Compare and contrast the personalities of Sir Mohan Lal and Lady Lal, especially the way they conduct themselves at the railway station.
Answer: In the short story Karma, Sir Mohan Lal and his wife Lachmi are completely opposite in personalities and characters.
Sir Mohan is a proud and arrogant. He is a barrister by profession. He has a degree from Oxford University and speaks English fluently like an Englishman. He has practised English etiquette and culture in a refined manner. He always hate Indians. According to Mohan Lal, British Culture and tradition is far superior to that of India. He thoughts that Indians are dirty, inefficient and indifferent. The hatred for his native land is the humiliation to the country. This is an act of self-humiliation too.
When Sir Mohan is inside the waiting room, his wife sits upon the trunk outside. He gets illusioned with his dress and fineries. But he has no qualms of conscience for his wife. From this feature of Sir Mohan Lal we can understand that human emotion and feeling is missing in him.
On the other hand, Lachmi is simple and unsophisticated. She is an illiterate Indian woman and doesn’t know the ABC of English. She has no such title and glory. She is grown up with Indians customs and traditions. Like many Indian housewives, she chews betel leaves.
Lachmi’s common dress is white saree with red a red border and blouse which shows her rustic simplicity and lack of taste. This stands in sharp contrast to Sir Mohan’s Saville Row suit and prim and proper outfit.
Even their food habits they are totally different. When Sir Mohan Lal drinks whiskey inside the waiting room, Lachmi takes chapattis with mango-pickle outside and conversing with a coolie. She could talk freely and enjoyed finding a native like her to talk to. From this character of Lachmi it is understood that she never discriminate between a rich and a poor.
Sir Mohan Lal travels in the first class and let her wife travel in the Zenana Inter-class. Here we see that Lachmi does not protest against such misbehavior. Rather she proves herself to be an obedient wife.
Eventually, Mohan Lal is found to have been flung out of the train by two British soldiers. We the readers can realise that Sir Mohan is nothing but a hypocrat.
Lachmi knows nothing what happens to her husband. The rejection from two British soldiers symbolizes that Mohan has lost his identity. He is neither an Indian nor an English. His wife has no such crisis and happy with her Indian counterparts.
Conclusion:
Lachmi is a native woman, who never tries to adopt the western manners as her husband. Through his character, Lachim shows her indifference to urban artificially and sophistication.
On the other hand, Sir Mohan Lal try to imitate the ways and customs of English people blindly and hates Indian culture and tradition.
However, contrast between the personalities of Sir Mohan Lal and Lachhmi that emerges through their behavior teaches us that to be a real person, not just education, one must respect one’s own culture and society.
If we don’t do that, we are sure to face humiliation and tragic doom, like Sir Mohan Lal.
★Thank you.
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