The Management Of Grief by Bharati Mukherjee, 1988
The magic trick:
Taking on an immensely sad topic and finding something intensely somber and real behind the hysterics of grief
If you own a short story compilation printed in the last 30 years, it is very likely you have this story on your bookshelf. It’s been anthologized quite a lot, and finally having read it myself, I can certainly see why. It’s a very powerful story.
This is high degree of difficulty stuff here. We’re talking about a story that employs first-person narration to take the reader through the aftermath of an airplane bombing that has killed her husband and sons, as well as the husband and daughter of her neighbor.
How do you get inside the mind of that character in that situation while maintaining the reader’s trust and a level of believability?
I’m not sure, honestly. I can’t imagine, but Mukherjee pulls it off here.
One thing you’ll notice in the story is the lack of hysterics. There is intense, intense sadness. But very few scenes of the characters during the crushing moments of pure agony. That is left unsaid, off-screen.
What we get instead is a lot of quiet, confused numbness. These characters go through the motions of life. Things continue on. The narrator goes back to India to spend time with her parents. One man, who lost his family in the crash, takes on a job that requires a long-distance commute. There is something very human in that – certainly believable. Ultimately, too, it’s also in some ways even sadder than those moments of loud, demonstrative grief. It’s deeper.
And that’s quite a trick on Mukherjee’s part.
The selection:
Kusum is one of the lucky ones. The lucky ones flew here, identified in multiplate their loved ones, then will fly to India with the bodies for proper ceremonies. Satish is one of the few males who surfaced. The photos of faces we saw on the walls in an office at Heathrow and here in the hospital are mostly of women. Women have more body fat, a nun said to me matter-of-factly. They float better.
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