A Father

The themes of "A Father" include irony, religious perspective, clash of cultures, control and the lack of it, arranged marriage, lack of intimacy, old world vs. new world, generation gap, gender expectations, patriarchy, and superstition. It's important to note the relationship Mr. Bhowmick has with his chosen goddess, Kali. She symbolizes all that we cannot understand in life which clashes with Mr. Bhowmick's desperate need to control life. She also symbolizes Mr. Bhowmick's hatred of women, especially the women he cannot control. It is ironic that Mr. Bhowmick chose this goddess to worship because she is a woman and represents chaos at it’s core.

The relationship between Mr. Bhowmick and his daughter Babli is something that I found very interesting. This passage was very telling. “Balbi was not the child he would have chosen as his only heir...Babli could never comfort him. She wasn’t womanly or tender the way that unmarried girls had been in the wistful days of his adolescence...her accomplishments didn’t add up to real femininity. Not the kind that had given him palpitations.” (Pg 341) Mr. Bhowmick’s makes his disdain for his daughter quite evident. Mr. Bhowmick probably never showed Babli affection as a child, which in my opinion, gave her a negative attitude towards men. Babli is outspoken and fierce, more like her mother than her father. This is also why Mr. Bhowmick has such a resentment for his daughter. It is also interesting to note what exactly Mr. Bhowmick means by real femininity. His idea of femininity is constantly challenged by the women in his life.

The way I felt about Mr. Bhowmick was how I felt about the narrator when I read Lolita, to a certain extent. I couldn’t stand his character and I found him pathetic but I felt so bad for him. He was not comfortable in his life. He didn’t think he was American enough and now he didn’t belong in his home country either. He states that he hates Ranchi and he would never go back. He cannot find home anywhere because both places can’t fulfill him.  Maybe this is why he cannot love Babli and where his anxiety stems from.  

The themes of racism and sexism are intermingled when Mr. Bhowmick thinks about the gender and race of his grand child. He only refers to his grandchild as grandson and never once thinks about the possibility of Babli having a girl. He prays that the man who impregnated Babli is white and envisions his grandson “brown and buttery-skinned.” He even suggests that Babli must have been raped or yielded to passion by a married man, which he does nothing about. He doesn’t even consider that Babli would get artificially inseminated because what it comes down to is that being raped or assaulted would be better than having a baby on your own in his mind.