In “A Father” by Bharati Mukherjee we are introduced to Mr. Bhowmick a very complex man who is filled with hypocrisy, the first example of that is he is introduced as a very meticulous man. He awakes at 5:43 am despite 8:30 am is the time he leaves to work because he is so cautious. Yet he is thrown through a rude awakening when he finds his daughter is pregnant, maybe he wasn’t as cautious as he could have been with his child. He also is shown to be very serious and incontrol but that is not how he is portrayed further in the reading. Mr. Bhomwick doesn’t take the situation of his daughters secret pregnancy as serious as she should, he finds out so early but does not confront his daughter at all. He finds it humorous thinking of him greeting a white man as Balbi’s father, a Bob, Jack, Jimmy or Tom.
Another act of hypocrisy is his resentment towards the women in his life, his wife wasn’t as beautiful as he wanted and only married her for a free education. His daughter who yet again isn’t an example of what he believes one should be, he states how much he doesn’t love her throughout the whole passage and can’t believe someone would find her attractive enough to impregnate. Though despite his hate for the women in his life he is controlled by them, his wife is the one who made him come to America. He isn’t as strong as them or ferocious, he struggles with being stern and at towards the end , “Stop it! His own boldness overwhelmed him”. be it. This shows even when he is being bold he is still uncomfortable being the power within the household even though he expects to just
One of his most significant hypocrisy lies within his religious goddess, Kali-Mata. This goddess is holding a decapitated mans head, swords; she has a long red tongue and completely naked. Yet Mr. Bhomwick goes out of his way to worship her yet at the same time he resents women like her. His wife and daughter are sharp tongued and at a certain degree independent. Balbi I think represents her more, she embraces her sexuality and independence as a woman to make the decision she does not need a physical man to be the father of her child. At the end of the story Balbi completely reflects Kali-Mata, she is shown to be laughing and mocking her father as her long red tongue shows from her mouth; and Mr. Bhomwick beats her until the police are callen. It shows the hypocrisy of how religious he was, he prayed double the amount, he built a place for his Kali-Mata statue yet he threw all of that away and assaulted his own daughter. The goddess he loves is a woman yet it is apparent he gives the women in his life no respect.
In the end I found Mr. Bhomwicks character so fascinating because he continues to contradict himself, sort of like his hate and love relationship of Ranchi and of America. He can’t come to say he absolutely adored Ranchi or belonged there but also the same for America he felt as if he didn’t belong anywhere. He was in the middle, and that is why I believe his beliefs and emotions were so muddled and opposing at times. He was fighting between two opposing forces in his life that I believe would lead to his further destruction.
