The management of grief

Read Bharati Mukherjee short story "The Management of Grief" - a really beautiful and moving transnational story. Mukherjee’s story is an example of transnational literature that complicates simplistic and deterministic accounts of globalization. For example, the context of the story involves the Air India Flight 182 terrorist bombing in 1985. The plane, having left Montreal en route through London to New Delhi, explodes over Ireland killing 329 people including 280 Canadians, 27 British citizens, and 22 Indians. In terms of airspace and casualties, the attack transgress national borders even though its rationale seems highly localized since it concerns Sikh militants disgruntled over the India government’s assault on one of Sikhism’s holiest temple. This is an example of how local politics in so-called periphery nations can affect the lives of those in “core” nations. The preceding investigations of the bombing take place, not in India, but in Canada for the next twenty years. Perhaps this is also Mukherjee’s intention in writing this story – to demonstrate that it is a cross-border issue that intersects with other nations and cultures. Thus, much of her story revolves around the idea of travel. The protagonist, Mrs Bhave, in attempting to reconcile her emotions over the loss of her husband and children, travels from Toronto to Ireland and then to India; while back in Canada, she follows a white social worker, Judith, to visit a Sikh family in an apartment dominated by Indian and West Indian community. Yet, it is this motif of travelling that conveys the sense of fluidity rather than a linear, uni-directional movement from core to periphery. This is most clearly evidenced in the scene when Judith gets Mrs Bhave’s help to persuade the Sikh couple to sign a release form that will enable a trustee to manage the couple’s finances. Though Judith, as a representative of the Canadian provincial government, appears altruistic in her offers to help the elderly couple manage their finances, she is not aware of the political implications of her act. By asking the couple to sign the release forms, they are entrusting the payment of the bills, investment of their money, and income to the state. Despite the real danger of losing all the material possessions they have, including their home, the couple continues to hold on to what they deem more important – their autonomy. This autonomy guarantees the freedom for this couple to hold on to their traditions and not allow a foreign state to intrude or influence their belief system which, in this case, means faith in God for the material rather than faith in the state. If signing the release form is representative of the symbolic act of releasing their sons, then autonomy also allows the couple to resist a Western cultural treatment of death by continuing to maintain the hope that their sons will return. When Mrs Bhave reflects that “in our culture, it is a parent’s duty to hope”, there is already an implicit dichotomy between “our” and “theirs” or us versus them. This dichotomy represents that imaginary border in which the “periphery” refuses to submit or conform to the culture and laws of the “core”.