The postmodernist view of the short story raises a peculiar analogical consideration whereby the short story is seen to be more akin to the film than any tradition of literature proper. That the short story and the film are expressions of the same art is because of their common essentialist function of telling stories by a series of gestures and suggestions. These gestures and suggestions need not be elaborated or explained for that will make the very purpose of using them redundant and herein lies the birth of limitations that characterize the short story. The formal, temporal and generic limitations of the short story are not imposed from outside; they are rhizomic in nature- arising within but acting without. The constraints of space and theme can also be seen in a sonnet but in a sonnet the constraints are extrinsic whereas in the short story they are intrinsic. The writer of the sonnet chooses a structural form that gives rise to a particular thought pattern in expression, but the writer of the short story chooses a particular thought pattern in expression that gives rise to a structural form.

The short story, in comparison with the novel, is obviously less diffuse. The structural bagginess and wide scope of the novel can incorporate within itself digressions, loosely connected episodes, variety of registers and commentaries to produce differing effects but a short story caters to a single effect. Thus by compression and avoidance of digressions or repetitions the short story achieves ‘unity of impression and a feeling of totality’ (Roger Fowler, ed. A Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms, Routledge, 2001, p.221). This does not mean that the novel because of its wide social range and episodic design cannot concentrate on a single event or character or emotion and lacks in any way in comparison to the short story. The overall effect of the novel is something more than the sum total of the differing effects due to its plots, characterizations and descriptions and hence its organic wholeness. This establishes the fact that the novel and the short story are not extended and shortened form of the each other respectively. The novel and the short story are two different genres and have their generic qualities some of which are opposed to each other, thus the novel involves large actions as opposed to the economy of incidents of the short story. But they also have a lot of generic similarities: both are prose works, both rose to probe familiar environment, both employ the techniques of symbolism, tension, paradox and so on. Functionally, though, both the genres are representatives of the world, the novel depicts its contingency whereas the short story depicts its epiphany. The novel reveals by the slow process of dissection, the short story reveals by pulling the innards inside out without losing any time.

The novel has passed through various stages of development since the time of Defoe and Swift. Even the works of Johnson, Fielding and Sterne were thought to be not worthy of literary merit during their time. It was only through the works of writers like Austen, the Brontes, Thackeray, George Eliot and their likes that the novel was able to establish its literary tradition and gradually at the fin de siecle the novel became the foremost mode of literary expression. It is to be noted that the novel, during its developmental phase in the nineteenth century at the height of pre-Raphaelite movement, was often compared with the art of painting. Arthur Compton-Rickett in the book A History of English Literature (UBSPD, India, 2001) describes Dickens as ‘a painter of London life’ (p. 500), Thackeray as ‘a painter of manners’ (p.515) and Hardy as ‘a painter of certain concrete aspects’ of life (p.546). The postmodernist analogy of the short story with the film is because the short story is in a developmental stage and has still to establish its tradition. Short fiction has an ancient lineage but the short story proper has proponents like D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, H. E. Bates and others who all came not before the twentieth century. Historically the novel has become an institution of society but the short story is in a theoretical stage and is open to dynamism and it is this dynamic quality that makes this art essentially fluid and elastic. Michael Thorpe in his Introduction to Modern Prose has pointed out that a good short story ‘can include almost every aspect of the writer’s genius in miniature.’ Thus whatever vehicle the writer chooses, the novel or the short story, both are potent enough to express the writer’s predicament despite their methodological differences.

Jhumpa Lahiri has shown her prowess in both the genres to explore the theme of exile literature. Lahiri herself, being born in London and brought up in Rhode Island, is a representative of second generation non-resident Indians and thus her knowledge of the NRI experience is intrinsic. Her two published works to date are the Pulitzer Prize winning collection of short stories, titled Interpreter of Maladies, and the highly acclaimed novel, The Namesake. Though in both the books it is the Indian diasporic community where she focuses mainly, the two books belong to different literary genres and require on the writer’s part the ability to make suitable adjustments to make her exploration successful. A comparative study of Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel and her collection of short stories will reveal how the diasporic quality of Lahiri’s Indians are shaped and moulded differently in two different literary forms. It is to be noted that the limitations of the short story form and the relative freedom of the novel form need not necessarily cater to differing ends but rather they are just different paths to reach a similar goal.

The constraint of space in a short story is by far its most prominent distinguishing feature from a novel. In the title story of Jhumpa Lahiri’s book Interpreter of Maladies, Mrs. Das makes a sudden revelation about her sexual infidelity to the tour guide Mr. Kapasi. The suddenness of the revelation not only surprises Mr. Kapasi but also the reader of the story. Mrs. Das, an NRI touring India with her family, is so emotionally attached to India that after eight years of guilty existence she is desperately in search of an Indian audience to whom she can confide her secret. Therein the role of Mr. Kapasi fits in. But the suddenness of it all can only be justified in a short story for it is not long after the shocking revelation that the story ends leaving the reader lingering perplexed in its aftermath. It is precisely this effect that the story demanded and if it was to be extended further it would have diluted the very effect of the exploration of the diasporic quality of the NRI character concerned. Here the lack of space is employed in such a way that it acts as an advantage for the writer. Firstly, it helps through astonishment to establish a lasting single effect in the mind of the reader. Secondly, the suggestions strewn in the story stimulates the mind of the imaginative reader to extrapolate the story into the past and maybe into the future. At the start of the story itself the bickering between Mr. and Mrs. Das indicates the strained relationship between them. Throughout the story there are indications of Mr. Kapasi’s strained circumstances. Even at the end of the story, when the paper with Mr. Kapasi’s address slips out of Mrs. Das’s bag and flies away unnoticed by the Das family, it suggests the end of Mr. Kapasi’s contact with them and also the end of the reader’s perusal of the story, but not the end of any vista of imaginative possibility.

The diasporic quality of being emotionally attached to one’s country of origin as explored through the medium of revealing a secret is also done in the novel, The Namesake. When Ashoke Ganguli reveals to Gogol the secret behind him being named so, it is sudden and shocking for Gogol but not for the reader because the reader has known the secret all along. In fact Lahiri makes the reader somewhat anticipate the disclosure to come. The situation of Gogol being late due to a minor train accident not only makes Ashoke Ganguli recall his major train accident long ago but also helps the reader to recollect the incident that took place in the very first chapter. Thus the advantage of length afforded by the novel form is fully utilized by the writer to produce the desired effect. Lahiri does not have to shock the reader here as she had to do in the short story Interpreter of Maladies because the novel has a lot of background information to sustain the effect in the reader’s mind. The reader does not know whether Mrs. Das ever made any attempt to reveal her secret to anyone but the reader does know about Ashoke Ganguli’s failed attempt to disclose the secret to Gogol on his fourteenth birthday.

The comparison made so far does not mean that the short story form is rigid and can only produce its effect by shocking the reader. The short story A Temporary Matter has an NRI couple mourning the loss of a still born child and the story progresses as every night during power outage the couple start exchanging disclosures. Lahiri prepares the reader for the final confessions to be made by Shoba and Shukumar by revealing gradually ‘the little ways they’d hurt or disappointed each other, and themselves’. The situation is palpable but here it is not shock but suspense at work. The differing reactions shown by Shoba and Shukumar to a common grief gives an indication of how people belonging to the same diasporic community are moulded differently by the influence of a foreign culture. When on the fifth night they make their final revelations both are pained by ‘the things they now knew’. Interestingly the reader is found to be in empathy with both of them and therein lies the writer’s triumph. This story gradually builds up to a crescendo by going through minute details but the writer is able to do so within the constraints of space because the time span of the story is of only five days.

The Namesake has Gogol and Mousumi as a couple of Indian diaspora yet each of them has shaped up differently living in American society. They get into contact with each other by the insinuations of their parents at a time when Gogol is mourning his break-up with Maxine and Mousumi the betrayal of Graham. They marry and then the reader goes through Mousumi’s secret affair with Dimitri and the episode seems to lead towards a disclosure that does not come. Lahiri tacitly avoids the disclosure because her purpose is already served and hence in the following chapter Gogol is found to be already separated from Mousumi. It is only later that a passing reference is made on how the disclosure came about to Gogol. Thus here, unlike in her short story A Temporary Matter, Lahiri does not build up to a climax but rather goes back and forth in time to achieve her goal. Lahiri is able to do so because the aim of the short story is singularity of effect whereas the aim of the novel is totality of effect.

The above discussion has brought into consideration the element of suspense. A good short story builds up its own illusion of suspense for a short story, because of its limitation of space, cannot afford repetitions. Hence whatever information the short story gives is something that is not known to the reader beforehand. The novel on its part because of its freedom of space can have repetitions for emphasis; but it does not mean it is devoid of any suspense in any of its episodes. In The Namesake, Ashoke Ganguli’s death is kept in suspense both to his wife Ashima as well as to the reader for some length of time. This is done so on purpose just to emphasize the suddenness of the incident. Thus the element of suspense is one of the many techniques employed in novel-writing but in a short story it becomes quite an obligation: to instill a mood of attention in the reader.

Jhumpa Lahiri has explored that it is the little things that have become constant causes of consternation in the Indian diasporic mind. An unacknowledged thing like one’s inability to drive is too trivial to become an issue in itself unless it recurs as an impediment in one’s life regularly. At the starting of The Namesake when the Gangulis move to the suburbs of Cambridge, where ‘there are no sidewalks to speak of, no streetlights, no public transportation, no stores for miles at a time’ and it becomes necessary for them to own a car, Ashima ‘has no interest in learning how to drive the new Toyota Corolla’ (p.49). Midway through the novel ‘though she is willing to drive herself around their town, she is not willing to get on the highway and drive to Logan’ (p.163). And again towards the end it is the second generation NRI Mousumi who laments that ‘even after thirty-two years abroad, in England and now in America, her mother does not know how to drive’ (p.247). It is not just because of the novel form that Lahiri has mentioned a trivial thing thrice in hardly three hundred pages. It recurs in the novel because it also recurs in the lives of certain diasporic Indians and then it no longer remains trivial. Lahiri emphasizes her point in the novel through repetition but for a short story this technique is not possible hence we find in the short story Mrs. Sen’s a different approach. Mrs. Sen has to baby-sit Eliot at her own house because she does not know how to drive. No doubt the relationship of Mrs.Sen and Eliot is central to the story but the other thing mentioned in the previous sentence is not just a passing information. At the end of the story Mrs. Sen meets with an accident while driving to the market to buy a whole fish to cook. Thus Lahiri takes a small thing and incorporates it into a dramatic pattern to establish her point in the short story. No words are verbiage in a short story, they have a rigorous sense of necessity.

A novel is basically episodic in design but each episode is not as significant in itself as each short story is in a collection. Had it been so, the novel would have become a collection of short stories having common characters. This does not mean that the episodes narrated in the novel are just verbiage because even the most insignificant episode fits in the crooked cranny of the jig-saw puzzle that is the framework of the novel whereby a larger picture comes into recognition. No visit of the Ganguli family to India in The Namesake stand in comparison with the significance of the Das family’s visit to India in Interpreter of Maladies, yet when taken a perspective view with regard to the whole novel each episode where the Ganguli family visits India gains enormous importance. It is the organic wholeness of the novel that gives the apparently loosely connected episodes an undercurrent of unity, necessity, tension and coherence. The formal limitations of the short story genre and the relative freedom of the novel genre are products of the writer’s temperament. In a short story the choice of words, the length of a sentence- long or short- all depend on the writer’s mind whether it wants to elaborate on the idea or not. Similarly, in the novel, the repetitions and the organization of episodes are all underlined by the writer’s enthusiasm or lack of it on certain points. Thus the limitations and freedom are of temporal origin and hence the postmodernist blurring of distinctions: to view a short story as an episode from an imaginary novel or seeing an episode from a novel as a stand alone story in itself is both feasible and plausible.

Jhumpa Lahiri is quite conventional in her approach but not unoriginal; her originality is subtle and stems from her sensitivity. Lahiri’s sensitive portrayal of Mrs. Sen and Ashima in the limelight of their cooking activities is poignant and when she displays their loneliness in this busyness the effect becomes more incisive. In the short story Mrs. Sen’s loneliness is highlighted in comparison with her ward Eliot’s loneliness but in the novel Ashima’s loneliness is brought about over time – from her arrival in America, through her husband’s death, to her preparation of returning back to India for good. Even when the same prop of letters is used to depict the sentiments of Mrs. Sen and Ashima, it is done so differently in the short story than in the novel. Mrs. Sen is found to wait longingly for her letters from ‘home’ that are her only source of happiness apart from cooking. In the novel Ashima is found waiting in anxiety for a particular letter from her grandmother which never arrives. Towards the end of the novel Ashima is found to go through her hoarded memorabilia – letters from her parents and relatives in India; it not only arouses nostalgia about the time when they had come but also nostalgia about the place from where they had come. The play on nostalgia is not afforded in the small length of the short story and so what is done is to show how Eliot perceives Mrs. Sen’s happiness when she receives a letter from ‘home’ and how he gradually realizes that by ‘home’ Mrs. Sen means India.

Linguistic anomalies, especially due to colloquialism, in the interactions between Indian and Western characters is another aspect of diasporic culture that is explored by Lahiri. In the short story the aberrations in speaking help in the progress of the story but in the novel they act as digressions. Mrs Sen’s using of the word ‘driver’ for ‘chauffeur’ and her faltering English in the nervousness of driving all help in concert to alienate her from the act of driving and lead towards the climax of the accident. But in the case of Ashima when she uses the words ‘finger’ and ‘toe’ when she meant ‘fingers’ and ‘toes’, she instantly realizes her mistake and leads the reader back in time when in India Ashima was a student of English and used to give tuition in that subject. No doubt it is digression but it has its purpose too: when Ashima realizes that ‘in Bengali, a finger can also mean fingers, a toe toes’, it becomes clear that in the new world Ashima is thinking in Bengali and translating her thoughts into English.

There are numerous instances where Lahiri shows how to tackle similar issues differently in two different genres of storytelling. In the short story, This Blessed House, it is Tanima’s fetish for collecting Christian relics left over in her husband’s newly bought house by its former occupants that forms the crux of the story. But in The Namesake when religious motifs are used, like the Ganguli family’s Durga puja celebration among their diasporic community or Gogol’s Christmas and Easter celebration or Sonia’s Hinduism class, it is done in reference, either to create a background or an atmosphere so that the development of the characters, their assimilation into differing cultures is put into perspective. Even when Ashima explains to Judy that going to India after the Durga puja ‘is like going home a few months after your Christmas’, Judy replies that she and her husband are Buddhists; the issue is stretched no further. The writer has to be careful that no issue or incident is to gain extra prominence that might dwarf other issues and incidents respectively and mar the overall effect of the novel. Gogol’s Christmas here is quite akin to Lilia’s Halloween in the short story, When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine, except that unlike Gogol in the novel it is Mr. Pirzada and not Lilia around whom the story revolves. The external link is made between Mr. Pirzada and Lilia’s Halloween celebration when Mr. Pirzada carves out the pumpkin into a jack-o’-lantern but it is the gentle evocation of Mr. Pirzada’s anxiety about the safety of his daughters in his civil war torn homeland that forges the link internally. Mr. Pirzada coming to dine with Lilia’s parents establishes a specific image not only in Lilia’s mind but also in the mind of the reader giving a unity of feeling. On the other hand Ashima’s parties for her Bengali acquaintances establishes a general image of the diasporic community giving a unity of experience.

Sometimes it is seen that the writer does not have to make any conscious effort to portray things differently in the short story and the novel once the process of creation is put into motion. Gogol comes every other weekend to his home from Yale, ‘obediently but unwillingly’. The reader who knows about Gogol’s life at Yale and at home does not need any elaboration on his obedience and unwillingness. A crisis takes place when, after three months at Yale, Gogol unwittingly mentions Yale as his home to his parents. His mother, Ashima, is ‘outraged by the remark’ because even ‘after twenty years in America, she still cannot bring herself to refer to Pemberton Road as home’. In the short story, The Third and Final Continent, the narrator and his wife bring occasionally their son home for a weekend from Cambridge, ‘so that he can eat rice with us with his hands, and speak Bengali’. The reader has no information about the said son’s life in the University but the little suggestion given in the form of the reason for which he is brought home satisfies all curiosities. The novel has the luxury of describing the actual passage of time and the changes that take place and though a short story does not have that luxury it can still depict a sense of time. In The Third and Final Continent just the presence of a character like Mrs. Croft, a hundred and three years old lady, gives a sense of time and Mrs. Croft’s incomprehension of the modern world depicts starkly the amount of changes that has taken place in that period.

When Ashima muses that ‘she has given birth to vagabonds’ and ‘thinks of all the dark, hot apartments Gogol has inhabited over the years’ it recalls the incidents of the novel in hindsight. In comparison when the narrator of The Third and Final Continent comments: ‘bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept’, it is like an epiphany.