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Unit 8: Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies: Detailed Study

pronounced reformatory parole. This transformation reveals her moral beauty; hence she justifies, Notes
rightly to the image of beauty. Iyengar commenting on the substantial stuff of a story says:
• “A short story, no less than a long novel, must create characters and situations that grip and
live in the reader’s mind, even as the barest two-roomed tenement and the luxurious multi-
chambered palace must equally, though not to be same extent or on the same lavish scale, give
Shelter to their respective occupants. One may be unable to define a ‘short story’ when one
comes across it; and the fortunate ‘common reader’ can afford to ignore our academic
differentiations in the sheer enjoyment and enchantment of literature.”
• Each story stands the test of unity for every incident and detail of the action bears a direct
relation to the conflict and its relation is worked out in the linear progression focussing on the
eventual resolution. Nearly all stories contain internal conflict; a very small room is provided to
external conflicts nevertheless the conflict is integral to her stories and they give a sufficiently
completed pattern of the life described. In most of the stories like ‘Interpreter of Maladies’, ‘A
temporary Matter’, ‘Sexy’, and ‘A Real Durwan’, the moment of resolution and perception are
practically simultaneous; the emotion evoked at the end makes the reader understand the
situation after the disappearance of disturbing clouds. For example- in ‘Blessed House’, there is
an immediate conflict between Twinkle’s desire for exhibition of religious tolerance and the
superstitious belief that removal of the effigies of Christ would deprive them of conjugal bliss.
The conflict reveals through her compulsive efforts to make her wish prevail over Sanjeev.
Finally the immediate conflict is resolved when Sanjeev accepts Twinkle’s outlook-a moment of
perception is simultaneously evoked with Twinkle projecting Sanjeev’s desire by putting one
of the effigies in the garden. Thus it seems the modern short story: “…demonstrates its claim to
the possession of narrative structure derived from plot. Basically, its structure is not very different
form that of the older and more conventional type of story, but its technique that is frequently
mistaken for lack of structure by readers and critics”.
• Interpreter of Maladies makes cultural invocations by using Indian and American societies side
by side. Lahiri has paid enough attention to cultural appropriateness of her language and her
interpretative competence is marked on almost every page, for example- in ‘A Real Durwan’
Indian culture is faithfully reflected to make real India echo through words:
• “Which was it, by truck or by car?” the children sometimes asked her on their way to play cops
and robbers in the alley. To which Boori Ma would reply, shaking the free end of her Sari so that
she skeleton keys rattled, ‘Why demand specifies? Why scrapelime from betel leaf ? Believe me,
don’t believe me. My life is composed of such grieves you cannot even dream them”.
• Undoubtedly Jhumpa Lahiri has successfully shared the quintessence of Indian and American
culture despite social and geographical differences, an easy victory barriers in communication
is marked all through the length of the collection, Z.N Patil in his book Style In Indian English
Ficiton points out:
• “Meanings are in people, not in the messages. A text is just an iceberg. It triggers off an
interpretative process which vitally depends on the backgrounds, posses different individual
experiences. In these differences that result in multiplicity of interpretations. A text acquire its
‘multiple existence’ (Armstrong 1986: 321) by inspiring different and even contradictory readings.
This is so precisely because readers from various cultural and social groups bring surprisingly
varied interpretative equipment. Every communicative act, textual, interpersonal or intercultural,
is a transaction between two private worlds-the world of the addresser and that of the reader.”
• Emerson in ‘The American Scholar’ says that every book become luminous with the content of
an active soul that sees “absolute truth”, “ utters truth or creates it”; every sentence is doubly
significant “and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.” Certainly “life is our dictionary
through which the meaning of the art of living becomes meaningful”.
• Her perception embodies reality that contains living in contemporary period. Lahiri constructs
reality with adequate, with expressive grace and transparent words. She uses metaphors
containing wonderful emotive potential. For example- mound of a belly: bronze leaves; penciled
instructions; full grapetoned lips; silver-haired men; mannish legs; bulbous lids; (‘A Temporary

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