I really started to think about how Lahiri addresses this issue after I read the post by Maggie Sully. I really liked the link Maggie makes between light and the barriers between Shoba and Shukumar. After I read her post I really started to think more about the things that were keeping them from restoring some sort of community. Shukumar hides himself in his study with his computer and Shoba watches TV while redlining her papers. Shukumar even cringes when his wife comes to see how is doing, and he longs for his computers during the first night of the power outage. It really seems that technology can partition our lives in such a way that it is difficult to relate to other human beings. I thought that this was briefly illustrated in the Interpreter of Maladies, for Mr. Das seems to only experience the world through books and this appears to greatly inhibit his ability to relate to his wife and children.
I see the dependance on technology as a very similar concept. I'm not sure how this ties into globalism, but I'm sure that many there are many scholars who focus on this relationship. This concept seems to tie into the words of Nipal in Mimic Men when Ralph states that,
"In a city already simplified to individual cells this order is a further simplification. It is rooted in nothing; it links to nothing. We talk of escaping to the simple life. But we do not mean what we say. It is from simplification such as this that we wish to escape, to return to a more elemental complexity."
I love that last line, "elemental complexity"; the complexity that comes with relationships with other human beings not the complexity of computer subroutines. Now don't get me wrong I love technology, but we haven't had computers very long and we clearly do not understand their effect on us. We have colonial and post-colonial literary theories, but is there a technology or post-technology theory? If there is could Lahiri also fit into that category?
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