Interpreter Of Maladies

In Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story, “Interpreter of Maladies”, the characterization of Mr. Kapasi mostly occurs through his private thoughts and speech and prove that he is a catalyst for plot development. The story is mostly told through the eyes of the tour guide, Mr. Kapasi, and therefore, the depictions of the other characters are impossible to experience without the looming and imbedded personal opinions of Mr. Kapasi. We can see right of the bat that he is not an objective narrator as the input on the other characters, specifically Mrs. and Mr. Das, is covered in some slight and not-so-slight judgement’s. It starts when, after seeing Mr. Kapasi observe the Dases, we see that he thinks that the couple seems more like siblings than actual parental figures
One example of this is when he used Mrs. Das not wanting to paint her daughter, Trina’s, fingernails in the car. Even though the taxi driver interpreted this as bad parenting, there are several other plausible reasons that she could have had - small children are messy and don’t sit still for very long which are two qualities that can severy hinder the desired effect of polished nails. It appears that he also has hypocritical tendencies. While Mr. Kapasi is married, the “fond” memories of in include “the bickering, the indifference, the protracted silence,” which is most clearly a strong motivator for his crush on Mr. Das (5). While it starts out slow when she calls his job as an interpreter for a doctor “so romantic”, he imagines having a long term relationship with her via the exchange of letters as well as hanging back alone in the car with her towards the end of the story (4). This all seems fine and dandy, until he discovers that she cheated on her husband years before and that Mr. Das was no the father of Robbie, one of their supposed children. As soon as she lets this bit of knowledge slip, he nearly