Candlelight in Darkness

“A Temporary Matter” by Jhumpa Lahiri is a brief but heart-wrenching piece. It is difficult to put that much emotion into something so small, especially when not all of the characters’ thoughts and voices are heard, and when much of the story is spent in pitch blackness. In this case, though, those two things work to enhance the story. Granted, the story would be easier to tell if all of the private thoughts and actions of each character were shown, and if those thoughts and actions were bathed in light, but the story as Lahiri tells it would not be the same. It may even be harder to understand in full.

The narration is third person limited--we see only what Shukumar is doing and thinking, and we see it from an outside, unbiased narrator. However, although the narration is limited, we learn quite a bit about the situation at hand. We learn about Shoba’s need to plan everything from the stocked pantries he uses to cook. We learn that their marriage is crumbling from the way he hides in his office, dreading his wife coming in: “He knew it was something she forced herself to do...he set up his desk there deliberately, partly because the room soothed him, and partly because it was a place Shoba avoided (8).” We learn that Shukumar is suffering from depression in nearly everything he does, and when they play the game and share their secrets in the dark, we learn that he still hopes that he and Shoba will learn to love each other again. Then, when Shoba reveals that she is leaving, we learn that he cares so much about his wife that he refuses to tell her the one thing she never wanted to know; until, that is, his hopes are dashed irrevocably.

The two main characters, then, are Shoba and Shukumar. However, there is another character in this piece: the darkness. Shoba and Shukumar have literally been hiding from each other for years now, but in the darkness, they are able to speak to each other. They eat dinner together, for the first time in what appears to be a very long while They tell each other secrets they have been keeping ever since the beginning of their courtship, in some cases. True, the secrets were a part of Shoba’s plan, a way to gently break the news that she was moving out, but without the darkness, this never would have happened. They would still be living together, cold, silent, scared of what the other person will do or say. The darkness is what moves the story forward, and, while it is not a corporeal character, it is the most important one in the piece.

We do not see the thoughts and actions of the darkness, because there is nothing to see. We also get only a glimpse of what Shukumar is thinking half the time, and we never see what Shoba is thinking at all. Still, the story is vivid. It moves forward in an interesting, heartbreaking way, and the characters are breathing and full of life, the setting a house you may find on your street. This is accomplished because of the narration, which reveals just enough, and the darkness, which makes the characters (ironically) truly visible.