Himanshu Kunwar
(The following contains spoilers for Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story ‘A Temporary Matter’)
Grief is the main focus of A Temporary Matter, a short story by Jhumpa Lahiri. The story follows the story of a married Indian couple, Shoba and Shukumar, who have just lost their newborn child to a failed cesarean delivery. A tragic event has now dulled a vibrant marriage full of enthusiasm, color, cooking, and love. Each character battles an internal struggle, blocking themselves from the external world. Diving deeper within themselves, they are met by the face of an empty void. When the power goes out on their street, Shoba and Shukumar are forced to confront each other at a dark candlelit dinner. The blocked swirling pool within their hearts has overflowed, spilling out harsh truths. They struggle with immense grief and the way in which it has manifested into their lives and their relationship. The psychological entanglement that grief has caused this couple unravels into a messy heap, giving the reader a glimpse into the void. Lahiri delves into the nature of grief and shows how grief can manifest itself through weariness and reveals how it can pull people apart, and she does so by using contrasts of life before and after loss, confessions, and by detailing a growing distance between the couple.
A Temporary Matter begins with the illustration of a slightly and unsettlingly bleak household. It may not appear this way at first glance, but Lahiri gives subtle cues to the reader, which becomes clearer as the story progresses. Lahiri expresses that Shukumar and Shoba feel grief through their changes in behavior as they become wearier and tiresome. The couple’s grief physically manifests itself, and the couple begins to notice these differences in each other. Shukumar describes his wife as “the type of woman she’d once claimed she would never resemble” and noting her appearance resembled how his wife would sometimes look “on mornings after a party or a night at a bar, when she’d been too lazy to wash her face” (Lahiri 1). At this point, Lahiri hasn’t revealed that the couple has lost a child, and this new tired appearance seems to be from older age and the stress of work. Lahiri continues to create an image of what life used to be like. Shoba and Shukumar’s house is like an old mural, scrubbed of its beauty, with only a tinge of color. Although the house was located in America, it was decorated with bits of Indian culture. The couple found fascination in their culture and used it like a brush to brighten their little world. One way they did this was through cooking. Shukumar recalls that “when [Shoba] used to do the shopping, the pantry was always stocked with extra bottles of olive and corn oil, depending on whether they were cooking Italian or Indian” (Lahiri 6). Lahiri explains that, after the loss of the couple’s child, “They’d eaten it all by now. Shukumar had been going through their supplies steadily, preparing meals for the two of them, measuring out cupfuls of rice, defrosting bags of meat day after day” (Lahiri 7). The food in the household was dwindling day after day as Shoba and Shukumar’s lust for life lost its flavor. Lahiri continues to hint at her characters’ emotional state by describing the couple’s neglect to celebrate Christmas that year and Shukumar’s unbrushed teeth. Through these descriptions of changing behavior and comparisons to the past in happier times, Lahiri constructs how grief has presented itself in the couple’s life through a loss of pleasure in the things that once brought them joy and has physically worn them out. Lahiri not only showcases how grief can manifest itself in a newfound weariness but also how it can pull people apart.
The philosopher Erich Fromm once said, ‘To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness’. This quote bears a tough truth. Lahiri reveals the way in which grief can empower a growing distance between people. Lahiri does not at first directly write of the loss of a child but rather alludes to it through the elusive description of Shoba’s pregnancy. This allows the reader to discover the grief of the mourning parents more naturally. Shoba and Shukumar are married, and thus should be the safest ones to comfort one another. Oddly enough, they do the opposite and reclusively draw farther away from one another. Lahiri describes how “These days Shoba was always gone by the time Shukumar woke up. He would open his eyes and see the long black hairs she shed on her pillow and think of her” (Lahiri 4). This reclusiveness may seem strange, but psychologically, it makes sense. In his article Loneliness, Isolation and Grief, Stephen Moeller states that “Even if others have experienced the same loss or one that is very similar, how you feel is never the same as someone else” (Moeller 1). This is wise insight, as grief often traps the individual within their own minds. We can see this in that Shoba could barely speak, and neither could Shukumar. The narrator expresses Shukumar’s inner dialogue and laments that “They weren’t like this before. Now he had to struggle to say something that interested her, something that made her look up from her plate or from her proofreading files. Eventually, he gave up trying to amuse her. He learned not to mind the silences” (Lahiri 12). Lahiri’s description of these characters’ lives draws sympathy, and the reader understands that they no longer had the energy and willpower to communicate with each other. Unfortunately, though, this only fed their grief even more, and through this, the reader can begin to understand the divide that is isolating them further. Trapped in their internal voids, they grew farther and farther apart, destroying the life they once knew. Lahiri’s description of these characters and their actions implies to the reader that they have stopped feeling much, for if they feel, they might risk feeling the sorrow they try to avoid. The minds of Shukumar and Shoba have quite frankly become blank since the death of their child. Their home has lost its vibrancy, their food has lost its appeal, and they seem to keep their minds blank. “He [Shukumar] knew that when they returned from the hospital, the first thing she [Shoba] did when she walked into the house picked out objects of theirs and toss them into a pile in the hallway” (Lahiri 16). One would expect a couple that has lost their child to throw away things they had bought in expectation, but the things Shoba discards are the couple’s possessions. Shoba had cleared her house just as her mind had been, and through this disposal, Lahiri communicates Shoba’s need for distance from her past and everything that reminds her of her loss, and in doing so foreshadows Shoba’s ultimate need to move on from her relationship with Shukumar.
Lahiri utilizes a series of confessions to bring the couple closer together one last time before their grief ultimately pulls them apart. These confessions surface as a game of sorts when the power goes out and the couple sits down at a candlelit dinner. Here, Shoba proposes that they should begin “telling each other something [they’ve] never told before”; a ‘game’ she used to play at her grandmother’s house when the power went out (Lahiri 12). As more nights ensued, the couple continued to admit secrets such as Shukumar’s thoughts of infidelity, and Shoba’s martini with a friend named Gillian. Shoba finally reveals her biggest secret: that she plans to leave and move out. The reader can finally see the fruits of Lahiri’s construct, the growing distance that she has been describing has finally taken full form. This shocks and saddens Shukumar, which leads him to retaliate with the revelation of his own secret: knowing the gender of their deceased child, something Shoba wished never to know. The short story ends here, with a confession that brings the couple together but ultimately solidifies the bridge that has grown between them. Grief uprooted the couple and forced them out of a pleasant way of life. Although Shoba and Shukumar could have comforted one another, they failed to comfort themselves and thus had no energy to give to each other, only fueling the growing gap between them. In the end, the separation of the couple is both depressing and bittersweet. Of Shukumar, the narrator notes, “He was relieved and yet he was sickened” (Lahiri 21). They have now finally been completely honest with one another, easing the ability to move on. Lahiri produces an incredibly realistic, nuanced, and heart-wrenching exploration into the depths of grief.
Lahiri creates a deep dive into the human psychology of grief through very visual descriptions. She gives a very intimate view of grief and explores the impacts it can have and the ways in which it can present itself in everyday life. Lahiri’s characters’ immense grief causes them to neglect their household, their health, and ultimately, neglect each other. The couple isolated and separated themselves, spending too much time staring into the void, swallowed by their sorrows. Such an abrupt and harsh ending is often how reality presents itself and the story stays realistic through the way Lahiri sets her story and creates her characters. The reader is led slowly through their lives, learning more and more about them, experiencing the slow drift between them, and is left just as surprised as the characters are at new revelations. Lahiri contrasts life before and after the loss of the couple’s child to show how grief has impacted them and uses confessions and the subtle behaviors of the characters to express that they have grown farther and farther apart. It’s almost as if the reader is transported into the minds of Shukumar and Shoba and because of Lahiri’s storytelling, at the end of the story as the bleak sadness within the characters’ hearts becomes increasingly apparent the reader shares their sorrow.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. Interpreter of Maladies: Stories. Houghton Mifflin, 1999.