Mukherjee's "A Father": A Struggle of Ethnic Identity and Culture Clash

A symbolic painting on clashing cultures by Nicola Verlato 

Sharati Mukherjee’s “A Father,” is a story that essentially symbolizes the struggle of ethnic identity. Mr. Bhowmick, a husband and father originally from India, comes to America with his more progressive wife (as Mr. Bhowmick would describe her himself) in search for the “American Dream.” However, Mr. Bhowmick, who’s more of a traditionalist, is more spiritually inclined than his wife. Nevertheless, despite spiritual differences, in a way his wife resembles, and is the connection, to his Indian past, now that they have officially settled in the United States. (And the wife too retains some of her traditional beliefs as she still cooks her husband a big breakfast every morning. In other words, she can be seen as he intermediary between Mr. Bhowmick and his daughter, Babli.) Babli, who along with his wife, have become, for the most part, “Americanized,” enriched by a more practical and materialistic lifestyle. In comparison to Mr. Bhowmick who has a more chauvinistic and sexist attitude, believing that women play certain roles in society, Babli represents a more feminist one (possibly due to the fact that this story was written at the peak of the Civil Rights Movement). 

While Mr. Bhowmick is geared toward his ethnic background, it is not to be confused for his appreciation of America. While he admits that America has provided him and his family a comfortable life (materialistically speaking). What really fulfills him in his soul is the culture he grew up with: it is a battle in which for Mr. Bhowmick spiritualism triumphs over materialism. Symbolically, Babli can be seen as his total opposite in the sense of personal views and lifestyle. It can be interpreted that while Babli (as America) can bring Mr. Bhowmick material comfort (as she is a successful engineer) when in need. However, she (as America) cannot bring him the level of comfort and fulfillment as his Indian background does (p. 341).

This brings Mr. Bhowmick to question his own identity, and which culture should he choose. The author allegorically places Mr. Bhowmick in a situation in which he had to choose to ignore the sneeze that his neighbor, Al Stazniak, made, which represented a “start of a journey [that] brings bad luck” in Hindu superstition (siding with American culture), or “admit the smallness of mortals, undo the fate of the universe by starting over, and go back inside the apartment, sit for a second on the sofa, then re-start his trip” (siding his original Indian culture). To his rationale “[c]ompromise” and “adaptability” is what made sense to balance “between new-world reasonableness and old-world beliefs” (p. 342). (This makes sense because he had already compromised a spiritually fulfilling life of “truth, beauty, and poetry” in India for materialistic life in America.)

Nonetheless, he chooses to go with what he was comfortable and decides to go back inside his home and pray to un-jinx the superstition. As a result, he happens to overhear his daughter vomiting. Many different reasons for why she is vomiting races through Mr. Bhowmick’s mind. His ultimate conclusion is that Babli is pregnant. He kept quiet about it until he found his wife attacking Babli over the pregnancy, as she was not impregnated by a man in the “traditional” fashion (the wife going back to her cultural roots despite being described as progressive). In contrast, before Mr. Bhowmick finds out that Babli got pregnant, he tried to keep a positive, more progressive attitude. But of course, his true ethnic background overcame that, as with the sneeze aforementioned, when he did come to find out the method in which Babli was impregnated: through a donor. And even though Babli was in favor of it, Mr. Browmick was the one who ended up attacking his daughter: it was a clash between cultures. While this story speaks to the reality of how people through different cultural backgrounds clash. What we can learn from this story is to attempt to be more open-minded to cultures and possibilities, not only to make us more tolerant but wiser as well.