Interpreting Maladies

Interpreting Maladies

“Interpreter of Maladies” is a story about two cultures meeting in a taxi ride. Although all of the characters in the story trace their roots to India, the husband and wife were born and raised in America. On the other hand, Mr. Kasapi, our taxi driver extraordinaire, is a direct product of India. The husband and wife should be viewed form an Indian perspective also because of the role their parents played and the exposure to Indian customs in their upbringing. All of the adults in the story are involved in unsuccessful marriages. Ultimately, the characters’ Indian heritage and culture leads to the demise of their marriages.

In the case of Mr. and Mrs. Das, cultural motives were the cause of their union. As Mrs. Das shrewdly recaps, “Our parents were best friends who lived in the same town. My entire life I saw him every weekend, either at our house or theirs. We were sent upstairs to play together while our parents joked about our marriages. Imagine” (¶140)! As we discover, the two were engaged as early as high school and then went on to the same college. This manner of engagement is certainly not typical of mainstream America, and therefore can be attributed to their Indian culture. However, there is a further impact to their young marriage; it led to early childbearing. The arrival of children led Mrs. Das to sequester herself from her community. She describes her own isolation when she says, “Always tired, she declined invitations from her one or two college girlfriends, so have lunch or shop in Manhattan. Eventually the friends stopped calling her, so that she was left at home all day with the baby, surrounded by toys that made her trip” (¶143). Although it is not explicitly mentioned in the text, the reader can infer that this frustration was the reason “Bobby was conceived in the afternoon.” She had been unhappily married for quite some time now all because of a marriage that happened when she was too young.

Mr. Kasapi’s unhappiness is also because of his cultural background. First, cultural taboos play a detrimental role in Mr. Kasapi’s relationship with his spouse. Mr. Kasapi complains about never having seen his own wife completely naked. It can be inferred that culture accounts for this peculiarity when the narrator says, “He had, of course, seen plenty of bare limbs before, belonging to the American and European ladies who took his tours” (¶ 99). Since Mr. Kapasi has been exposed to other cultures as a result of being a tour guide, he is able to apply certain norms to his own marriage. The quote leads us to believe that Western women are more likely to show their “bare limbs,” whereas Indian women are less likely to do so. Next, a conscientious reader should wonder why the couple still finds themselves together. The marriage is clearly not a happy one, “He wondered if Mr. and Mrs. Das were a bad match, just as he and his wife were. Perhaps they, too, had little in common apart from three children and a decade of their lives. The signs he recognized from his own marriage were there––the bickering, the indifference, the protracted silences” (¶79). Also, Mrs. Kasapi does not think very highly of her spouse, “his wife had little regard for his career as an interpreter” and she calls him a “doctor’s assistant”(¶78). These statements illustrate how miserable the marriage must be for the two individuals involved. Perhaps the reason they have not yet separated is because of culture. Divorce, after all, is not as accepted in other parts of the world as it is America.

Jhumpa Lahiri herself may not be against her Indian roots, but this story can be interpreted in such a manner. The story may not even be a criticism of India, but at the very least, India’s customs are to be blamed for these particular cases. The story masterfully combines the plight of both Indians living in the subcontinent as well as Indians that have moved to other parts of the world.