The Management of Grief by Bharati Mukherjee
"The Management of Grief" by Bharati Mukherjee is a poignant exploration of grief and identity set against the backdrop of the tragic Air India bombing in 1985, which claimed the lives of 329 passengers. The narrative centers on Shaila Bhave, an Indian woman grappling with the profound loss of her husband and two sons. As she navigates her grief, Mukherjee highlights the cultural nuances that shape Shaila's experience, particularly her struggles with guilt and her feelings of detachment from both her Indian roots and her new life in Canada.
The story delves into the complexities of immigrant life, as Shaila finds herself caught between the supportive yet suffocating embrace of the Hindu community in Toronto and the alienation she faces in the Western context. Mukherjee poignantly depicts Shaila's journey from Toronto to India and Ireland, emphasizing her emotional connection to her deceased family members and the cultural heritage that influences her coping mechanisms. The narrative illustrates how grief can transcend cultural boundaries, while also revealing the challenges of identity and belonging in a multicultural society. Ultimately, Shaila's path toward healing signifies a search for freedom amid her profound losses, underscoring the resilience of the human spirit in the face of tragedy.
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Subject Terms
The Management of Grief by Bharati Mukherjee
First published: 1988
The Work
Based on an actual event—the Sikh terrorist bombing of an Air India plane on June 23, 1985, which killed all 329 passengers and crew—“The Management of Grief” is Bharati Mukherjee’s “tribute to all who forget enough of their roots to start over enthusiastically in a new land, but who also remember enough of their roots to survive fate’s knockout punches.” Mukherjee’s story focuses on Shaila Bhave in the hours, days, and months following the deaths of her husband and two young sons. The story focuses on her forms of grief and guilt, which are specific to her culture. As an Indian wife, she never spoke her husband’s name or told him she loved him—simple acts that Westerners take for granted. Her grief reveals who Shaila is, was, and will be. As do many of the characters in Mukherjee’s stories and novels, she finds herself caught between cultures, countries, and existences. “At thirty-six,” she considers, “I am too old to start over and too young to give up. Like my husband’s spirit, I flutter between two worlds.”
One of the worlds is Indian, including the highly supportive Hindu community in Toronto, from which she feels strangely detached. The Hindu community in Toronto is itself part of a larger Indian immigrant community that includes Muslims, Parsis, atheists, and even the Sikhs, tied by religion if not necessarily by politics to those responsible for the bombing, which is part of a struggle for autonomy being waged by Sikh extremists in India. Even within Toronto’s Hindu community there are divided allegiances as parents “lose” their children to Western culture no less than to terrorist bombs. The other world, the “West,” or more specifically Canada, is equally problematic, especially for Indian immigrants such as Mrs. Bhave, who are made to feel at best marginalized, at worst excluded altogether. She experiences the insensitivity of police investigators, the inadequacy of news coverage (the implicit message is that the victims and their families are not really Canadian), and finally the well-intentioned but ineffectual efforts of a government social worker’s textbook approach to “grief management.” The social worker enlists Mrs. Bhave’s help in assisting those who have not been “coping so well.”
The story’s complex identity theme is reflected in its spatial diversity. It follows Mrs. Bhave from Toronto to Ireland (to identify remains) and then to India, where she believes she hears her husband’s voice telling her: “You must finish alone what we started together.” This seemingly irrational link to tradition, including her thinking that her husband and sons “surround her like creatures in epics,” gives her the strength to leave India and return to Canada. Although she does not assume, as some of the older relatives do, that God will provide, she is provided for and in a way that precludes the reader’s seeing her as entirely representative. Thanks to her husband’s savings and the sale of their house, she is financially secure and so can afford to heed her dead husband’s final admonition: “Go, be brave.” Her future, including her future identity, may be uncertain, but in that uncertainty Shaila Bhave finds her freedom, one inextricably rooted in loss.
Bibliography
Carter-Sanborn, Kristin. “We Murder Who We Were’: Jasmine and the Violence of Identity.” American Literature 66, no. 3 (September, 1994): 573-593.
Moyers, Bill. “An Interview with Bharati Mukherjee.” In Connections: A Multicultural Reader for Writers, edited by Judith A. Stanford. Mountain View, Calif.: Mayfield, 1993.
Mukherjee, Bharati, and Clark Blaise. The Sorrow and the Pity: The Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy. Markham, Ontario: Viking, 1987.