The "Dead Space" In Our Heads

There are times in everyone's life when we second-guess ourselves. “Should I have majored in Political Science when all I want to do is Art?” “Should I have said yes when he asked me to marry him?” “Maybe I should have bought the house that was $50,000 less...how am I going to pay these mortgage payments?” There are millions of little reasons why we chose to do what we decide to do at any given moment. Every experience we have had up to that point in life pushes us to chose a particular direction to go in, or a particular thing we do. When we make our choice because of a reaction to one of those experiences, it can sometimes bring us to that point where we are asking ourself “how did I get here?” And then of course the next question that always comes up is “how do I get out of here?”

In the novel “Jasmine” by Bharati Mukherjee, the main character is a woman who makes decisions and must learn from them that the reasons why we do things are not always what we think they are. Jasmine wears many faces and lives many lives trying to find out who she wants to be. As an immigrant from Pakistan to America, she travels headlong into various circumstances that sometimes are new and exciting and sometimes are dangerous and frightening. Death seems to follow her wherever she goes, first with the death of her beloved husband in Pakistan. His death prompts her to decide to go to America and fulfill her duty as a wife by committing sati, and throwing herself on a fire she will build in his memory. But when she arrives in America, things do not happen the way she imagines, and she finds that instead of ending her own life she must end the life of a man whom she murders in order to survive. After leaving this horrible scene behind she accidentally finds sanctuary with a woman named Lillian who's mission in life is to save the immigrant “flotsam and jetsam” who land on the beach near her home, and set them on their feet. Jasmine knows that Lillian's home is not a place to land forever, and is grateful when Lillian agrees to help her with the bus fare to go to New York City. She has an address that she has carried with her from Pakistan for the home of “Professorji”, the teacher who wanted her husband to come to America and attend college. Jasmine sees Professorji as her only lifeline in America, someone who will know who she is and understand her grief as the “helpless widow of his favorite student.” She pictures Professorji as a successful example of an immigrant from her country, and knows that she will be safe with him. Professorji will tell her what she should do, what steps she should take from here.

When she arrives at the address in Queens, things are not exactly the way she pictured them. Professorji lives in a small home with his aging parents and his new bride Nirmala, who is the same age as Jasmine. He goes by the name of Dave Vadhera (“When he answered the phone...it sounded like Dave O'Hara”) and is gone all day every day because of the importance of his “lab work” that must be done. Nirmala seems to be a modern American wife at first. She works in a sari shop during the day (to the chagrin of her mother-in-law) and watches videos from India every night. But Nirmala is not that much different than the wives from Jasmine's village in Punjab; she is obsessed with becoming pregnant and does not ask questions about her husband's life or business. Nirmala is content to be the traditional Punjabi wife and “follow an ancient proscription for marital accord...submission, beauty, innocence.” Because Jasmine is a widow, she has to go back to wearing plain saris with patterns that the old women wear. She spends all her time cooking, cleaning and looking after Professorji's aging parents. She cannot go out, unless it is to the market or to “walk the rewound cassette back to the rental store.” Eventually she realizes she is losing her English speaking skills and depression sets in. She finds herself locked in the bathroom “sobbing from unnamed, unfulfilled wants.” Jasmine feels as though she is “stuck in dead space”. Living with Professorji and his family is like living behind “an imaginary brick wall topped with barbed wire...cut off from the past and prevented from breaking into the future...a prisoner doing unreal time.” When Professorji finds her having one of her crying spells, he demands to know what the problem is. Jasmine explains her feelings and her need for a green card because “a green card was freedom.” Eventually, Professorji agrees to help her “for Prakash's sake” even though he thinks she will never be able to pay him back the $3000 it will cost.

Jasmine is again grateful to someone for agreeing to help her out of her predicament. But she doesn't understand why the money should be such an issue to successful college instructor. Before Jasmine leaves Queens and finds a job as a nanny for a young couple and their daughter in New York City, she discovers that Professorji is not who she thought he was. One day when there is an emergency, she has to track him down. She finds him working in a basement office as a human hair importer. Jasmine is shocked and embarrassed to find out Professorji's secret. Professorji is not very happy either, but he saves face by insisting “His integrity as a man of science, and as a businessman, rested on the absolute guarantee that hair from Dave Vadhera met the highest standards and had been personally inspected.” Jasmine eventually understands that this is what Professorji must do to survive in America. Things did not turn out the way he imagined them. But he refused to let his family or friends know that he was not “Professorji” the distinguished college instructor. “He had sealed his heart when he left home. His real life was in an unlivable land across oceans. He was a ghost, hanging on.” Jasmine realizes she has learned an important lesson about surviving as an Indian in New York from Dave Vadhera. She knows that the important question is not “how did I get here?” but “how do I get out of here?”

No, things don't always turn out to be the way we think they will. Decisions we make are sometimes followed by responsibilities that we don't want to take on. The important thing is not to let shattered illusions keep you from finding your way. We all make decisions that we sometimes regret. But the person who can find a way to break out of their “dead space” is the person who will keep on living. And living is the whole point.