CHAPTER - V

CONCLUSION
Kamala Markandaya and Jhumpa Lahiri, the two significant
wheels of Indian English fiction, are passionately interested not
only in presenting the important aspects and varied colours of
human life but also in depicting the socio-cultural conflicts in their
fiction. Both the writers are in tremendous love with life and
naturally, both intend to celebrate life. It is their subtle observation
of society and culture which makes them examine the prevailing
sicknesses, sorrows and miseries and bring to the fore the factors
which prohibit us to live our life joyously. Life is so full of meaning
to them that they find a possibility of divine song in the chaos of
life. However in an attempt to discover that divine song, they try to
diagnose and treat the illnesses inflicted by human beings, society
and environment sympathetically.
In the wide spectrum of her novels, Kamala Markandaya has
successfully presented almost all the important aspects and the
varied colours of human life viz., family life of poor persons in

183

Nectar in a Sieve and A Handful of Rice; husband-wife relationship

in A Silence of Desire; exploitation of man by man in Possession,
The Coffer Dams and Two Virgins; racial conflicts in Some Inner
Fury and Coffer Dams; love for country's freedom in Some Inner
Fury and The Golden Honeycomb and a spirit of love and fraternity
between the people of the East and the West in Pleasure City.
Jhumpa

Lahiri

as

diaspora

writer,

deals

with

multicultural society both from 'inside' and 'outside', seeking to find

her native identity as well as the new identity in the adopted
country. This brings in a clash of cultures and dislocation and
displacement. It is this predicament of people in diaspora that the
fictionist attempts to analyse through her oeuvre of fiction writing
consisting of Interpreter of Maladies (1999), The Namesake (2003),
Unaccustomed Earth (2008) and The Lowland (2013). She also
dwells on 'acculturation' and 'contra-acculturation' which the
second generation Indian-Americans experience. They are able to
get accultured in the new country, embracing its socio-cultural
values, at the same time experience a sense of nostalgia for the
Indian culture and sensibilities, experiencing alienation and
184

uprootedness. Such a feeling of in-betweenness experienced, the

fictionist portrays through her characters.
Kamala Markandaya's themes have been presented with a
rare realistic touch. Whether it is Hunger and Degradation or the
East-West encounter, the natural feelings of hunger and starvation
and the real feelings of the East towards the West and the vice
versa have been boldly depicted with an indelible mark on the
reader's conscience. The theme of Rootlessness, Fatalism and
Human

Relationship

have

the

unmistakable

tinge

of

an

autobiography. While going through the entire corpus of her work,

one cannot afford to be oblivious of the basic facts of her life-She
was born and brought up in a traditional Brahmin family of SouthIndia and later on went to England where after her marriage, she
settled permanently as an expatriate. Living in England for years as
an expatriate, she is a first hand witness to the sharp conflict
between the Eastern and the Western values.
It is generally felt that Markandaya's themes depict her tragic
vision of life. Her genuine concern for the miserable lot of the
poverty-stricken masses and their ruthless exploitation in her
185

motherland in sharp contrast with the glitter, affluence and

comfort of the West and decidedly further deepened her tragic
vision. Her concern for the have-nots has found a spontaneous
expression in Nectar in a Sieve, A Handful of Rice, The Coffer Dams
and even in The Golden Honeycomb. Further, colonialism and
consequent exploitation of the Indians and the struggle for
independence in India have also contributed to her tragic vision.
To give a realistic touch to her themes, the picture of human
nature which she presents is not poetic. She does not idealise or
glorify but presents the life as it is, with its variegated cavnas.
Jealousies, intrigues, petty quarrels and rivalries are all there, but
at the same time there is goodness, patient sufferance and heroic
endurance, and a living faith in a benevolent God too. In Nectar in
a Sieve, Some Inner Fury, Possession, A Handful of Rice and The
Golden Honeycomb, Markandaya does full justice to the Indian love
of, and attachment to the land and the family. The novels brim with
life and find an echo in every Indian heart.
The theme of Rootlessness points out the helplessness of man
before nature and circumstances. Sometimes floods and sometimes
186

man-made

whims

like

rapid

industrialization

and

lure

for

modernism uproot people. Nectar in a Sieve depicts Rootlessness

caused by industrialization and furies of Nature in the form of
floods and droughts. Possession shows Rootlessness resulting from
the selfish motives of Caroline to exploit an innocent child. A
Handful of Rice presents Rootlessness caused due to hunger and
adverse circumstances resulting in darkness in the life of Ravi. The
Nowhere Man points out the misery due to leaving, native land and
settling in another country and Two Virgins depicts Rootlessness
caused by lust for modernism and forgetting one's own culture.
Thus, all such real experiences of life have been brought alive in
Markandaya's novel.
The implied message in Markandaya's novels is that India
should confidently pursure her own path holding fast to her
traditional values and using methods appropriate to her culture It
is true that the novelist recognises the evils and deficiencies in
Indian life and society and warns her countrymen against a slavish
imitation of the West, yet she desires that India should adopt
quickness, agility and spirit of struggle for rights from the West.
187

The most striking feature of Markandaya's fiction is the

concept of cultural continuity in the din and bustle of social,
economic and political changes in modern India. The purposive
direction of her creative sensibility endows her novels with a certain
representative characters that marks them out as a significant
entity in the Indo-English Fiction.
Markandaya takes her characters from a wide spectrum.
Indian peasants, students, film producers and Swamis. Her men
and women characters are memorable ones. Rukmani, Mira,
Caroline, Saroja, Lalitha, Ravi, Clinton, Govind, Richard, Srinivas
and Rabi are full of strength and vitality. All her characters are
victims of circumstances like the people of this world. They try their
best to lead a peaceful life by trying to fight various hardships.
These obstacles can be in the form of nature and also man-made. It
is for man-made obstacles, Markandaya expresses her disgust. She
feels concerned to see man becoming the greatest enemy of man.
She wants that this whole world should be like a Pleasure City in
which man is not trying to oust another man, but is waiting for his
return so that all can live together happily.
188

Jhumpa Lahiri's Pultizer prize winning Interpreter of Maladies

(1999) with its nine stories give the readers the subtle way in which
the

fictionist

probes

into

various

maladies

that

disrupt

relationships between protagonists living in exile. As they cope up

with life in the new world, their emotional turmoil continue to be
the focus of Lahiri's attention. Being an immigrant herself, Lahiri
makes her soul searching study very absorbing, interpreting
maladies as they dynamics of culture and diaspora continue to
daunt her characters.
In 'A Temporary Matter' the relationship between the Indian
couple Shoba and Shukumar begins to break up after Shoba
delivered a stillborn child. The event leads to their avoiding each
other - she busies herself with her work, while he sleeps most of
the days having neglected her Ph.D. work.
The wife fails to understand the loss her husband has
experienced, manifested in his hermit like withdrawn life. At the
final breaking point when she reveals her intention to live in
apartment away from her husband, he makes his final confession
of the dead child's sex revealing his deep-rooted shock of having
189

lost a boy child. Their malady is failure in communication in

emotional stress.
"The Interpreter of Maladies" is centered on a second
generation Indian American couple Mr and Mrs. Das on a tour of
India with their three children. Their marital life is on the rocks
manifested in the bickering on small matters. The tour guide Mr.
Kapasi's own faltering marriage comes in contrast to the couple in
conflict. Coming to know of his regular profession as an interpreter
of maladies of patients to a doctor as translator, she finds him quite
romantic and intoxicating. Interested in him, she request for his
address, which he jots on a paper for her. He begins to entertain
romantic thoughts of intimacy with her. In the meantime, when the
two of them are in the car together. Mrs. Das confesses the secret
about one of her sons, fathered by a Punjabi friend of her husband.
She wanted a remedy for her malady for Mr. Kapasi. The story
reveals how guilt ridden people like Mrs. Sen seeks remedy for their
ailments in the wrong place.
'Sexy', centred on Miranda, an American woman involved in
an extramarital affair with Dev, a married Indian. He cheats his
190

wife and son to continue the clandestine relationship with Miranda.

The malady of Dev's sexual perversion is given a remedy when
Miranda decides to break up with him, showing her change of
attitude. The story is a reflection on the mysteries of human
behaviour beyond the dynamics of culture and diaspora.
Lahiri as the omniscient observer applies the predicament of
her characters to interpret the maladies gnawing into their
immigrant life. She also attempts to cope up with the dynamics of
culture as well as diaspora in each situation. Her stories, thereby,
provide a powerful healing touch to immigrants caught up in
alienation, exile and isolation.
In The Namesake, Lahiri makes her protagonsit Ashoke
emerge out of Gogol's overcoat, a man in exile and diaspora,
attempting to build a dream for his family. The story set in the
United States is written in the background of Lahiri's own life in
New England and New York, with Calcutta hovering over. For her
America is a real presence in the book; the characters must
struggle and come to terms with what it means to live here, to be
brought up here, to belong and not belong here.
191

The novel recounts the story of Ashoke and Ashima who

attempt to build their home in America. Ashima, struggling to cope
up with the new life, yearns for home as she awaits her child's
birth. Meanwhile Ashoke following the inspiration of Nikolai Gogol's
story "The Overcoat" which saved him from death during a train
accident in Calcutta, qualifies himself with a Doctorate in USA, to
make his dream come true in diaspora. When his son is born, due
to delay in getting a name chosen by the grandmother, Ashoke
christens him Gogol - the namesake of Nikolai Gogol, the Russian
author.
The novel, however, ends in Gogol's coping with his pangs to
live a new life in diaspora. The dynamics of relationships continue
to puzzle Lahiri's as the characters in their multiplicity of
relationships, be it from the west or the east, remain universally
the same. However, culture and diaspora remain central concerns
in the daunting novel as she interprets various maladies that Gogol
suffered and the way he seeks remedial measures.
In the eight stories in Unaccustomed Earth Lahiri interprets
the

maladies

in

her

protagonists
192

entangled

in

multiple

relationships. The diaspora experience of the central character also

focus on their sense of exile, alienation, and uprootedness. Being
essentially autobiographical in her writing, she includes details
from her Bengali community and personal experiences in her
fiction. Portraying life of the Indian migrants to America, Lahiri has
been very poignant in capturing the diaspora spirit of her
characters.
In all the stories in Unaccustomed Earth Jhumpa Lahiri
applies the metaphor based on the epigraph from Nathaniel
Hawthorne's "The Custom-House" which reads: "Human nature will
not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted,
for too long a series of generations, in the same wornout soil. My
children have had other birth places, and, so far as their fortunes
may

be

within

my

control,

shall

sterile

their

roots

into

unaccustomed earth".
In the title story, "Unaccustomed Earth" through the garden
metaphor, Lahiri examines the maladies in the relationship
between Ruma and her father. After her mother's death, retiring
from a pharmaceutical company, he began travelling to Europe
193

through package tours. After one of his tours he comes to visit

Ruma who lives with her white husband Adam, and her three year
old son Akash, in their new home in Seattle.
Her father was reluctant to move into Ruma's home as he was
happy to live a life of his own. The metaphor of 'nourishment'
becomes ever stronger for family bonding. Symbolically the bonding
continues to be present through emotional ties even when
separated through death and distance. In the final analysis Ruma's
predicament takes her through a process of assimilation and
acceptance into American society, yet cherishing family ties,
following the promptings of her inner self Lahiri deafly assesses the
maladies her characters face and the remedies she proposes.
Diaspora experience is none of exile, migration, dislocation
and displacement that brings in identity confusion and problems of
identification in the backdrop of alienation from old and new
cultures. Some bits and pieces are taken from my own parents and
other parents that I knew growing up..... The thing I took for
granted when I was growing up is that I was living in a world within

194

a world... To me, they don't represent immigrants or anyone

specific. They just represent the human condition (Bookforum).
Jhumpa Lahiri's latest novel "The Lowland" focuses on
Subhash and Udayan, two brothers who are born fifteen months
apart. Subhash is placid and obedient, while Udayan is impulsive
and daring. Udyan identifies with the Naxalite movement, a Maoistinspired peasant insurgency that seeks to return land to the poor
by engaging in guerrilla warfare against government forces.
The history and development of the Naxalites dominate the
first half of the novel. The second half traces the aftershocks of its
violence on the family. Subhash leaves India to pursue a doctorate
in Rhode Island, while Udayan marries and devotes himself to the
Naxalite revolution. Subhash's placid life changes forever when he
learns that Udayan was murdered by police forces.
Udayan's wife, Gauri, and his parents are traumatized
because they witnessed the killing. When Subhash proposes
marriage to Gauri, she agrees. It's a practical decision. Gauri is
pregnant with Udayan's child, and needs to get away from her in-

195

laws. In America, Gauri is a neglectful mother and an emotionally

distant wife.
The novel moves back and forth in time and takes on different
points of view, which allow readers to see how anger and betrayal
redound through the generations.
Gauri increasingly isolates herself, pouring her energy into
getting a degree of Doctorate in Philosophy. She specializes in the
neo-Marxist social theory of the Frankfurt School. She doesn't take
up arms against landholders; instead, she gives papers at academic
conferences.
Ironically, loss and anger pave the way for a rejection of
radical politics. For Gauri anger was always mounted to her love for
Udayan like some helplessly mating pair of insects. Anger at him for
dying when he might have lived, for bringing her happiness, and
then taking it away, for trusting her, only to betray her, for believing
in sacrifice, only to be so selfish in the end.
In truth, deliberate, personal abandonment is worse than
political risk. Gauri abandons Subhash and her daughter, Bela,
who never gets over it. There's a sense of justice when Gauri
196

realizes the damage she caused her daughter. "She understood now
what it meant to walk away from her child. It had been her own act
of killing. ... It was a crime worse than anything Udayan had
committed." (The Lowland)
The Lowland dwells in complex territory. Gauri realizes the
Naxals are oblivious to an oppression much closer to home: that of
women. Udayan had wanted a revolution, but at home he'd
expected to be served; his only contribution to meals was to sit and
wait for her or her mother-in-law to put a plate before him.
These insights point toward an unspoken question: Is it
irresponsible -- or even criminal -- to risk your life for a political
cause that may not be realized in your lifetime? The Lowland
stutters in response: Yes -- no -- maybe.
Indeed,
bearings

of

the
the

psychological
primary

ties

implications
make

the

and
works

sociological
of

Kamala

Markandaya and Jhumpa Lahiri an engrossing study for those who

explore the reality of human happiness in terms of cultural truths
and sociological perspectives. At the present moment, when a
cynical could-not-care-less attitude is fast developing to corrode the
197

foundations of the sacred familial ties, the novels of Kamala

Markandaya and Jhumpa Lahiri can serve as eye-openers. They
inspire one to cherish these bonds and maintain their harmony.

198