In “A Temporary Matter,” Shukumar and his wife, Shoba, suffer from unresolved grief. Six months before the story takes place, the couple was about to have their first baby. They’d been married for only a few years and were very much in love. However, three weeks before the baby’s due date, while Shukumar was away at an academic conference, Shoba went into early labor and suffered a stillbirth. Now, both husband and wife grieve for the baby that never was, but they come to their grief from different places and with very different inhibitions that prevent them from moving forward with their lives. For Shukumar, the guilt of not being present for the birth renders him unable to grieve and ultimately costs him his marriage. Lahiri uses Shukumar’s inner conflict to comment on the role guilt plays in the grieving process, suggesting that dwelling too heavily on one’s role in a tragedy can ultimately prevent people from coming to terms with their grief in a healthy way.
Shukumar feels unresolved guilt for not being present during the baby’s birth. Before the couple was expecting their baby, Shukumar had made plans to attend an academic conference in Baltimore. Because the baby’s due date was still three weeks away, Shoba encouraged him to attend; Shukumar would be in the job market the following year, Shoba reasoned, so it would be good for him to make contacts. But the baby came early, and Shoba was forced to undergo an emergency C-section while Shukumar was away. Although Shoba gave Shukumar her blessing to attend the conference, Shukumar insists that he “hadn’t wanted to go.” Lahiri emphasizes Shukumar’s hesitancy to leave Shoba through his vivid recollection of the last time he saw Shoba pregnant: “Each time he thought of that moment […] it was the cab he remembered most, a station wagon, painted red with blue lettering.” Lahiri’s choice to preface Shukumar’s memory with “Each time” reveals that Shukumar constantly replays this moment in his mind—he sees it as the instant he made the wrong decision. It’s also significant that Shukumar recalls the cab most clearly in his memory. Shukumar chose to climb into the cab, and the cab was the vessel that carried him far away from Shoba and their child, and the danger they faced without him.
After the baby’s death, Shukumar’s guilt causes him to retreat inward. He has no desire to leave the house or to socialize—especially not with Shoba. He loses interest in everything. Shukumar’s newfound apathy causes him to stagnate, preventing him from moving forward in his life. Shukumar is no longer engrossed in his doctoral work. He admits that “nothing [is] pushing” him anymore, and he’s been relieved of his teaching duties for the spring semester. He has no desire to leave the house, “not even […] to get the mail, or to buy fruit or wine at the stores by the trolley stop.” At the beginning of the story, the reader learns that he hasn’t even managed to brush his teeth that morning. When Shoba is home, her presence makes him feels so uncomfortable “that he fear[s] that putting on a record in his own house might be rude.” Overcome with guilt and unable to face Shoba, Shukumar holes up in the one room he knows Shoba won’t dare enter, for fear of summoning forth painful memories: the would-be nursery he’s since converted into an office.
Shukumar constantly thinks about the baby and the effect its death has had on his marriage, yet he never voices his thoughts out loud. He is ashamed to admit that he is thinking about a tragedy for which he wasn’t around (and therefore isn’t entitled to mourn), so he keeps these thoughts to himself. At the beginning of the story, the couple is informed by their electric company that their power will be cut for one hour each night so that a damaged power line can be repaired. At dinner during the first night of the blackout, Shukumar lights candles so they don’t have to eat in complete darkness. Shoba remarks that the candles remind her of a rice ceremony (a Hindu custom celebrating the first time a baby eats solid food) where the power went out. “I had to attend an entire rice ceremony in the dark,” she remembers. “The baby just cried and cried.” Immediately, Shukumar considers the fact that “their baby had never cried,” though he does not share the connection with Shoba, choosing instead to steer the conversation toward more mindless, banal subjects. Shukumar recalls a moment when Shoba’s mother had moved in with the couple immediately after the baby’s death to help them cope with the tragedy. Shukumar mentioned the baby’s death in conversation, to which Shoba’s mother replied simply, “But you weren’t even there.” Lahiri ends this section of the story with Shoba’s mother’s response. Thus, Shukumar is offered no chance to interject with any concluding remarks of self-defense or reflection—the story simply moves forward to the next scene. Shukumar’s silence confirms Shoba’s mother’s remark: that Shukumar wasn’t there, and that his grief is shameful. Because Shukumar feels ashamed and unworthy of his sadness, his grieving process stagnates, and he remains unable to move beyond the tragedy of his child’s death.
The grief Shukumar feels for his dead child is very real, yet the guilt he feels at his core prevents him from confronting this grief directly. When Shukumar denies himself the right to grieve—and when others, like Shoba’s mother, deny him his right, too—he retreats inward, alienating himself from Shoba and preventing the two of them from moving forward from their tragedy together.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Guilt and Grief ThemeTracker
Guilt and Grief Quotes in A Temporary Matter
He hadn’t left the house at all that day, or the day before. The more Shoba stayed out, the more she began putting in extra hours at work and taking on additional projects, the more he wanted to stay in, not even leaving to get the mail, or to buy fruit or wine at the stores by the trolley stop.
Each time he thought of that moment, the last moment he saw Shoba pregnant, it was the cab he remembered most, a station wagon, painted red with blue lettering. […] As the cab sped down Beacon Street, he imagined a day when he and Shoba might need to buy a station wagon of their own, to cart their children back and forth from music lessons and dentist appointments. He imagined himself gripping the wheel, as Shoba turned around to hand the children juice boxes. Once, these images of parenthood had troubled Shukumar […] But that early autumn morning, the trees still heavy with bronze leaves, he welcomed the image for the first time.
At some point in the evening she visited him. When he heard her approach he would put away his novel and begin typing sentences. […] He knew it was something she forced herself to do. She would look around the walls of the room, which they had decorated together last summer with a border of marching ducks and rabbits playing trumpet and drums. […] Shukumar had disassembled it all before bringing Shoba back from the hospital, scraping off the rabbits and ducks with a spatula.
[Shoba’s mother] was polite to Shukumar without being friendly. She never talked to him about Shoba; once, when he mentioned the baby’s death, she looked up from her knitting, and said, “But you weren’t even there.”
“It’s like India,” Shoba sad, watching him tend his makeshift candelabra. “Sometimes the current disappears for hours at a stretch. I once had to attend an entire rice ceremony in the dark. The baby just cried and cried. It must have been so hot.”
Their baby never cried, Shukumar considered. Their baby would never have a rice ceremony, even though Shoba had already made the guest list […].
“Are you hot?” he asked her.
These were the things he had told her. He had held his son, who had known life only within her, against his chest in a darkened room in an unknown wing of the hospital. He had held him until a nurse knocked and took him away, and he promised himself that day that he would never tell Shoba, because he still loved her then, and it was the one thing in her life that she had wanted to be a surprise.
Shoba had turned the lights off. She came back to the table and sat down, and after a moment Shukumar joined her. They wept together, for the things they now knew.
