Response to "the Management of Grief" by Bharati Mukherjee

Response to "The Management of Grief" by Bharati Mukherjee

This story begins with a numb, detached, and shell-shocked Shaila Bhave's standing aside watching a house filled with strangers and friends moving about in her Toronto home. They have gathered together for guidance, tea, and comfort because the Indian community has just experienced an extraordinary loss when a flight from India exploded on the way to Canada. They are listening to multiple radios and televisions to gather more information on what may have caused the explosion. The Sharma boys murmur rumors that Sikh terrorists had planted a bomb.

Shaila and Kusum, her neighbor and friend, sat on the stairs in Shaila's house and they began to reminisce about Kusum and Satish's (her husband) recent house warming party that brought cultures and generations together in their sparkling, spacious suburban home: "even white neighbors piled their plates high with tandoori" and Shaila's own Americanized sons had "broken away" from a Stanley Cup telecast to come to the party. Shaila wonders "and now . . . how many of those happy faces are gone." Shaila feels "punished" for the good success of Indian immigrant families like hers and Kusum's. Kusum brings her out of her reverie with the question: "Why does God give us so much if all along He intends to take it away?"

It seems like Shaila begins to quickly regret her perfect obedience to the upper-class, Indian female decorum. She shares with Kusum that she never called her husband by his first name or told him

that she loved him and Kusum comforts her by saying: "He knew. My husband knew. They felt it. Modern young girls have to say it because what they feel is fake." Just as Kusum is explaining this to Shaila, Kusum's first daughter Pam walks into the room and orders her mother to change out of her bathrobe because reporters are expected. In this story, Pam, represents the "modern young girls" that Kusum resents. Pam had refused to go to India with her father and younger sister, preferring to spend that summer working at McDonald's. Kusum and her daughter Pam exchange harsh words and Pam accuses Kusum of wishing that Pam had been on the plane, since the younger daughter was a better "Indian." Kusum does not respond which to me seems to confirm Pams thoughts about her mother Kusum.

A Canadian social worker by the name of Judith Templeton visits Shaila, hoping that Shaila would help her facilitate her work with the relatives of the victims of the explosion. It seems that Judith is a young, by the book, unemotional professional. She asks Shaila to join her because she has the "right human touch" for the impersonal work of processing papers for relief funds. Additionally, she explains to Shaila that she was chosen because of her calm and was seen as a "pillar" for the devastated Indian Canadian community. However, Shaila, replies by saying that her seemingly cool, unaffected demeanor is hardly admired by her community, who typically expect their members to mourn publicly and vocally. Shaila is confused by the "calm that will not go away" and considers herself a "freak."

The story moves to Dunmanus Bay, Ireland, the site of the explosion. Kusum and Shaila are wading in the warm waters and recalling the lives of their loved ones, imagining they will be found alive. Shaila wishes she had also died here along with her husband and sons. They are joined by Dr. Ranganathan from Montreal, another who has lost his family, and he cheers them with thoughts of

unknown islets within swimming distance. Dr. Ranganathan utters a central line of the story: "It's a parent's duty to hope." He scatters pink rose petals on the water, explaining that his wife used to demand pink roses every Friday. He offers Shaila some roses, but Shaila has her own gifts to float-- Mithun's half finished model B-52, Vinod's pocket calculator, and a poem for Vikram, which belatedly articulates her love for him.

Shaila is struck by the compassionate behavior of the Irish and compares them to the residents of Toronto, unable to image Torontonians behaving this open-heartedly. Kusum has identified her husband while Shaila looking through picture after picture, does not find a match for anyone she knows. A nun "assigned to console" Shaila reminds her that faces will have altered, and she is instructed to "try to adjust her memories."

Consequently, Shaila leaves Ireland without any bodies, but Kusum takes her husband's coffin through customs. A customs bureaucrat detains them under suspicion of smuggling contraband in the coffin. In her first public expression of emotion, Shaila explodes and calls him a "bastard." She contemplates the change in herself that this trauma has wrought: "Once upon a time we were well-brought-up women; we were dutiful wives who kept our heads veiled, our voices shy and sweet." From Ireland, many of the Indian Canadians, including Shaila, go to India to continue mourning. Shaila describes her parents as wealthy and "progressive." They do not mind Sikh friends dropping by with condolences, though Shaila cannot help but bristle. Her grandmother, on the other hand, has been a prisoner of tradition and its gender expectations for most of her life. She was widowed at age sixteen and has since lived a life of ascetic penitence and solitude, believing herself to be a "harbinger of bad luck." Shaila's mother calls this kind of behavior "mindless mortification." While other middle-aged

widows

...