If Shukumar’s grieving process is obstructed by his overwhelming guilt, Shoba’s is inhibited by her reliance on planning and predictability. Shoba and Shukumar’s marriage begins to unravel when the expectations they had for their life do not go as planned. Because Shoba relied so heavily on her ability to plan for the future, she finds herself unable to adapt to life after the unexpected death of their baby. This, in turn, obstructs her grieving process. Before the stillbirth, Shoba measured her success by her ability to plan and organize her life in the most efficient, effective way possible. To a certain degree, she might have even believed that having a healthy, happy baby could guarantee her success and happiness in her marriage. But when Shoba suffers a stillbirth, she is forced to reckon with the fact that not all of life can be planned for and predicted. The stillbirth complicates Shoba’s ability to plan, and she struggles to recover in the aftermath. In Shoba’s struggle, Lahiri suggests that life is inherently unpredictable, and efforts to plan and control one’s life are thus likely to fail.
Shoba plans out every aspect of her life. She feels best when she is able to enter into situations prepared. As the story unfolds, Lahiri shows the extent to which planning and precision dominate Shoba’s personality—even her career allows her to exist in the realm of the prescribed and the predictable. The reader learns that Shoba works as a proofreader, “search[ing] for typographical errors in textbooks and mark[ing] them […] with an assortment of colored pencils.” Shukumar admits that “he envie[s] her [for] the specificity of her task, so unlike the elusive nature of his.” Shoba orients her life around what she can plan for. She chooses a career that rejects the elusiveness and ambiguity she so despises, that allows her to know precisely what each day will bring, and what tasks it will require her to undertake. Shoba even prefers to plan for the smallest, most inconsequential minutia of life. Shukumar notes that Shoba “was the type to prepare for surprises, good and bad. If she found a skirt or purse she liked she bought two.” Down to the smallest details, Shoba feels best when she can exercise control by planning for the expected.
But the baby’s stillbirth shows Shoba that not all of life can be planned for. After the death of her baby, Shoba struggles to regain the control she once believed she could have over her own life. Despite Shoba’s wide hips, which her doctor “had assured her were made for childbearing,” the baby’s birth fails to go according to plan. To Shoba, the stillbirth represents the unpredictability of her own body. In addition to the horrific loss of a child, the stillbirth forces Shoba to grapple with the realization that she can’t even rely on herself to perform as expected, and even less so the volatile world around her. Shoba doesn’t take well to this realization, and Lahiri illustrates this through the physical and behavioral changes Shoba undergoes in the months after her baby’s death. When Shoba returns home from the gym looking disheveled, Shukumar notes that Shoba has become “the type of woman she’d once claimed she would never resemble.” Shoba’s thrown-together appearance reflects the new loss of control she feels on the inside. Shoba’s behavioral shift further illustrates the extent to which she’s given up on planning and precision. Before the baby’s death, “the pantry was always stocked with extra bottles of olive and corn oil. […] There were endless boxes of pasta in all shapes and colors, zippered sacks of basmati rice, whole sides of lambs and goats.” But Shoba hasn’t shopped since the stillbirth, and Shukumar notes that “they’d eaten it all by now.” Just as Shoba’s precisely-stocked food supply has diminished, so too has her motivation to plan.
Shoba’s stillbirth forces her to come to terms with the fact that life is unpredictable, and that the success of one’s life cannot be measured by one’s ability to plan. When the unimaginable occurs—when Shoba and Shukumar’s baby is born dead—Shoba’s meticulous plans are rendered useless, and her inability to reckon with her newfound powerlessness leaves her stagnant, flailing, and unable to work through her loss.
Related Themes from Other Texts
The Limits of Planning ThemeTracker
The Limits of Planning Quotes in A Temporary Matter
She wore a navy blue poplin raincoat over gray sweatpants and white sneakers, looking, at thirty-three, like the type of woman she’d once claimed she would never resemble.
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.
It was typical of her. She was the type to prepare for surprises, good and bad. If she found a skirt or purse she liked she bought two. […] It astonished him, her capacity to think ahead. When she used to do the shopping, the pantry was always stocked with extra bottles of olive and corn oil […] It never went to waste. When friends dropped by, Shoba would throw together meals that appeared to have taken half a day to prepare […] Her labeled mason jars lined the shelves of the kitchen, in endless sealed pyramids, enough, they’d agreed, to last for their grandchildren to taste. They’d eaten it all by now.
“I remember during power failures at my grandmother’s house, we all had to say something,” Shoba continued. […] “A little poem. A joke. A fact about the world. For some reason my relatives always wanted me to tell them the names of my friends in America. I don’t know why the information was so interesting to them.”
She wouldn’t look at him, but he stared at her. It was obvious that she’d rehearsed the lines. All this time she’d been looking for an apartment, testing the water pressure, asking a Realtor if heat and hot water were included in the rent. It sickened Shukumar, knowing that she had spent these past evenings preparing for a life without him. He was relieved and yet he was sickened. This was what she’d been trying to tell him for the past four evenings. This was the point of her game.
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.
