In many countries and cultures, Western society is looked at with fascination and as if it is superior. This fascination may lead to an uncritical adaption and imitation of western ways of living and people may end up leaving all of their own cultural identity behind, ending up in a melting pot of a homogeneous culture. This is exactly what has happened to the anglicized main character Sir Mohan Lai, in Kushwant Singh’s short story “Karma”.
The short story is narrated through third person. Singh has chosen the narrator to be omniscient, but shifting between being limited to Sir Mohan Lai and his wife Lachmi. This allows the reader to discover thoughts and feelings from both characters and it gives the reader a broader perspective.
Sir Mohan Lai, our main character, is an Indian man whom while studying at Oxford for five years has adopted an English lifestyle and now, in every manner possible, tries to imitate Englishmen. Lai hates everything about his home country, India. This is seen already in the very beginning of the story when Lai talks to a mirror made in India, “You are so very much like anything else in this country inefficient, dirty, indifferent” (p.15 lines 4-5). Throughout the story it is very clear that Lai is fascinated with British culture and English lifestyle, and that he is very much against, and very contemptuous against, everything that has anything to do with India. Lai has chosen voluntary assimilation while studying in England. Lai sees himself as a fine man, because of his nice Oxford-English, his expensive suit, his eau de cologne, and the fact that he drinks whiskey and reads The Times. It is clear that Lai only does these things in order to impress Englishmen that he meets on his way, “With a sigh he sat down in a corner and opened the copy of the Times that he had read several times before” (p.18, lines 34-35). Lai does not bring the paper for his own enjoyment, but only to seem like he is educated and worth for an Englishman to talk to.
In contrast to Lai, his wife Lachmi sees herself as a native woman. She is uneducated, she does not know English, and she does not care about English lifestyle and manners. Lachmi chooses to sit in “her” zenana inter-class in the train where the story takes place. She believes that that is where she belongs, and it does not bother her. Lai, on the other hand, believes that he belongs in first class with the other Brits. Also, privately Lai and Lachmi are separated. Lai lives on the ground floor, and Lachmi lives on the upper floor. Lai has no respect for his wife; this is seen in the text when he describes his nocturnal visits to the upper floor, “…or nocturnal visits to the upper storey, all-too-brief sexual acts with obese old Lachmi, smelling of sweat and raw onion”. He describes her as if she has no worth to him and as if he sees her as a disgusting woman. Lachmi is very humble compared to Lai. After finishing her meal, just before the train arrives, Lachmi washes her mouth and hands under a public tap and also thanks the gods for the meal, something that Lai would probably never do. Also, Lachmi does not see Lai as her husband, but as her master. We know this because she tells the coolie, whom she talks to waiting on the train, that she is travelling with her master. When Lachmi thinks about Lai’s nocturnal visits, she thinks about how she passively obeys, indicating that she is treated almost as if she were nothing but his personal slave.
The title of the short story is “Karma” and this goes very well with the whole plot of the story. Karma, in Hinduism and Buddhism, is the sum of a person’s actions in this and in previous states of one’s existence, viewed as deciding one’s faith in the future. Lai, whom is being very arrogant and who has neglected his own culture in order to imitate and assimilate English culture, ends up being humiliated by the exact people that he is trying to be like. Lai has forgotten all about the important things in life, like his wife, because of his desire to be an Englishman. In spite of Lai’s cultured behavior on the train, two English soldiers wanting to sit in the compartment where Lai is sitting see him as an unworthy nigger, and they therefore throw him out of the train. They hear Lai’s English and think of it as being too much of the King’s for them, meaning that he is trying way too hard to sound educated and smart. After being humiliated and thrown out of the train, Lai lays on the platform while his wife Lachmi is comfortably sitting in the women’s section of the train, “As the train sped past the lighted part of the platform, Lady Lal spat and sent a jet of red dribble flying across like dart” (p.19, lines 35-36). This quote, being the very ending of the short story, can be interpreted as the humble, Indian woman Lachmi winning over the arrogant, know-all Indian man Lai.
As a foreigner coming to a Western society, it may be very hard to find your identity. You may come from a country were ways of living are different and the whole society is run differently from what you are used to. You can choose to adapt some of the new culture and still keep some your own cultural identity from home, and in this way form your own multicultural identity and be a part of a pluralistic integration pattern. You can also leave all of your cultural background behind and assimilate completely being a part of a so-called melting pot integration pattern. As seen in the short story “Karma”, the main character chooses the last mentioned option, which ends up bringing him in great trouble. By showing different sides of the story, the author Sing gives us an idea of how things can go, and how difficult it can be to try and fit in and find a balance between keeping some of your own cultural heritage and adopting new culture and ways of living.
