Life

pocket and hopes of ascertaining the life and death of his family. His name was Pirzada, and he came from Dhaka, now the capital of Bangladesh, but then part of Pakistan. That year Pakistan was engaged in a civil war." Mr. Pirzada had come to the United States to study the foliage of New England. But the war begins in 1971, and he becomes a sort of war refugee. He yearns to be back in his homeland, and his identity is fumbling to such an extent that his pocket watch is set to Dhacca standard time, eleven hours ahead. It is almost as if his shadow is trapped in New England, while the real Mr. Pirzada goes about his life in East Pakistan. When the war finally ends, Pirzada returns to his homeland. Several months later, Lilia and her family receive a card and a short letter from him, which says he has been reunited with his family. He has no remaining attachment to America other than the second family he adopted while he was there, and his strongest ties and identity lie with his mother country and family.

While Jhumpa Lahiri's characters are in fact fictional, the subject matter that her writing subtly creates awareness for is universal. For diaspora communities, losing a sense of identity or experiencing a lack of connection with new surroundings is a common problem. When one visits places such as Brick Lane and South Hall in London, it is apparent that those who have strong ties with their heritage who have migrated to the "melting pot" fear the possibility of this tie loosening and thus go to great lengths to retain their original identities. This suggests what an important factor their national identities play in their lives. Therefore, they try to recreate something to preserve them. While not all communities described in Lahiri's stories are as populous or iconic as South Hall in London, she does in fact show how ardently both first and second generation immigrants cling to their sense of community and tradition.

A majority of the characters in "Interpreter of Maladies" suffer from the loss of some form of identity, primarily social, economic, or familial as they have significant obstacles to overcome during a transition into a new land. Jhumpa Lahiri expands her exploration of the question of fluid, wavering identity to include other vastly different perspectives, as she focuses on the interior landscape of personal relationships in her immensely poetic and emotional style in the short stories of "Unaccustomed Earth." The title of the collection is taken from a passage of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Custom House" suggesting that transplanting people into new soil might, in fact, be beneficial; yet Lahiri's stories are often dominated by a sense of loss and insecurity. The process of self-reconstruction depicted from generational viewpoints is one of the central themes of "Unaccustomed Earth." Once again, Lahiri sheds light upon the real significance of one's roots. Most of the narratives focus on the lives of second-generation migrants who are apparently settled and adapted to the environment their parents have chosen as their new home and should not face any problems with acculturation. However, despite their foundations in American soil, they, too, experience moments of self-doubts and insecurity which they seem to have inherited from their parents. The children's stories are thus never complete without the background stories of their parents, whose cultural remembrances still shape and influence their lives. In other words, the lives of children and parents are undeniably interlinked without their awareness, and problems such as identity crisis, feelings of alienation, isolation, or exclusion are passed down from parents to children as parts of genetic predispositions. Lahiri's well-thought out narrative strategies are particularly striking in "Unaccustomed Earth." In "Only Goodness" the girl strolls through the National Gallery in London and stops to admire Jan van Eyck's portrait, The Amolfini Marriage. The painting, depicting Giovanni Arnolfini, standing in a room, hand in hand, with his bride, may be regarded as an equivalent of Lahiri's elaborated writing technique. Beside the two figures who dominate the painting there are other objects worth noticing which carry symbolic meanings, such as the dog (faithfulness), the fruits placed on the window sill and the blossoming tree outside (fertility) or the solitary burning candle in the chandelier. The careful selection and deliberate placing of these symbolic objects in the painting, which might at first sight appear as insignificant and random, correspond to Lahiri's propensity towards subtlety and detail. The structure of a short story has significant spatial boundaries, which thus calls for symbolism dense with meaning in order to contribute to a profound understanding of the message.

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