Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter Of Maladies

Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies depicts the convergence of the remorseful lives of Indian immigrants with American culture, estranged physically or spiritually from their homelands and facing adversity adjusting to America's sterility. In the story, “Mrs. Sen's,” the sense of transforming into an American lifestyle indicates Mrs. Sen's quiet strength, but an overbearing loneliness sinks into her life as readers begin to sympathize with her life. Mrs. Sen's resistance to assimilate to American culture through her obsession with material possessions back from her native India and her lonely, vicarious nature accentuates her emotional exile, making her the most sympathetic, distressful character in Lahiri's short story collection. Mrs. Sen earns the reader's sympathy with her antisocial nature and a growing obsession with food and Indian clothing, giving a sense of homesickness and her original cultural identity. Her choice of wearing a “white sari patterned with orange paisleys” (112) indicates her passion for Bengali people, Bengali food, fish and all possessions from Calcutta. The arrival of fish at the local store is greeted as a piece of news from home,
Sen creates an alienated life for herself through resistance to assimilation in America, one that strictly hold on to only Indian customs. “Mrs. Sen's” is not told from her perspective, which prevents greater lament for readers and of knowing her true, deep thoughts, yet this presence is nevertheless a large part in the ultimately disheartening story. Her reclusive nature and obsession with food reflects her true homesickness. When she projects loneliness upon Eliot and attempts to accept America, their strong bond eventually eradicates as her extreme refusal to assimilate increases again. Mrs. Sen not only has a great downfall, but loses her only friend, creating an uncertain sense of her future in America and earning the reader's