Lately, I have been gravitating towards stories of everyday living. A slice of life selection of tales that are united in something bigger. Within: Short Stories for the Evolving Multicultural Woman by Aditi Wardhan Singh reminded me of one of my favourite storytellers growing up – Jhumpa Lahiri. She is famous for her book, The Namesake, which was made into a movie, but I remember her from her other collection of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth. I read it as a young woman in India, almost at the end of my university education. I didn’t know yet what adult life was going to look up, especially now that I was moving to a whole new country. So I started intentionally reading books which had my cultural roots and my near-future immigrant-ness.
Now, many years later, when I feel like I am again attracted to stories about everyday life with those cultural and geographical groundings, especially after huge milestones like marriage and career, I found Jhumpa Lahiri’s book waiting for me.
Navigating between the Indian traditions they’ve inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri’s elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In “A Temporary Matter,” published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant.
Content notes include miscarriage, infidelity, child death, death, medical content, death of parent.
Thoughts on Interpreter of Maladies
The collection of Interpreter of Maladies begins with a beautiful foreword by Domenico Starnone where he talks about finding a copy of this book at a second hand bookstore in Rome and fondly devouring it in the afternoon. It’s a book he loves coming back to. I feel like that is one of the highest compliments that one can give to an author – that their storytelling is one that calls us back to it. I was truly in awe of Jhumpa Lahiri and even now in my reverence, I can never go to the cold reference by last name. To me, she is an amazing role model author who is not afraid to write about the hardship and suffering of everyday life. I was craving her stories again. I had bought Interpreter of Maladies almost two years ago and now was my chance!
Interpreter of Maladies is a collection of 9 stories. The characters and perspective vary but in general, we meet Bengalis, sometimes in India, sometimes abroad. My Amma, paternal grandma, was Bengali, and I loved my additional connection to the stories. I related to many of the characters’ experiences in this book. The stories are always real. They are about people at crucial points in their lives.
There is a story told from the point of view of a young boy, Elliot. Elliot’s mother is working and he ends up being taken care of during the day by a young Indian woman, who is the wife and new bride of a professor. He likes Mrs Sen and finds her very interesting because she is so unlike his mom. She is always cooking, happy, doing something. But as time passes, Elliot starts to realize that Mrs Sen dearly misses her life back home in India. The events that follow portray the heartbreak of never being able to go back and hitting rock bottom.
The story mentioned in the synopsis about a young couple who have lost their child – it spoke to the struggles of living with tragedy and not knowing who we are. Of protecting each other from truths because they would hurt a lot but also realizing talking about them is the only way forward. I loved this story too!
There were a few stories that spoke to the pain of Partition of India – how it affected not just the people who were separated but also those who were not there. Indians from around the world. With reading The Girl and the Goddess, and growing older, history has taken on a whole new personal level and these stories felt powerful.
Many stories were told about the pains, some growing, some not, of being with someone. Of what it means to share a life with someone through the act of matrimony. The pain of belonging nowhere, of creating a new connection, of getting up when we feel down, and of being surrounded by community.
I got so much out of reading about life, I felt like my experience is no different than other human experiences and that makes me glad. And that is what I had wanted to read. Something about immigration, something about missing home and finding a new one, something of milestones: Interpreter of Maladies is a raw collection. It tugs at heartstrings and I loved it very much. These lines from the last story, The Third and Final Continent, express the emotions very well:
I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, three are times I am bewildered by each mile I have travelled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.
Interpreter of Maladies, Pg 193
This gives me solace of having found a new home. I have come a long way from the young woman who read Unaccustomed Earth. I wonder how much I would be able to understand this time. On my trip back home, I will be sure to bring back and reread my copy! Will I feel the same as Domenico Starnone about Interpreter of Maladies? I will keep you posted! 🙂
You can find Interpreter of Maladies on Goodreads and Storygraph.
I’ve only heard good things about this book but never gravitated toward short stories or slice of life. Since that’s currently changing, I’ll have to give it a read!
I hope you find this an enjoyable read. 🙂