RESEARCH PAPER
JHUMPA LAHIRI’S “MRS. SEN’S”
(INTERPRETER OF MALADIES)

Name: Babar Ali Kaiser
Student ID: 1142131
Instructor: Dr. Christina Sommerfeldt
Course: English 111
Term: Winter 2007
Jhumpa Lahiri, through the stories in her book “Interpreter of Maladies”, sheds light on the experience of immigrants from the subcontinent who face difficulties in adjusting and integrating and as a result feel homesick and isolated in a new world so different from their homeland. The short story “Mrs. Sen’s” is about a thirty-year old Indian woman who migrated to the United States with her husband. Her husband is a professor of mathematics at the university and is gone all day leaving Mrs. Sen behind by herself. She feels lonely and isolated when her husband is away and she therefore baby sits an eleven year old boy named Elliot. She thinks of the times she had back home “sitting in an enormous circle on the roof of her building, laughing and gossiping and slicing fifty kilos of vegetables through the night” (115). She attempts to find the life she had in India but finds it hard to do so in this society which is new to her. Her only connection to the society is the little boy, Elliot. The short story “Third and final continent” is also about a young woman just like Mrs. Sen, who migrates to the United states after getting married but unlike Mrs. Sen, she adjusts well to the life in the United States.
At the start of the story, Lahiri describes Mrs. Sen’s apartment as being decorated in a typical Indian style. Her apartment is what one can say a living example of an archetypal Indian house with “plush pear-colored carpet” (112), unwrapped lamp shades (Lahiri 112) and the “TV and telephone covered by pieces of yellow fabric with scalloped edges” (112) are only a few examples of how her house was decorated. Mrs. Sen is described as wearing a “shimmering white sari patterned with orange paisleys” (112) and she wore “saris of a different pattern each day” (119). Her hair was centered perfectly and “was shaded with crushed vermilion” (117) which married Indian women wear on their scalp just above their foreheads. She listened to traditional Indian music and at times “played a tape of something she called a raga” (128). Although Mrs. Sen was trying to adjust in the western society but her attempts were futile, she was actually trying to bring Indian culture in the United States which was not working. Analogous to Mrs. Sen is Mala in Lahiri’s “Third and final continent”, who after getting married first arrived to the US in her traditional sari “her thin brown arm were stacked were gold bracelets, a small red circle was painted on her forehead, and edges of her feet were tinted with a decorative red die” (Lahiri 191). What they both have in common is their traditional Indian style which is in their roots and they cannot let go of it. As noted by S. L. Sharma “Indians are always nostalgic about Indian food and their women tend to stick to their lovely saris” (Sharma 48). Mrs. Sen should have adopted a more western lifestyle and dressing in public so she could easily adapt to the new society. Even though she wanted to adjust in the western society but her denial to give up her Indian way of life was holding her back. Mrs. Sen was like most Indian immigrants who are “more Indian in their cultural orientations and practices than resident Indians in India” (Sharma 48). The fact of being more Indian than resident Indians be explained from a sociological point of view that she “found the culture as a defense mechanism against a sense of insecurity in alien setting or it may well be so because the immigrants get stuck to their conception of the Indian culture of the time when they had left India” (Sharma 49). Mrs. Sen was, as a result of staunch following of her Indian ways, still isolated in what she calls a strange new world.
Mrs. Sen also attempts to strike a relationship with Eliot’s mother when “each evening she insisted that his mother sit on the sofa, where she was served something to eat” (118). Eliot’s mother really did not like Mrs. Sen’s cooking and she had mentioned this to Eliot in the car (Lahiri 118). Yet at another occasion she strikes a conversation regarding fish (123-124) which again did not interest Eliot’s mother. According to Madhuparna Mitra, “the possibility of female companionship of the kind shared by the women chopping vegetables was thwarted” (Mitra 194) thus leaving Mrs. Sen felling isolated and unable to adjust. Elliot’s mother has a completely different lifestyle as compared to Mrs. Sen as both were two different people who clearly had nothing in common. Mrs. Sen attempted connection with Eliot’s mother fails because she treats her like another fellow Indian without thinking about her interests and tastes.
Mrs. Sen did not like the life in the US and desperately wanted to go back to India. This notion in this short story is a reflection of Lahiri’s own life experience when her parents after living abroad for over thirty years, still call India their home (Post-colonial web). “When Mrs. Sen said home, she meant India, not the apartment where she sat chopping vegetables.” (116). Due to the inability to adjust in foreign land, Mrs. Sen never really wanted to live in US. “Could I drive all the way to Calcutta? How long will it take, Elliot? Ten thousand miles, at fifty miles per hour?” (119). Saying this showed her desperation to return back home to India. Mrs. Sen found the life in the US a bit too quiet and was not used to this kind of life. At an instant she said to Elliot “if a scream right now at the top of my lungs, would someone come?” (116). She is used to a noisy Indian way of life where people talk loudly and where something different happens each day. “Mrs. Sen is homesick for the kind of community she had in India, a community defined by a responsibility to participate in the lives of others rather than a responsibility not to interfere or be in any way intrusive in the lives of others” (Brada-Williams 459). Here she finds herself in a dead end life in a country where she knows no one except for Elliot, who is her only connection to the society. Her inability to connect with people in the foreign land makes her homesick. When Mrs. Sen received a letter from India, she got really excited, “As soon as they were inside the apartment she kicked off her slippers this way and that, drew a wire pin from her hair, and slit the top and sides of the aerogram in three strokes” (122). When she felt nostalgic she listened to “a cassette of people talking in her language – farewell present she told Elliot, her family had made for her” (128). The cassette had the voices of her family members from India each saying something different, some were reciting poems, some shared anecdotes and some were just emotional good byes. News that came from India made her really happy and at the same time sad about the things she was missing while in the US. She felt that she had to be there to share and enjoy the new developments that were taking place in India. The reality of being able to go there made her even more homesick. When she heard the news of her grandfather’s death, she got really depressed but couldn’t do anything since she was not in India. Her daily ritual, as described Brada-Williams, is chopping ingredients to make elaborate meals for herself and her husband and “this daily ritual or routine connects Mrs. Sen with India” (Brada-Williams 458-459). Since she is unable to socialize in the US, where she lives, she needs an outlet for her emotions and she uses cutting vegetables as her emotional connection to India. This activity draws her closer to India as she remembers the time when she and other neighborhood women used sit together all night to chop vegetables and this elevates her desire to go back home to India. Her inability to adjust has led to her isolation and this is her biggest dilemma which she cannot seem to overcome.
Mrs. Sen had an obsession for fish and the only “other thing that that made her happy was fish from the seaside” (123). She went to the fish market so often that the fish vendors in the fish market knew her and called her at home as soon as they had fresh fish available. Mrs. Sen did not like the fish available in the US and said that it “tasted nothing like the fish in India” (123). When she was not able to find the desired type of fish she said “It is very frustrating…living so close to the ocean and not to have so much fish” (123). Saying, she did not like the fish in the US meant she did not like what was available there. She showed her disregard for what was available there and hence this points towards the troubles faced by her in the adjustment process.
Once, Mrs. Sen decided to take the bus to the fish market taking Eliot along with her. “On the way home an old woman on the bus kept watching them, her eyes shifting from Mrs. Sen to Eliot to the blood-lined bag between their feet” (132). The staring of other people made Mrs. Sen feel even more alienated. The way Mrs. Sen dressed up and the way she carried herself was odd for the woman on the bus. Then the bus driver inquiring “What’s in the bag?” raised even more doubts in the mind of Mrs. Sen. She really felt unwanted and misfit in this strange new world she was in. According to Mitra, “it marked her as an immigrant outsider” (Mitra 194). It is this feeling and the incidents like these which make people feel isolated and adds to their difficulties faced during the adjustment process in a new country. Episodes like these highlight the differences in the cultures of the east and the west and the fact that how different are people belonging to different cultures. “It would be too easy to call the old woman in the bus intolerant, but the episode does underscore the cultural chasm that separates the old woman from Mrs. Sen” (Mitra 195).
Getting a driver’s license for Mrs. Sen was a big issue for her as she could not drive properly and was reluctant to drive and learn how to drive. She got easily distracted, while driving, with anything she saw on the road. Her husband, Mr. Sen, always encouraged her to drive when he was with her but she always refused saying “not today, some other day” (126). Mrs. Sen is characterized as otherwise a very careful woman but a reckless driver who gets easily distracted. She is uncomfortable with the other cars on the road and gets confused when someone honks the horn at her. In India she had a chauffeur (Lahiri 113) who drove her anywhere she wanted to go, so she really did not need to learn driving. Driving was a big problem she had to face and her inability to drive made her more isolated from the society. Only if she had learnt how to drive, she could have gone to different places and probably would have made new friends or at least she could have taken a tour around the city. Mrs. Sen’s reluctance to learn driving and her careless driving made her lose her only connection to the society, Elliot. If she would have learnt driving she would not have to go through even more isolation in her life. Mrs. Sen although not legally allowed to drive alone on main roads, without a licensed driver on her side, took the car out to get to the fish market. She did not tell Elliot of her intentions to take the car, without Mr. Sen sitting next to her, to the fish market. And so it happened, “Mrs. Sen took a left before she should have, and though the oncoming car managed to swerve out of her way, she was so startled by the horn that she lost control of the wheel and hit the telephone pole” (134). Both Mrs. Sen and Elliot suffered minor injuries. After that incident Elliot was gone and he did not come at Mrs. Sen’s apartment any more. Mrs. Sen managed to make her isolated life even worse and now she had no one to talk to any more. Her only social partner Elliot was gone. A social condition that was already bad was made even worse.
To conclude, Mrs. Sen kept on trying to get along in the new society but always failed. Her approach on the adjustment process in my opinion is flawed. When you enter into a new society, you have to change yourself a bit in order to adapt. One has to make sacrifices and has to let go of the past. Even though Mrs. Sen had a nice life in India, a life and place where she wanted to be but she had to admit the fact that she was not in India anymore. One has to understand that the country they are in is not like their country back home. You are new to this country and you have to accommodate and the country will not change for you. The incident that took place in the bus made her feel misfit but it was also a signal for her to change herself. Be more like the people in the society and if she does not want to be like them, then at least fake it. If you have to adjust in a different society, you have to change yourself according to the ways of the new country. At the instant when she complained about the taste of fish in the US to Elliot mother, she was showing her disregard for something that was native to the US. Saying things like these, showing disregard for what is native to a new country will not help in adjusting to the new society. One should be able to accept all that there is and show that they acknowledge everything about the new country they are in. Otherwise how hard one tries as Mrs. Sen did, one cannot adjust. She should have had the right approach and that is to accept what came to her.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Brada-Williams, Noelle. “Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies as a Short Story Cycle.” Brada-Williams 29.3–4 (2004): 451–64.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. “Mrs. Sen’s.” Interpreter of Maladies. Boston: Houghton, 1999.

Large, Jackie and Quinn, Erin. “Jhumpa Lahiri: a Brief Biography”. The Literature and Culture of the Indian Sub-Continent: The Post-Colonial Web. 7 Dec. 2002. .

Mitra, Madhuparna. “Lahiri’s Mrs. Sen’s.” Mitra (2006): 193-196

Sharma, S. L. “Perspectives on Indians Abroad” The Indian Diaspora: Dynamics of
Migration. Ed. N. Jayaram. New Delhi, India: Sage Publications, 2004. 47-54