The Management of Grief is a narrative written by Bharati Mykerherjee. It speaks of the struggles of a woman, who has lost her family in the tragic terrorist bombing of the Air India Flight 182, to come to terms with the hard truth. The writer writes the narrative in the first person, allowing readers to relate to the speaker and her innate struggles. The writer uses various literary devices such as structure and dialogue, not only to present the tragedy of loss, but also to allow readers to form impressions on the grieving characters in the passage.

A striking impression of the speaker is that despite her shock at the unexpected news of the bombing, she maintains a calm demeanour, as can be seen where the writer uses short and succinct sentences like “No one suffered” to reflect how the speaker is absorbing all the information and is desperately trying to process it.

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Another notable impression of the speaker, Shaila, would be that she wishes to free herself from earth and join her husband and sons, for any moment in life is now pointless since her closest of kins are gone, as evinced by “I could die here, too, and be content”. Yet ironically, while she is contemplating death, she is reminded of what her swami tells her, that she has “no right to grieve” and she should instead “be thrilled for them”, for they are in Heaven, a paradise much better than earth. Yet how can Shaila, who is on the verge of a mental breakdown, whose tragic loss has taken a toll on her emotional state, not mourn the death of her family but feel happy? She has every right to grief and this internal conflict within the grieving character of Shaila elicits a sense of empathy within readers towards her, for readers are able to see her displaced emotional state. Yet, she can do absolutely nothing to relief herself from her worldly burdens, since she had to “wait for [her] turn to come”. This goes a long way to amplify the tragedy of loss.

Shaila’s mental state is hanging on by a thread, as she is clearly still hopeful that her husband and sons are alive. The repetition of “What if” represents her mind that is clogged with questions she is trying so desperately to find answers to, yet in so doing, intensifying her grief. This is further exemplified in Bharati’s use of an irregular structure throughout the prose. The irregularity represents Shaila’s tangled state of mind, reflecting her intermittent train of thoughts that is a consequence of her devastation towards her loss. This elicits the tragedy of loss because if living family members are not given definite answers and conclusions, no assumptions can be made nor verified, and they would forever be shrouded in the mystery of their family member’s worldly presence.

In an attempt to give Shaila and her friend and neighbour, Kusum, a gleam of light, a source of hope, Bharati introduces a minor character in the form of Dr Ranganathan. He gives Shaila false hope by suggesting that “a good swimmer could make it safely to some island”. This sentence in the form of a dialogue is rather poignant and evokes a sense of pathos for Shaila. If her husband and sons have survived, they would have long been found, given that this conversation takes place four days after the terrorist attack. They both are willing to accept any possibilities as “[it] is foolish to rule out possibilities that have not been tested”. Dr Raganathan has not determined and ruled out any outcomes, as he says “I myself have not surrendered hope”. Yet later on in the prose, Bharati states that “[he] has identified his wife and three of his children”. This reveals how even the smarts of a person, in this case Dr Raganathan who is an electrical engineer from Montreal, cannot apply to scenarios like this given one, as they try so, so hard, to accept the harsh reality of their losses. This therefore reveals the extent to which the tragedy of loss is portrayed in this prose.

Bharati closes the prose with an ending which closely parallels the start. In the beginning, Shaila finds “Kusum squatting on a rock overlooking a bay in Ireland” and at the end, Shaila states that she has “other things to float”. The repeated motif of water here, in the form of a parallel structure, perhaps reveals how Shaila, the main grieving character in the prose, has finally accepted and come to terms with the all-too-real truth, and has accepted the harsh reality she has fought so hard to deny- the deaths of the men in their family.

In conclusion, this prose is a grievous one as it portrays to readers the unexpected tragedies of life and that Man simply cannot will themselves to escape fate. Bharati has effectively utilised structure and diction to evoke pathos for the sorrowful characters, presenting the tragedy of loss by painting it as the product of fate, one that has been orchestrated by the cosmos.

Alexander SR Pang

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