A Temporary Matter

Let me start this blog post off with "sorry I'm late to the party."  I actually started to work on this last night but was a bit confused.  I poked around at various blogs and didn't see anything related to Lahiri.  I then cowardly looked at other peep's blogs and noticed that they hadn't posted either.  I was waiting for someone to go so I could figure out what I was doing wrong.   After a bit more poking around and scrolling way way way down, I finally saw the Lahiri posts.  My bad...


This post is in response to Auggie's post on Lahiri and his idea that her writing suggests that marriages are fragile.  To use Julie's analogy of viewing this under a different " lens", I'm going to take a closer look at their respective roles in a traditional Indian marriage.

While I don't disagree that Lahiri might be making the statement that marriage is a fragile thing, I think that the story delves deeper into issues of Indian culture in America.  For example, if we buy into the idea that Indian women are to be subservient to their men, then we have to look at this story as being contrary to that.  


What I mean is that in this story, we see a man and woman of Indian descent that are dealing with the loss of a child.  Each person is dealing with (or not) this loss and the story revolves around not only how they dealt with it individually, but as a couple.  However, in the story, we see that the stereotypical roles Indians are associated with simply do not apply.  For example, it is the husband who is so distraught that he has had to stay home (can't teach) and work on his dissertation.  The wife on the other hand goes back to work as soon as possible.  This is our first clue that not only are the roles reversing, but that each is dealing with the issue differently.  


The husband is actually trying to deal with it.  He is clearly depressed and sad.  However, in spite of this, he assumes the womanly role around the house and cooks the food and cleans the house.  His wife on the other hand goes back to work almost immediately.  She comes home late, throws her stuff around like she lives in a hotel (for him to clean up no doubt) and doesn't actually engage in the relationship.  Sure sounds like role reversal to me.


It is when the power is out and they are eating by candlelight that they are able to finally break through the ice a bit and start communicating again.  The naive husband is delighted by this and begins to feel as though they might actually be heading in the right direction.  During their conversations we begin to learn some of their secrets.  The wife details various secrets, which upon closer examination, detail her selfishness.  The husbands' secrets however, detail his selflessness.  For example, the wife mentions staying late to go out with a coworker for drinks.   The husbands mentions forgetting to tip a waiter and driving all the way back to give him a tip.   His motives were always for her benefit and her motives were for her own benefit.


Near the end of the story the husband learns that she has been staying late to find an apartment.  While it certainly hurt him, his response was unselfish.  He wanted her to deal with the problem and  to face the fact that "they" had  both lost a child.  He told her that he had seen and held the child.  He was at the hospital that day. He didn't say anything because he was keeping a promise to her that he wouldn't tell her the sex of the child.  It wasn't until he felt that this was all he could do to help her did he betray his own promise.


In the end, I think we see a complete role reversal from a typical Indian couple.  The husband becomes the nurturer and the wife becomes the typical stubborn male not willing to deal with her problems.  Do they get back together?  Who knows.  But his unselfishness causes her to finally break down and feel something.


Any thoughts?