30 pages • 1 hour read
Jhumpa LahiriA Temporary Matter
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Loss and Grief
Lahiri’s story encapsulates how loss can fracture a relationship if grief is not shared and experienced together. Shoba and Shukumar do not overtly grieve the loss of their baby, and they cope in different ways. Shoba restricts her attention to work and forfeits interest in her home life with Shukumar. In turn, Shukumar withdraws into the home and is unable to complete his graduate work. Although the couple does not talk about their grief, their subsequent loss of marital love shares space with neglected houseplants and the slow, creeping fracturing of their own identities.
In the decades since this story was written, mental health awareness has increased significantly, but Lahiri realistically depicts the lingering depression that comes with traumatic loss. The structure of the story allows Lahiri to explore Shoba and Shukumar’s six-month period of grief in a nonlinear fashion, capturing the way in which time seems to work awkwardly and uncomfortably after a tragic loss. The husband and wife’s confessions each bring to life moments from the past that they never addressed. These lingering truths reveal the disconnect between Shoba and Shukumar and suggest that the couple is unable to move forward unless they confront their trauma together.
When the couple first returned home from the hospital in September, Shoba’s grief manifested as a rejection of her domestic space:
[T]he first thing she did when she walked into the house was pick out objects of theirs and toss them into a pile in the hallway: books from the shelves, plants from the windowsills, paintings from the walls, photos from the tables, pots and pans that hung from the hooks over the stove. Shukumar had stepped out of her way, watching as she moved methodically from room to room. When she was satisfied, she stood there staring at the pile she’d made […] Then she’d started to cry (16).
After the loss of their baby, the triviality of all the objects in their house became overbearing for Shoba. However, even in her moment of grieving, Shoba remains “methodical.” Her need for control underscores her inability to connect with Shukumar, and he remains an inactive participant in her grieving. This grief continues throughout the story, but it is not distributed equally between husband and wife. Shukumar feels a creeping malaise: He is unable to complete his dissertation; he no longer feels love or lust for his wife; and he sometimes does not even want to walk down to the corner store. He becomes a bystander in their lives, which only furthers the divide he and his wife experience. Shoba resents Shukumar for being unable to share in—and thus lessen—her grief. The triviality and inescapability of this feeling mirrors the way she feels about the objects in the house, and Shukumar becomes one of these objects.
In the final sentences of the story, Shukumar tries to find common ground with Shoba. He attempts to convey that he felt a similar uncommunicable grief when he held their son as she slept. The repetition of “first time” throughout the story builds toward this moment of honesty between the couple. This is the first time that they are able to grieve together: “They wept together, for the things they now knew” (22). Lahiri shows how true healing cannot occur in isolation.
Intimacy and Marriage
Through Shoba and Shukumar, Lahiri illustrates how multifaceted intimacy is requisite for the survival of a marriage. The couple’s marriage undergoes a heavy trial in its first three years. As they reckon with the loss of their stillborn child, they deal with a constant diminishing of marital intimacy. From the story’s onset, Shoba disregards Shukumar. When she receives the notice, she remarks that the repairs should occur during the day. Shukumar calls attention to her indifference: “When I’m here, you mean” (2). Shoba never addresses this comment, which immediately builds tension in the story. There is a foreboding sense of listlessness when it comes to caring for each other in this marriage. Shoba is too engrossed in her grief to extend empathy to her husband, who is, in turn, dealing with his own loss of love. Just as Shoba shows no regard for her husband, Shukumar thinks of Shoba in fading terms: “Each day, Shukumar noticed, her beauty, which had once overwhelmed him, seemed to fade. The cosmetics that had seemed superfluous were necessary now, not to improve her but to define her somehow” (14). The narration consistently compares Shoba to who she was prior to the pregnancy loss, and the portrayal of Shoba as a worn, dispirited woman reflects Shukumar’s perception of her.
However, instead of addressing the growing distance in their marriage, Shukumar turns to the past. He recalls when he and Shoba were happy, passionate newlyweds: “He remembered their first meals there, when they were so thrilled to be married, to be living together in the same house at last, that they would just reach for each other foolishly, more eager to make love than to eat” (10). Shukumar recognizes the gulf between him and his wife but approaches his memories matter-of-factly, as if from a distance: “He thought of how long it had been since she looked into his eyes and smiled, or whispered his name on those rare occasions they still reached for each other’s bodies before sleeping” (5). The rekindled physical intimacy between Shoba and Shukumar coincides with the hope their relationship has for the future. In the early days of their marriage, they were consumed with passion for each other. As the years progressed and the couple grew apart, their lovemaking was reduced to only occurring on “rare occasions.” On the fourth night of darkness, they are physically intimate, “making love with a desperation they had forgotten” (19). This moment of genuine intimacy—with Shoba weeping and whispering her husband’s name—appears as a marital reconciliation to Shukumar. The couple’s final intimate moment in the story comes after Shukumar’s confession, in which the couple finally weeps together for the loss of their son. Lahiri suggests that marital intimacy requires more than physical connection. In order to persevere together, a couple must also maintain intimate communication and consideration.
Deception
The most obvious form of deception in “A Temporary Matter” comes at the end of the story when Shoba reveals her plans to leave Shukumar, and Shukumar reveals the sex of their baby. However, there are underlying deceptions that occur throughout the story. The game that the couple engages in during the dark nights is designed to reveal the deceptions, small and large, that they have withheld from one another over the course of their relationship. The actual effect is the revelation of the ways in which they have deceived themselves during this time.
Shukumar has fallen out of love with Shoba, and the narration reveals that Shukumar has hidden this fact from even himself until the final lines. He no longer romantically desires his wife, yet he continues to perform tasks that trick him into a sense of remaining emotionally connected to her. A home-cooked meal by candlelight with a bottle of wine evokes the idea of a romantic dinner aimed at celebrating and preserving the intimacy of a loving marriage. This is not the case for Shoba and Shukumar. Although the intimate meals provide Shukumar with a sense of optimism, his exchanges with Shoba eventually expose his own self-deception: He no longer loves his wife.
After the first candlelit night, Shukumar is fascinated to know what will come out the subsequent night when the lights go down: “What didn’t they know about each other? He knew she curled her fingers tightly when she slept, that her body twitched during bad dreams. He knew it was honeydew she favored over cantaloupe” (16). Shukumar believes that he and Shoba know everything there is to know about one another and that they could only reveal minor details during their “confessions.” Shukumar confesses about cheating on a university exam, implying that there is nothing left about the relationship with his wife that he could reveal to her. This is, of course, a profound deception. He has been harboring a secret that he believes would hurt Shoba: He held their son in the hospital before the child was cremated. This fact, however, seems to be so deeply hidden within Shukumar’s memory that he has deceived himself into believing it never actually happened. It is not until Shoba reveals that she has been meeting with realtors that he is able to uncover this final deception of his own.
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