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It’s a Man’s World, and It will Be- Bharti Mukherjee and Jhumpa
Lahiri
Himanginee Kaushik
Lect. in English
Govt. Polytechnic College
Loharu (Haryana)
ABSTRACT
The present paper discusses about the sufferings of female characters in Bharti
Mukherjee’s and Jhumpa Lahiri’s novels. The Indian born American writer Bharti Mukherjee is
one of the most widely known immigrant writers. From her early age she was brought up in
western culture. Her main theme throughout her works is to discuss about the condition of
women. She highlights the contemporary woman’s struggle to define herself and fight for her
own identity. Present paper mainly explores the question of self and also tries to target the
problem of identity. Bharti Mukherjee in her writings stresses on self empowerment which is
essential for any human being.
Jhumpa Lahiri, a diasporic writer has written short stories and novels on women’s
condition and their struggle to establish themselves in this male dominating society. Women
characters in Jhumpa Lahiri’s works face the challenges of their lives and try to live their lives
on their own terms and conditions. Her fictional works become more significant for giving a new
dimension to cross cultural encounter for a different society.
INTRODUCTION
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Lahiri’s novelThe Namesake is a stunning example of feminism and struggle of a lady
Ashima who searches for identity. Ashima calls out for her husband from the bathroom. She
doesn’t use his name, when she calls for him, since “it’s not the type of thing Bengali wives do.”
Ashima is about to give birth and in that mental and physical state she is full of fear and nervous
also about raising a child in “a country where she is related to no one, where she knows so little,
where life seems so tentative and spare.” When baby is born Ashmia mourns by realizing the fact
that her close family members are not there to celebrate. She just wants to go back to India. She
feels lonely, alienated and dislocated. She “feels too old to learn such a skill. She hates returning
in the evenings to a dark, empty house, going to sleep on one side of the bed and waking up on
another.” Here Ashima always struggles and tries to deal with her loneliness. She leaves her
country, family and her close ones for her husband but after all these things she feels lonely at
her own home in foreign land and Ashoke lives busy in his work and she spends hours thinking
about her past time. Even during her pregnancy she has to live alone.
In Interpreter of Maladies Jhumpa Lahiri discusses vacuum in the lives of Indians who
were living far off from their own people and land also. In one of her short stories named “A
Temporary Matter”, she presents the broken relationship of a couple named Shobha and
Shukumar in a modern society where both of them forget the love and try to avoid each other.
Shobha feels lonely and wants to remain herself busy in work and Shukumar wants to be at home
doing his dissertation on “Agrarian Revolts in India.” After the death of their baby life has come
to a stand still. Even time could not heal up their pain and they don’t spend time together but due
to power cut for five days from 8 to 9 pm gives them an opportunity to sit together and spent
some time but this was a temporary matter. The couple also uses this opportunity and makes
their confessions in the dark. Both of them reveal some of the hidden facts to each other, those
they have never told to each other. At last Shobha reveals the fact on the fifth night that she has
been looking for an apartment and she has found one. She tells about their final separation.
In her next short story “When Mr. Pirzada came to Dine” Lahiri tells about the time when
Pakistan was engaged in civil war just after India’s partition. Mr. Pirzada, the main protagonist,
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leaves his family in Dacca. He works as a lecturer in botany at the Boston University as he has
been awarded a grant from Pakistan government. The narrator ‘Lilia’ comes to know about Mr.
Pirzada as he is a daily visitor to their house in Boston, and used to come to have dinner and
watch the evening news at their house. Because the postal system of Dacca has destroyed so he
has not heard even a single word about his family for the year. This story represents the mental
state of the narrator who is worried about Mr. Pirzada’s family may also have been brutally
killed in civil war. But on the other hand, she is full of hope for the safety of his family. During
twelve days of the war, the narrator is not allowed to watch television by her father. After some
time Mr. Pirzada goes back to Dacca and reunits with her wife and seven daughters. But narrator
is not so happy as she is missing Mr. Pirzada, who is miles and hours away to her. She realizes
now the pain and suffering which Mr. Pirzada must have undergone in the absence of his family.
She also feels the value of relationship in one’s life.
The story “Interpreter of Maladies” is about Mr. Kapasi, the tour guide for tourist who
visits India. Mr. and Mrs. Das- an American family comes into the contact with Mr. Kapasi
during their visit to the Konark temple. Mr. Kapasi feels that Mr. and Mrs. Das are not happy
together and he feels attracted towards the beauty and simplicity of Mrs. Das. Mr. Kapasi feels
that Mr. and Mrs. Das is a bad match just as he and his wife are:
Her sudden interest in him, an interest she did not express in either her husband or
her children, was mildly intoxicating. When Mr. Kapasi thought once again about
now she had said “romantic,” the feeling of intoxication grew (Lahiri, 53)
On reaching the Konarka temple, Mr. Kapasi tries to express his love to Mrs. Das and he
gets a chance to interact with Mrs. Das. Mrs. Das also reveals her secrets to him and tells about
the guilt and pain that she is facing since eight years as she has committed a sin by making
relations with her husband’s Punjabi friend who has come to stay with them for a week. Mr.
Kapasi is stunned by her confession that Mr. Das is not father of Bobby and Mrs. Das has
conceived Bobby in the afternoon on a sofa when her husband’s friend has made love to her. Mr.
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Kapasi thinks to act as a mediator but when Bobby is attacked by monkeys, Mrs. Kapasi realizes
the love and emotions in the heart of Mr. and Mrs. Das for each other and their children. Mr.
Kapasi realizes that unseen bondage still exists in the family and there is no place for him.
In Jhumpa Lahiri’s next story “A Real Durwan”, she highlights the plight and suffering
of the people after partition with the help of the main protagonist Boori Maa and her miserable
condition. Due to partition she deports to Calcutta and there she is to work as a sweeper. Most of
the time Boori Ma memorizes and laments over the life she has before partition but now she is
not with her family. Jhumpa successfully describes the pain and agony which a person
experiences after the separation with his/her family and home with the help of Boori Ma. Boori
Ma also helps people but one day when she goes out to purchase some items and after coming
back she finds that the basin is missing and the blame is imposed on her. Now people do not
believe in her and she is no longer trust worthy. Though the story has a tragic end and
symbolizes no end to the toil and hard work which a man does throughout his life.
In her collection’s next story “Sexy” Jhumpa depicts contrast between real life and the
world of fantasy. The story revolves around the modern Boston society, where the influence of a
foreign culture and the disintegration of a family can be seen easily. The main protagonist
Miranda has a boy friend named Dev, a married Bengali man. They meet frequently in her
apartment, even after she knows that Dev is already married and he has to go back to his house
where he lives with his wife. Miranda does not reveal her relations to anyone, not even to her
colleagues at the public radio station. She even does not reveal this to Laxmi who those days, is
busy with her cousin, whose husband has deserted her after nine years of marriage for the sake of
an English girl. Laxmi’s main concern is her son who is not attending his school for many days
as there is no one to drop him. Jhumpa Lahiri depicts the difference between married life and the
lovers’ life. On one side she discusses about Laxmi who always argued with her husband and
then apologized. On other side she discusses Miranda and Dev, they never argue. After coming
back of Dev’s wife from London, Miranda cannot meet Dev regularly and they meet only on
Sundays now. On weekends, Miranda keeps herself busy in shopping and with Laxmi. Laxmi
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always discusses her worries about cousin’s husband who has an extra marital affair, “If I were
her I’d they straight to London and shoot them both____ I don’t know how she can just wait this
way.” (Lahiri,97)
At this statement Miranda feels quite uncomfortable as she is also guilty and ruining the
married life of Dev. After sometime, Miranda gets a chance to meet Laxmi’s cousin and son
Rohin. Rohin also reveals the pain, sadness and suffering of his mother because his father
deserted them for a girl whom he met in a plane. Rohin addresses Miranda by saying ‘Sexy’
when she wears silver cocktail dress. Miranda asks Rohin about meaning of this word and he
answers: “It means loving someone you don’t know____ that’s what my father did___He sat
next to someone he didn’t know, someone sexy, and now he loves her instead of my mother.”
(Lahiri, 107-108)
After listening these words, Miranda shocks and feels guilty for her relation with Dev.
She cries and cries a lot letting out her emotions, but by these situations Rohin is not disturbed as
he is habitual of seeing his mother crying. Now she decides that she will no longer continue her
relationship with Dev, as she and her wife both deserve a better life.
In her next short story “Mrs. Sen” Jhumpa Lahiri represents feeling of dislocation and
nostalgia in the hearts of those who are in Boston now and always miss their motherland. The
present story revolves around Mrs. Sen, a thirty years old woman. Like other Indians Mrs. Sen
also misses the feeling of empathy which she experienced in her childhood in India and also
memorizes about the moments when women used to gather, gossip and work together sharing
their joys and sorrows on different occasions and she also says Eliot that if she would tell her
problems to anyone here, no one would listen her. Eliot also feels the same thing when he thinks
about his own home. Eliot also inspires with Mrs. Sen and accepts the real life and feels ready to
face the challenges in life.
In her another short story “This Blessed House” Jhumpa Lahiri presents beautifully the
impact of foreign culture on Indians residing in U.S. The story is about a couple Sanjeev and his
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wife Twinkle. They go in a new house and both of them find some things of Christian
paraphernalia. Sanjeev is irritated of these things but Twinkle enjoys. Sanjeev feels Twinkle has
been changed and unsettled things don’t matter to her now.
Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story “The Treatment of BibiHalder”, is also a part of her famous
collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies. BibiHalder , the main protagonist of the story is
thirty years old and screams in the night when her wrists are bound with ropes and moist mass is
applied to reduce inflammation. Every effort was made to reduce her suffering by her family.
Her life has become terrible. All branches- Allopaths, homeopaths and ayurvedies have been
consulted to cure her ailment but in vain. JhumpaLahiri here shows that the main disease in
modern society is loneliness and the cure for it is only marriage. Bibi also wants a man who will
speak to her, protect her and earn for her. She also wishes to have a husband for whom she will
dress up smartly and he will take her to cinema, zoo and garden, and buy soda and cashews for
her. But Halder and his wife know that no one would like to marry her. As the doctor says that
only marriage would cure her.Halder gives a one line advertisement in the town newspaperin
order to solicit a groom: “GIRL, UNSTABLE, HEIGHT 152 CENTIMETERS, SEEKS
HUSBAND.” After passing two months without a single reply to the advertisement, Halder and
his wife realizes that no one is interested in her. After some time Bibi is found pregnant and
Halder and his wife help her to deliver a son. But they are shocked as who is the person in their
town has disgraced her:
A few of our servants were questioned, and in tea stalls and bus stands, possible
suspects were debated and dismissed. But there was no point carrying out an
investigation. She was to the best of our knowledge, cured. (Lahiri,172)
In Jhumpa Lahiri’s next short stories “The Third and Final Continent” she tells about
dislocation, alienation and pain of Indians after shifting to a foreign land. The narrator of the
present story- a penniless Bengali bachelor who leaves India to seek fortune far from home and
strives hard to survive in England first and after that in America where he settles down with his
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wife as American citizens. So America is known as his third and final continent. He feels that his
son should also gather courage like his father and mother.
In her next work Unaccustomed Earth,JhumpaLahiri examines experiences of Indians in
America again. The title story explores the relationship of a daughter and her father. It shows
how a daughter deals with her recently widowed father. Ruma is married to Adam. She, her
husband Adam and their son Akash live in Seattle. Ruma’s father comes to meet his grandson,
Akash. He starts travelling after the death of Ruma’s mother and due to this; her father is used to
live alone. During his journey, once he meets Mrs. Bagchi, a Bengali widow and he starts dating
her. Ruma also comes to know about it and finds a post-card but she doesn’t read the message.
In her next story “Hell-Heaven”, Jhumpa Lahiri tells about the relationship
ofPranabChakraborti and Usha’s family. Usha, the narrator of the story calls Pranab ‘Kaku’
(Uncle). He is alone in Boston. Usha’s mother falls in love with Pranab but Pranab calls Usha’s
mother ‘Boudi’ (wife of elder brother). Pranab meets an American woman named Deborah and
falls in love with her and later he also marries to her. Usha’s mother is not happy with their
marriage as she herself loves Pranab and due to that jealousy she predicts they are not made for
each other and they will divorce soon.
“A Choice Accommodations” is a story about Amit and Megan. They go back to
Langford Academy to meet an old friend Pam who is getting married. When Megan and Amit
are getting ready for the wedding she realizes she has a burn on her dress. After this, they plan to
attend and decide Amit will stand near her to keep people from seeing the burn. During that
ceremony Amit notices the changes about Langford and remembers about his time there. Megan
talks with one of Amit’s former classmates. Amit becomes uncomfortable because of that.
Like Jhumpa Lahiri, Bharti Mukherjee is also an Indian-born-American writer who is
currently a professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Berkeley. She
also highlights woman’s condition and pain in this modern society. In her work The Tiger’s
Daughter,she tells the story of an Indian girl named Tara who is raised in Calcutta, educated at
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Vassar, college in New York and is married to an American man. It is story of shattered dreams
of a lady. Tara, twenty two years old daughter of a wealthy family and prominent Bengali
Brahmin, marries an American and goes away from home for seven years. After seven years, she
returns to Calcutta. Now she finds that she is neither admired by her family nor by her friends.
Even her husband, David does not give her credit for clearing bathrooms which Tara considers a
wifely duty. She leads her to develop a split personality:
In the prayer room when she grows nervous over her mother’s ‘simple request to
share piety with her family’ and she forgets “the next step of the ritual, she felt it
was not a simple loss. Tara feared, this forgetting of prescribed actions, it was a
little death, a hardening of the heart, a cracking of axis and centre. But her mother
came quickly with the relief of words.” (p.51)
Tara feels she has become rootless both in India and America. She is full of fear that
David “no longer wanted to make her over to his ideal image, that he no longer loved her.”
(p.50) Tara falls in a dilemma between being a Bengali Brahmin and the American culture. Her
marriage to an American always makes her embarrassed among her friends and relatives. Tara’s
culture and David’s culture are not same. Due to her marriage she remains an outsider in her own
home. Tara also feels Indian people show so much interest in foreign things and dresses but they
do not support marriage with foreign people. Tara also feels “cut off” from her near and dear
ones on many occasions due to her marriage with David. In India, one should marry in her own
caste, he/she will be treated as an outcaste or a sinner. As Tara violates these rules and marries a
foreign man who is a Jew. She totally forgets her caste, culture and religion after her marriage.
Tara is also not comfortable with her mother after coming back to India and also feels alienated
in her presence. Tara becomes mentally turbulent and makes her return to the USA.
In her work Wife, Mukherjee depicts how a lady expects love and freedom from marriage
and what happens when her dreams shatter. Dimple, the main protagonist of the novel is a
Bengali girl. This story is about the conflict between Western and Indian cultures. She is a
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Bengali college educated girl but suddenly she has to go to an alien West. She is married to Amit
Basu, a consulting engineer. Before marriage Dimple thinks that marriage would bring her
freedom, cocktail parties and love. But after marriage, she gets puzzled that marriage does not
bring glamorous freedom. Dimple wants a different kind of life. Situation becomes more
complex when she comes to know about her pregnancy as she is not ready for this. She begins to
think of the baby as unfinished business. Dimple becomes a patient of insomnia. She even does
not want to meet anyone and she is afraid to leave her apartment and begins sleeping whole day.
Amit does not take these things seriously because he thinks that only pampered American
women have breakdown and such type of disorders. He explains that dimple is going through a
cultural shock. But Amit, her husband does not help her to come out from this situation. Such
situation drives her to an abnormal person. She complains to Amit, “Why didn’t you tell me to
get the loop? Why didn’t you arrange it? Why didn’t you get me some pills? Her helplessness
enraged her.” (p.32) All dreams of Dimple are shattered. She faces so much pain and problems.
Bharti Mukherjee’s novel Jasmine is a story of a woman from Punjab who takes her life
into her own hands and makes herself an American. The present novels tells the story of a girl
who becomes Jyoti, a Punjabi girl, to Jasmine, a loving and devoted Hindu wife, to Kali,
incarnation of destroying goddess, to Jazzy, a remade, non-immigrant to Jase, a nanny in the
home to a New York college professor, and to Jane, live in partner of a bank official in Iowa.
Behavior and personality of all these characters are different. Jyoti, the main protagonist of the
novel is a Punjabi girl. She is an intelligent, beautiful and self-willed girl. She goes to America
after her widowhood. Her husband dies in a bomb blast. Jyoti is born in the village of Hasanpur
in Jullandhar district of Punjab eighteen years after the Partition Riots. She is an unwanted child
of the family as she is the fifth daughter and the seventh of nine children. Her mother wants to
kill her because she does not want her daughter to suffer the pains of a dowryless bride. Jasmine
thinks: “I survived the sniping. My grandmother may have named Jyoti, light but in surviving I
wasalready Jane, a fighter and adapter.” (p.40) Jasmine also thinks about her childhood and these
childhood memories become an instrument in her fight against fate and her search for self-
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identity. In her childhood, an astrologer predicts about her widowhood and exile in an early age.
But she denies to believe on it and always tries to raise herself above all these false beliefs and
superstition. She is different from all other girls of the village who have no minds of their own,
“village girls are like cattle; whichever way you lead them, that is the way they will go.” (p.46)
But Jyoti knows her ways and what she wants to do. She falls in love with Prakash and marries
him, a young and ambitious engineer. He gives a new name to Jyoti that is Jasmine. Later her
husband dies in bomb blast. Jasmine goes to America on a forged passport. But there is she raped
by a Captain of a ship. She is a modern girl. She doesn’t kill herself after this incident instead of
she kills the cruel Captain and begins her journey into American. She faces life boldly and
struggles hard to survive against all odds. So Bharti Mukherjee shows Jyoti’s journey and her
fight with fate.
In Desirable Daughters, Bharti Mukherjee highlights the fight of a woman to survive in a
different society. Tara Lata, the main character of the novel is married to a tree in a ceremonious
ritual, as a measure to mitigate the malefic aspect. This concept is totally superstition from the
point view of feminism. In Indian society, women should be supportive to their husbands in each
and every circumstance. The novel discusses the life of three brahmin daughters- Tara, Padma
and Parvati. They were born in a wealthy Bengali Brahmin family. These three are brought up in
a very conservative traditional family. Tara has to marry a person of his parents’ choice.
Marriages in India are performed according to parents’ wish. A girl is given off in marriage to a
groom completely unknown to her. She is taken to the marriage pandal like a goat taken to a
deity for sacrifice. Tara is not satisfied with this and expresses her dissatisfaction about her
marriage with Bish and says, “I married a man I had never met, whose picture and biography and
blood lines I approved of, because my father told me it was time to get married and this was the
best husband on the market.” (p.26) Tara takes divorce to Bish and remarriages to Andy. So Tara
has to suffer because of her parents’ conservative attitude and old beliefs.
So on the basis of above discussion; it is clear that it is very difficult for a woman to
survive in this male dominating society. In society there are so many rules for a woman and she
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has to follow all those rules. Husband is like a God for a woman in Indian society and she has to
live according to his wish. According to the beliefs of Indian society, a girl has to live according
to her father in her childhood, her husband in her young age and her son in her old age. So it is
proved
that
it’s
a
man’s
world
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and
it
will
be.
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REFERENCES
1. Beauvoir, Simone De. The Second Sex. Trans, Parshley. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1983.
Print.
2. Mukherjee, Bharti. Jasmine. New York: Virago, 2002. Print.
3. ---. Wife. Boston: Houghton Miffin, 1975. Print.
4. ---.Desirable Daughters. New Delhi: Rupa, 2003. Print.
5. ---.The Tiger’s Daughter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972. Print.
6. Lahiri, Jhumpa. Interpreter of Maladies: Stories of Bengal, Boston and beyond. New
Delhi: Harper Collins, 1999. Print.
7. ---. The Namesake. New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2004. Print.
8. ---. Unaccustomed Earth. New Delhi: Random House, 2008. Print.
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