extended silence" and lifts her sunglasses for the first time. Suddenly, she begins to treat Mr. Kapasi like a person, sharing her gum and asking him more about his job. Because "Mr. Kapasi had never thought of his work in such complimentary terms," he begins to feel somewhat flattered. He'd always thought of his job as "a sign of his failings." Stuck in a loveless marriage with a wife who resents his work, Mr. Kapasi begins to believe that Mrs. Das has some romantic feelings for him. He imagines that they will write to one another, and he even counts the weeks until he thinks he can reasonably expect to hear from her. She, however, does not feel the same. Perhaps she is trying to butter him up, so to speak, so that he can explain or fix the feelings of pain that she sees as herown malady. She even asks him to stop calling her Mrs. Das, saying that Mr. Kapasi "probably [has] children [her] age."

Mrs. Das feels comfortable talking to him, sharing the details of her marital infidelity and who her son, Bobby's, father really is because of Mr. Kapasi's "talents," as she says. She wants him to say something "about how terrible [her situation] makes [her] feel." She says, "I feel terrible looking at my children, and at Raj, always terrible. I have terrible urges [...] to throw things away [....]. Don't you think it's unhealthy?" She believes it is his "job" to "interpret" for her, to "help [her] feel better, say the right thing. Suggest some kind of remedy." Mr. Kapasi considers how different Mrs. Das and her "common, trivial little secret" is from the patients who seek his help because they are "desperate." When he tries to help her, however, implying that she feels guilt and not pain, she turns on him because she cannot accept responsibility for the pain that she feels; she seems to feel like she's an innocent victim, like the patients he serves, when really she is a perpetrator of wrongdoing. It becomes clear that neither Mr. Kapasi nor Mrs. Das is particularly good at "interpreting" their own and others' feelings at all.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies” presents three adults who suffer from their own maladies.  The story takes place in India in modern times. The Das family, who are Indian, has come to holiday in India although they are Americans.  The other character in the story is Mr. Kapasi, the tour guide and driver, who is also the “interpreter of maladies.”

 Mr. and Mrs. Das are not a happy couple.  Mr. Kapasi describes them as acting like brother and sister.  The husband sticks his nose in a travel guide and ignores the family as much as he can.  Mrs. Das seems to be the ultimate self-centered woman who wishes that she were someone else and someplace else.  She does not share her snacks, tries to avoid doing anything with her children, and subtlety fusses with her husband.

Mr. Kapasi is not only a travel guide but an interpreter of maladies.  He works for a doctor that does not understand the language and interprets for the patient what he is suffering from.   His life has not gone as he wanted.  With an affinity for languages, he intended to be a diplomatic interpreter. 

Now, he observes this family and thinks about his own family situation. He and his wife have a lost a child to illness.  Neither of them has been able to comfort the other. The wife blames her husband and cannot stand to hear about his work.  They have no intimacy between them. 

During the ride, Mrs. Das shows an interest in Mr. Kapasi when he tells her about his second job.  She seems to give the job a prestige that Mr. Kapasi does not readily understand.  She includes him in the family picture and even asks for his address to send a copy. 

Mr. Kapasi begins to imagine the two of them having a special relationship…he is intrigued both sexually and emotionally by her attention. When they finally are alone, Mrs. Das shares her guilt over her affair with her husband’s friend and the subsequent birth of her youngest son.  Because of his job as an interpreter for a doctor, the misguided lady believes that the Mr. Kapasi can help her.

“Well, don’t you have anything to say? About my secret, and about how terrible it makes me feel.  I feel terrible, always terrible. I have terrible urges, Mr. Kapasi, to throw things away.  One day I had the urge to throw everything I won out the window….Don’t you think it’s unhealthy?”

He realizes that she looks at him as a father figure. Her confessions depress him.  Ironically, he does, in fact, help her identify her feelings as coming from the guilt that she feels from her indiscretion.  His diagnosis shocks and troubles her, but as she contemplates what Kapasi has told her that she seems to absorb his explanation.  Disturbed, she exits the car.

 Kapasi dislikes Mrs. Das as she has forced him to confront his own problems.  He must face the silence of his own marriage, which “now oppressed him.”  He looks at them as she accidentally lets his address blow away.  The family seems to convey a scene of normal familial happiness which is what Mr. Kapasi will remember about them.

While Mr. and Mrs. Das are of Indian descent, they come to their parents' homeland as tourists. To Mr. Kapasi, a traditional Indian man, they are just as foreign in their behavior and in their speech as "the elderly couple from Scotland" he had driven in his car the day before. The tour that the Das family takes with Mr. Kapasi allows Lahiri to juxtapose their two cultures in several different settings.

The Dases are the outsiders in India, but it is Mr. Kapasi who is the "fish out of water" in the story. He is surrounded by this American family as he drives them to different cultural attractions. They interpret what they see differently: Where Mr. Kapasi sees an emaciated man on the side of the road, Mr. Das sees an interesting "shot" for his camera. While Mr. Kapasi sees his job is a "sign of his failings," Mrs. Das sees it as "so romantic." The crucial scene where Mrs. Das confides in Mr. Kapasi that Bobby is not her husband's son makes their cultural differences insurmountable--Mr. Kapasi loses his brief infatuation with Mrs. Das and she in turn loses interest in him.

When communication breaks down, a marriage suffers.  “Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri presents characters that live with this frustration.  Failing marriages, buried guilt, and romanticized relationships—the story’s characters find themselves trapped in these circumstances.

 The narration is third person point of view with the majority of the story seen through the thoughts of Mr. Kapasi, the protagonist.  Mr. Kapasi is a tour guide part of the week.  Today, he will take a family, Mr. and Mrs. Das and their three children, to see one of the nearby temples.  

Communication breaks down repeatedly in the story.  Mr. Kapasi relates to the family of five that his real job is to act as an interpreter for a local doctor with patients who speak an obscure language.  Until that point, Mrs. Das had been totally uncommunicative with everyone.  It is obvious that she is not a happy person.  Suddenly, she takes an interest in Mr. Kapasi and his job.  Mrs. Das gives him the name of “interpreter of maladies.” 

The Das couple are apparently in a loveless marriage.  Mr. Das loses himself in a guidebook;  Mrs. Das, hiding behind her sunglasses, is rude both to her children and her husband.  Their frustrated attempts to communicate with each other lead to hurt feelings. 

Mr. Kapasi also has a difficult marriage. He has lost the ability to talk to his wife. The turning point in his marriage has been the death of a son.  His wife does not want to listen to the events of his workday, as his work in the doctor’s office reminds her of the son’s death.  Consequently, she belittles his work and, as resentment builds in Kapasi, he becomes starved for affection.   

Because of the interest in his job, Kapasi feels an infatuation for Mrs. Das. When they stop for pictures, the woman includes him in one of the pictures.  She has him write down his address, so that she can send him a copy of the picture.  Kapasi begins to imagine a long term letter writing communication between the two of them. 

When they are alone for a few minutes, the explanation for Mrs. Das interest becomes clear. Rather than thinking that Kapasi was her potential lover, Mrs. Das thought of Kapasi as a father figure. Sharing a secret with him and asking for his opinion surprises Kapasi:

Raj [Mr. Das] told her that Punjabi friend, would be staying with them for a week….Bobby  was conceived after the friend learned that a London company had hired him.  He made love to her swiftly, in silence, with an expertise she had never known…

When he points out that her problem stems from the guilt that she feels for deceiving her husband. Mr. Kaposi’s diagnosis troubles her, but a “certain knowledge seemed to pass before her eyes.”  Disturbed, she exits the car.  

The woman changes immediately toward her children and her family.  However, the connection between the two is irretrievably broken. As the woman walks back toward the car, the paper with Kapasi’s address symbolically blows out of her purse. 

Thematically, Kapasi loses any feelings for Mrs. Das.  When she reveals her trivial little secret to him about her adultery, she obviously could not understand the devastation he has suffered because of his son’s death. He comes to dislike her because she has caused him to confront his own loveless marriage. Again, communication fails.   He must face the silence of his own marriage, which, “now oppressed him.”