Short Story Spotlight: Sexy by Jhumpa Lahiri

February, Valentine's Day, Love, the theme of the month. I'm starting off with "Sexy" by Jhumpa Lahiri, one of my favorite modern short story writers. I discovered this story through one of the many English classes I took in college. The story came at the end of the semester, almost a throwaway as it was right before finals. But it was one that stuck with me and I searched through my discarded papers and syllabi to find the name. Since then, I have read her collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies and the novel, The Namesake. I enthusiastically recommend both, but back to "Sexy".

"Sexy" is about Miranda, a young 22 year old, who has moved from Michigan to Boston. She begins an affair with a married man named Dev that she meets at a department store. As a comparison, Miranda's co-worker, Laxmi, has a cousin whose husband has left her and her son for a younger woman. Miranda seemed young and lonely and vulnerable. She enjoys the initial time spent with Dev while his wife is in India for a few weeks. They act as a real couple, spending most nights together, before Dev has to get home in the early morning to speak with his wife. They go out on dates. Miranda even buys a slinky silver cocktail dress to wear out on the next date. However, the next date never comes. The wife arrives back home and Dev can only visit Miranda on Sundays during the day for a few hours; his excuse is that he's running.

Miranda develops an interest in Dev, his Indian background and culture. Shortly after they meet and sleep together, Miranda asks many questions about where Dev is from, where his wife is visiting, and ultimately his wife. She goes as far as to seek out the cover of a video to see the actress Dev says his wife resembles.  She gets his favorite Indian food for their lovemaking sessions. She learns how to spell her name in Bengali, his native language, spending hours trying to get the unfamiliar letters just right. I wonder if Miranda does all of this because she feels weird or self-conscious for dating outside her race. Or, perhaps, to overcome the guilt she felt for her apathetic treatment of the only Indian family in her neighborhood growing up. 

One Saturday, Miranda is tasked with babysitting Laxmi's cousin's son, Rohin. Rohin shows saddening signs of his parent's impending divorce and Miranda can deny him nothing. When he rifles through her closet and uncovers the slinky cocktail dress and he insists that Miranda tries it on. At first, she is reluctant, but she eventually changes into the dress, to which Rohin calls her sexy. Since he is only seven years old, she demands to know what he thinks the word means. He says, "It means loving someone you don't know." A word he has surely picked up from his parents fighting and has derived his own meaning. Finally, Miranda sees the parallels between the affairs and the affair comes to an uneventful end.

This story is one of favorites, merely for being an apt introduction to Jhumpa Lahiri. It showcases her unique voice and ability to weave her Indian background masterfully through each page and story. I'm sure my early 20 something year old self read it as a love story, just as teenagers read Romeo & Juliet as epic love. But now I see the reality of it; an affair that awakens interest outside of one's own world, but lacks depth beyond sex and physical intimacy. 

There's a scene set in the Mapparium at the Christian Science Center in Boston and it's worth mentioning because holy crap is it beautiful. I could fall in love in a place like that too.

I like short stories with a natural and basic story progression without the feeling of a condensed novel. It's so rare and hard to do. The story can be found here, but I recommend (again) getting the whole collection.