I was hoping you could make me feel better, say the right thing. Suggest some kind of remedy.

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, first published in 1999

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

Interpreter of Maladies is a series of collected stories that center on Indian experiences across a multitude of geographies. The stories examine everything from love lost to the deep-rooted growing pains of moving across the world and trying to adjust. They are touching, poignant, and carry a kind of universal weight that leave you marked. 

Spoiler Over (but not really, and you know it ;) - Continue Here

Well hello, dear readers!

 I finished this story collection a little while ago, and have actually already started and finished A Passage to India, which was a fascinating book to read right after this one. More on that in the next blob! Here are my thoughts!

Jhumpa Lahiri has also published three books in Italian. WOW. Anyone who can not only be fluent in multiple languages, but PUBLISH NOVELS in more than one language, and write the way Lahiri writes, is just... chef's kiss! My hat is off to you. 

I enjoyed this collection of stories, though if you have read my blob, you know story collections are really not my favorite. I decided I would give you little snippets from each of the stories, as there are only nine total. 

A Temporary Matter, or when Shoba and Shukumar lose their son and try to find each other in the dark

In each of these, the bold is Lahiri's actual title, and the italics are my rendering of the plot. This first story is about a couple who have suffered the tragic loss of their child-to-be, and how they rekindle pieces of their relationship during a series of scheduled blackouts.  

• He looked now for something to put the birthday candles in and settled on the soil of a potted ivy that normally sat on the windowsill over the sink. Even though the plant was inches from the tap, the soil was so dry that he had to water it first before the candles would stand straight. Planting a candle in the pot made me think of one of my favorite short stories from when I was younger, The Heat Death of the Universe, by Pamela Zoline - Someone has planted a hot dog in the daffodil pot. 

• All day Shukumar had looked forward to the lights going out.

• He wondered would Shoba would tell him in the dark.

• Something happened when the house was dark. They were able to talk to each other again.

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine, or when East Pakistan (and Mr. Pirzada) ceases to be a part of India

In reading this, I was reminded again how little I know about the history of other countries, and I felt like I really need to do another round of World Studies and World History, so we'll just cue that up for somewhere down the road. This story is about Mr. Pirzada, who is away from home, and how he becomes an extended member of an Indian couple and their young daughter, during a time when things are explosively unsettled in India.

• In search of compatriots, they used to trail their fingers, at the start of each new semester, through the columns of the university directory, circling surnames familiar to their part of the world. This was such a beautiful line, and reminded me how privileged I am. Never have I felt so foreign in my home that I searched a phone book for familiar surnames. What a beautiful way to find community.

• Mr. Pirzada - Each evening he appeared in ensembles of plums, olives, and chocolate browns. He was a compact man, and though his feet were perpetually splayed, and his belly slightly wide, he nevertheless maintained an efficient posture, as if balancing in either hand two suitcases of equal weight. His ears were insulated by tufts of graying hair that seemed to block out the unpleasant traffic of life. God, I love that line about the ear hair blocking out the traffic of life. :)

• Mr. Pirzada brings candy to the young girl, and she always thanks him, to which he replies once: 'What is this thank-you? The lady at the bank thanks me, the cashier at the shop thanks me, the librarian thanks me when I return an overdue book, the overseas operator thanks me as she tries to connect me to Dacca and fails. If I am buried in this country I will be thanked, no doubt, at my funeral.' 

• Now that I had learned Mr. Pirzada was not an Indian, I began to study him with extra care, to try to figure out what made him different. This story was such an artful and thoughtful way to examine a historical event through the eyes of a child. Of course, nothing about Mr. Pirzada or the girl and her parents has actually changed, but the political world shifts and then poof! Just like that, he is no longer 'Indian'. 

Interpreter of Maladies, or the exoticization of a home country and love, unrequited

This one was beautiful but also made me so sad. It centers on a family, Mr. and Mrs. Das, and their three children, and Mr. Kapasi, a man who drives them on a tour to see famous places in a part of India. Mr. Kapasi, it turns out, does interpreting at a doctor's office for patients who speak other languages, and when Mrs. Das is alone with Mr. Kapasi, she tells him she's been feeling unwell, and asks for him to say something. When he has nothing to offer, she says:

• I was hoping you could make me feel better, say the right thing. Suggest some kind of remedy.

Mr. Kapasi falls in love with/becomes enamored with Mrs. Das during their little jaunt, and happily imagines a world where they become romantic pen pals, after he takes a photo with them and she offers to send it along to his address. Later, though, he takes them to another place and the monkeys are overwhelming to the Indian-but-no-longer-used-to-India family, and the address floats away in the wind.

A Real Durwan, or Boori Ma's wrongful expulsion from her only home by her supposed 'neighbors'

This story chronicles the sad tale of Boori Ma, a woman who has supposedly become homeless and attached herself to a small collection of apartments after partition. The neighbors claim to have her interests at heart, but when they get a communal cistern tap and it is stolen, they turn on Boori Ma and she is expelled from their midst. 

• Such comforts you cannot even dream them. This is a line Boori Ma says, allegedly about her life before. I love the line. 

• It was true that prickly heat was common during the rainy season. I had to look this up - apparently prickly heat is a kind of itchy heat rash. Boori Ma is told perhaps she has a bad case, but she's sure that she has little insects living in her bedding. (I FEEL YOU, Boori Ma! When I had bedbugs it was the PITS.)

Sexy, or Miranda's dalliances with Dev (and India) and eventual compassion for Laxmi's cousin

Sexy was interesting. In some ways it felt a little out of place to me, or like it was from a different collection. It was probably my least favorite, but that may also have been because I don't feel a lot of empathy or connection to a character who is sleeping with another woman's husband. It follows Miranda, a white British woman, during her affair with an Indian man, Dev, and at the same time Miranda is consoling a co-worker, Laxmi, whose cousin's husband has just left her for a woman he met on a plane. The worlds collide eventually when Laxmi's cousin comes to town and Miranda ends up watching Rohin, the cousin's son. He tells Miranda that she looks 'sexy', trying out a word he's heard his parents use, and this seems to break the spell of Miranda's affair.

Mrs. Sen's, or the intense growing pains and excruciating adjustment period of immigration

I think this might have been my favorite story. It follows Eliot, a young white boy, during a time when he is baby-sat by a recent Indian immigrant, Mrs. Sen. She is trying and struggling to adjust to life in New England, and her husband is attempting to get her to learn to drive independently so that she can do more things and move about more freely, but she is terrified. 

• Eliot, if I began to scream right now at the top of my lungs, would someone come? This reminded me of when my nephew's father first moved to the US from Senegal. He described the suburbs to me once as so lonely, and asked me why people would want to live so isolated from each other. I had never thought of them like that before, and most of the time in the city, I hate how many people are around. But I understand that as someone habituated to family compound living, being in places where you have relatives and old friends around every corner, the American 'dream' could feel so empty.

• Brimming bowls and colanders lined the countertop, spices and pastes were measured and blended, and eventually a collection of broths simmered over periwinkle flames on the stove. I wanted to eat everything that Mrs. Sen was cooking. 

Mrs. Sen, when she's trying to enter an intersection: 'Impossible, Eliot. How can I go there? 
'You need to wait until no one's coming.'
Why will not anybody slow down?'
'No one's coming now.'
'But what about the car from the right, do you see? And look, a truck is behind it. Anyway, I am not allowed on the main road without Mr. Sen.' I felt so deeply for Mrs. Sen here. When I first learned to drive, I was terrified. My sisters used to joke that I'd drive for half an hour before the auto-lock went off, because I'd be going less than 15mph that whole time. I still remember the first time I went on a highway. It was with the school's Driver's Ed instructor, and she had the perfect temperament for it, but it still stands out as one of the scariest moments of my life. And I know how many roundabouts there are in the Boston area, and entering those can be like a nasty game of Double Dutch (something I've never been skilled at).

• 'My sister has had a baby girl. By the time I see her, depending if Mr. Sen gets his tenure, she will be three years old. Her own aunt will be a stranger. If we sit side by side on a train she will not know my face.' This was such a beautiful and painful line. 

This Blessed House, or a young Hindu couple's fierce battle over Christian paraphernalia

This story was about Twinkle and Sanjeev, a young Indian couple who have recently moved into a home in Connecticut, and discover all kinds of Christian paraphernalia. Twinkle is endlessly amused by it, building a shrine to every surprising knickknack, and Sanjeev is (in my mind, quite understandably) confused about why she wants to honor things she doesn't hold any belief in. They compromise in the end. It was not my favorite story.

The Treatment of Bibi Haldar, or a desperate woman's non-traditional path to becoming whole

I liked this one - it was another one of my favorites. Somewhat similar to Boori Ma, Bibi Haldar is a kind of social pariah, living with her brother and his wife in an apartment building. She is prone to attacks and bizarre medical incidents like seizures, and this makes her generally deemed as unfit for marriage. She's stuck sort of pingballing around the building, desperate to advance to the traditional stages of womanhood.

• 'I will never dip my feet in milk,' she whimpered. 'My face will never be painted with sandalwood paste. Who will rub me with turmeric? My name will never be printed with scarlet ink on a card.'

• Her soliloquies mawkish, her sentiments maudlin, malaise dripped like a fever from her pores. God, this is a beautiful sentence.

• To get her to quiet down, Haldar placed a one-line advertisement in the town newspaper, in order to solicit a groom: 'GIRL, UNSTABLE, HEIGHT 152 CENTIMETRES, SEEKS HUSBAND.' LOLOL. Yes, Haldar, that will definitely bring the men in droves.

• It was rumored by many that Bibi conversed with herself in a fluent but totally incomprehensible language, and slept without dreams.

The Third and Final Continent, or a young man's journey from solo immigration to center of a family

This story was also one of my favorites. It centers on a man who is originally from India, goes to school in London, and then ends up at MIT in America. He wants to rent a room for a time before his wife is to arrive, and so he encounters Mrs. Croft. Here's one of their exchanges.

For a moment she was silent. Then suddenly she declared, with the equal measures of disbelief and delight as the night before, 'There's an American flag on the moon, boy!'

'Yes, madame.'

'A flag on the moon! Isn't that splendid?'

I nodded, dreading what I knew was coming. 'Yes, madame.'

'Say, splendid!'

This time I paused, looking to either side in case anyone were there to overhear me, though I knew perfectly well that the house was empty. I felt like an idiot. But it was a small enough thing to ask. 'Splendid!' I cried out. He knows Mrs. Croft is old, but it turns out she is 103. Her daughter comes and leaves her soup in the refrigerator, because Mrs. Croft can't open the cans herself. Mrs. Croft is spicy and for sure a bit demented, but the man grows to love her. 

• Mrs. Croft's was the first death I mourned in America, for hers was the first life I had admired; she had left this world at last, ancient and alone, never to return.

Lines I Really Liked

• What resulted was a disproportionately large hole the size of a lemon, so that our jack-o'-lantern wore an expression of placid astonishment, the eyebrows no longer fierce, floating in frozen surprise above a vacant, geometric gaze.

• Most of all I remember the three of them operating during that time as if they were a single person, sharing a single meal, a single body, a single silence, and a single fear.

Words New to Me

durwan - a porter or doorkeeper; a person whose job is to guard the entrance of a large building

Well, blobbists, there you have it! I'm off to blob on another adventure centering on the experience of Indians, this time from a British white man's perspective. I'll leave you with a line I particularly liked from the man in the last story.

In my son's eyes I see the ambition that had first hurled me across the world. In a few years he will graduate and pave his way, alone and unprotected. But I remind myself that he has a father who is still living, a mother who is happy and strong. Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he cannot conquer. While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.

Sending love to all of you, and hoping that you live lives beyond your own imagination. Good night!