interpreter of maladies

My friend Lois and I had one of those “what? you too!” moments when talking about how much we enjoyed reading short stories. I shared with her my love for Alice Munro, while she told me about a book of short stories written by Jumpa Lahiri, the author of The Namesake. So, we exchanged copies and I began reading this wonderful collection.

I’m a “tad” late on the uptake (the book was published in 1999 and won a Pulitzer in 2000!), but was completely taken.  All of the stories surround Indian men and women. Some who live in America, others in India. Some are immigrants, others are Americans.

These stories, as I find with Munro’s, are encapsulated in characters that one either relates to directly or are so real you feel you’ve always known them. A couple of passages brought back memories or described my own feelings so perfectly, it felt at times as if she knew me.

One silly connection came from the story “Mrs. Sen” about a young boy who, being raised by a single mom, goes to Mrs. Sen’s house every day after school:

Eliot didn’t mind going to Mrs. Sen’s after school. By September the tiny beach house where he and his mother lived year-round was already cold; Eliot and his mother had to bring a portable heater along whenever they moved from one room to another, and to seal the windows with plastic sheets and a hair drier.

I had to giggle out  loud as I recalled all the years my mom and I shrink-wrapped plastic sheets on our windows with a hair drier. This year, when Andy and I decided to try it on our windows, he was amazed at my proficiency.

Another moment came in the last paragraph of the last story about an Indian man who sought a new life in America:

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.

The bewilderment of the miles traveled, meals eaten, people known, and rooms slept struck a chord with me. I could never have described this feeling as beautifully as she did, but the feeling was there none the less.

To me, this is the draw of short stories: the ability to articulate, describe, paint such a clear picture of ordinary people in ordinary life, that it allows you to see yourself and the world around you more brilliantly.

Filed under: Art