A Tale of Heartache Hell-Heaven - Essay Example

Hell-Heaven” A Tale of Heartache Question: How did the narrator’s mother use the term Hell-Heaven? Hell-Heaven is used by the narrator’s Bengali mother to describe not only Pranab Kaku’s behaviour, but her own position in life as well. Aparna, the narrator’s mother, lived in two diverse worlds, like Hell and Heaven. She was trying to hold on to old ways, while embracing a new environment, America, as an immigrant from Bangladesh. Although Aparna only uses the phrase “Hell-Heaven” once, the term fitted almost every aspect of her life. The first metaphorical aspect of Aparna’s life is her marriage to Usha’s father. Like most immigrants from India, Aparna and her husband were betrothed by their parents. Aparna was “even in her bleakest hours of homesickness she was grateful that my father had at least spared her a life in the stern house of her in-laws, where she would have had to keep her head covered with the end of her sari at all times and use an outhouse that was nothing but a raised platform with a hole” (DiYanni 350). Aparna’s husband and she were thrown together by chance. This part of her life was one of her metaphorical Hells. Pranab Kaku’s innocent visits to Aparna and Usha’s apartment plus their outings were a release for Aparna. Since the outings were supervised by the narrator, Aparna’s husband felt “freed from the sense of responsibility he must have felt for forcing her to leave India” (DiYanni 351). Although the narrator did not realize it at the time, she later came to the realization that “It is clear to me now that my mother was in love with him” (DiYanni 351). Aparna had more in common with Pranab Kaku than with her husband. For example, “They had in common all the things she and my father did not: a love of music, film, leftist politics, poetry” (DiYanni 350). This relationship was Aparna’s Heaven. Another Hell for Aparna was the foreign atmosphere of America. Even in America Aparna wore Indian clothes. The narrator wrote, “given that my mother was wearing the red and white bangles unique to Bengali married women, and a common Tangail sari” (DiYanni 348). Aparna clung to her old Indian ways. She constantly chided Usha about the Bengali ways. Aparna admonished, “Don’t think you’ll get away with marrying an American, the way Pranab Kaku did” (DiYanni 356). The balancing act of raising an Indian daughter in America was Hell for Aparna. Bangladesh was Heaven for Aparna. That is why Aparna fell in love with Pranab Kaku, not for who he was, but what he represented. Pranab Kaku reminded Aparna of “cheerful songs of courtship, which transformed the quiet life in our apartment and transported my mother back to the world she’d left behind in order to marry my father” (DiYanni 350). Aparna loved the Heaven that Bangladesh represented for her. In this story, Hell can turn to Heaven and vice versa. When Pranab Kaku met an American and began dating her, the relationship between him and Aparna became a Hell. Aparna would describe the difference in Pranab Kaku’s behavior, “’It’s just hell-heaven, the difference,” she would say, always using the English words for her self-concocted, backward metaphor (DiYanni 352). Aparna predicted that Pranab Kaku’s relationship with Deborah would end in tragedy. However as time went by, Aparna’s relationship with her husband became Heaven after the narrator left home. The narrator relates, “as my parents approached their old age, she and my father had grown fond of each other, out of habit if nothing else” (DiYanni 360). Aparna learned that contentment could be a piece of Heaven. Aparna learned that Heaven and Hell are closely related, but some aspects of her life contained both aspects of Heaven and Hell. A prime example is the relationship Aparna had with her daughter, Usha. Like most mothers dealing with daughters, part of Aparna and Usha’s relationship was hell. Aparna must have felt the Hell when Usha said, “I told my mother, for the first but not the last time in my life, that I hated her” (DiYanni 354). On the other hand when Usha grew older, Aparna confided in her. Mother and daughter grew closer, creating a heaven for both of them. Aparna disclosed that after Pranab Kaku’s married Deborah, she doused herself with gasoline, “For nearly an hour she stood there, looking at our house, trying to work up the courage to strike a match” (DiYanni 360). Aparna never told another soul her secret, except for Usha. Nothing can be more Heavenly that a mother-daughter bond. Another example of a both Heaven and Hell at the same time is the Bengali community that Aparna and her family were apart of. The close Bengali community and their social events were the Heaven aspects. The Bengali society was cliquish, even excluding Deborah, “Deborah would, eventually, politely slip away, much to the relief of the Bengali women with whom she was expected to carry on a conversation” (DiYanni 353). Aparna fit in where Deborah did not. The downside of the Bengali society is “when after twenty-three years of marriage, Pranab Kaku and Deborah got divorced. It was he who had strayed, falling in love with a married Bengali woman, destroying two families in the process” (DiYanni 359). A Bengali captured Pranab Kaku after the many years of resentment Aparna had towards Deborah. That side of Bengali society was Hell. When Pranab Kaku divorced Deborah, she started to feel Aparna’s heartache. After living with him for twenty-three years of Heaven, Pranab Kaku threw her into Aparna’s Hell. Yet when he threw Deborah in Hell, Pranab Kaku raised another woman up to Heaven. Pranab Kaku was Hell and Heaven. Aparna’s life with the aspects of Hell and Heaven can define anyone’s life. Not everybody’s life is as compartmentalized as Aparna’s, so cannot be as well defined in the term Hell-Heaven. The most important lesson in Aparna’s story is that even though her life had both facets of Hell-Heaven, she survived. Aparna might have coped with her life uniquely, but she endured. References DiYanni, R. Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, & Drama, 6th Ed. U.S.A.: Textbook Recycling Co., 2005. Read More