Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Mrs. Sen’s is the title of the sixth story from the story collection ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ by Jhumpa Lahiri which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2000. The story is about a lonely 11-year-old American boy and a lonely Indian woman, an immigrant from India whose husband works as a mathematics professor at a university in New England, America. The story touches on the themes of loneliness, assimilation, cultural differences, and differences between expectations and realities. Back at home, the Indian woman’s family believes she is leading a life of glamour and luxury in America while facing opposite situations. Her flat at the University of America is shabby and nowhere near the luxuries of her home in India. She realizes that her husband’s financial condition in America is no match to what they were used to in India. Furthermore, she suffers from loneliness and lack of social connection in the new place especially because she is treated as an alien in the new country.
Characters of Mrs. Sen’s:
Mrs. Sen is the main character of the story. She is a lonely woman, about 30 years old, who desperately misses Calcutta, her home. Her husband took a job as a professor in a New England town. Life is very different for her there. Her husband is often busy with his university work. She refuses to learn to drive because it scares her, but the refusal also limits her experiences in her new country. She becomes a babysitter for Eliot, who comes to her house after school. The two share an unspoken loneliness. Eliot is the other main character. He is an 11-year-old who knows how to do everything himself. He just needs a babysitter to watch him "in case of an emergency." Eliot lives with his single mother in a beach house. After the tourist season is over, the weather grows colder, and the town becomes more desolate. His mother worries that he needs company and thus, she arranges for him to be watched by Mrs. Sen, who is just as lonely as Eliot. Eliot is a precocious child. He is perceptive to the pain felt by both women, his mother, and Mrs. Sen. Eliot’s mother is a single parent, either divorced or separated from her husband. She is a working lady, struggling to keep her life intact. Her struggle and frustration appear through Eliot who notices that she skips her dinner and drinks too much wine and isolates herself. Mr. Sen is Mrs. Sen’s husband. He is a professor of Mathematics who moved from Calcutta to teach at a university in New England. He knows the struggles of Mrs. Sen and her loneliness but doesn’t care much as he is too busy with his work at the university.
Summary of Mrs. Sen’s:
Eliot is an 11-year-old boy who lives at a beach house with his mother in New England. His mother is a single parent who needs to commute to a distant office to work. She tries babysitters for Eliot but one of them is a vegan who refuses to prepare meat for Eliot and the other is an alcoholic. His mother then notices Mrs. Sen’s advertisement at Supermarket who is willing to serve as a babysitter at her home. Eliot’s mom prefers to have Eliot looked after at their house, but she makes an exception for Mrs. Sen since Mrs. Sen cannot drive.
Eliot and his mother go to meet Mr. and Mrs. Sen at their shabby university apartment. Mrs. Sen wears a sari and traditional Indian makeup, and she and Mr. Sen take off their shoes and wear flip-flops indoors. Mrs. Sen offers tea and biscuits to Eliot’s mother but she refuses. Rather she begins questioning Mr. Sen and Mrs. Sen to ascertain that her son will remain safe. She doesn’t approve of the apartment complex and notices the low quality of the lobby furniture and uneven paint. However, her main concern is that Mrs. Sen cannot drive, because she works 50 miles away and his father doesn’t live nearby. Mr. Sen tells her though that he's teaching Mrs. Sen how to drive and she should be ready to go by December. Eliot’s mother notices that Mr. Sen’s house is rather empty. Mrs. Sen clarifies that they have all their riches back in India. She also clarifies why she doesn’t know how to drive because, in India, where the Sens have all of their stuff, they have a chauffeur. Eliot notices that at the mention of India, Mrs. Sen becomes distracted and upset.
Eliot’s mother is wary of Mrs. Sen and her weird-looking dresses, the Indian saris. However, she has no other option and thus she agrees to the arrangement. On the other hand, Eliot finds her beautiful. He likes her colorful sari. He rather feels his mother’s clothes are gloomy and unattractive.
Eliot begins going to Mrs. Sen’s apartment after school. Eliot doesn’t mind because the neighborhood he lives in does not have any other children for him to play with. Eliot learns to take off his shoes upon entering Mrs. Sen’s apartment. As Eliot spends his days at Mrs. Sen's, he starts to like it there. His small beach house is cold in September whereas Mrs. Sen's house is warm. The boy takes an active interest in watching Mrs. Sen’s culinary preparations, as she chops ingredients for the evening meal. He notices the special blade Mrs. Sen uses. Mrs. Sen notices his curiosity but doesn’t allow him to go near the blade, afraid for his safety. As Mrs. Sen talks about her days back in India, Eliot notices that she is nostalgic for her native country. One evening, she tells Eliot that when she lived in India, she would prepare food with a community of women for celebrations—but in the U.S., she’s lonely. She says that it often becomes difficult to sleep back in India because of the chattering of the neighboring women. But here in the U.S., she finds it difficult to sleep because of too much silence. While Mrs. Sen is handling chicken meat in the kitchen, she asks Eliot if anyone would come by to check on them if she starts to scream. Eliot tells her that they might but just to complain about the noise. Mrs. Sen tells Eliot that in India people would come by to check. Eliot thinks of how uneventful his life is with his mother, and how when he asks her to go somewhere she refuses and secludes herself from him. He learns that Mrs. Sen is deeply unsatisfied with her life in America and he also notices his own loneliness. Mrs. Sen asks Eliot whether, if she started screaming, anyone would come. At home, people would come running at the slightest commotion to share joy or grief. Eliot remembers a party that was thrown by a neighbor; he and his mother were not invited. Eliot says that someone might call to complain. He understands that “home” to Mrs. Sen means India and not the house they’re presently in. In India, which Mrs. Sen keeps referring to as "home," all she has to do is yell and the whole neighborhood will come rushing over to share the good or bad news.
Mrs. Sen tells Eliot about Bindi, the red dot she applies to her forehead with powder, which is custom for Indian women who are married. The dot symbolizes that she is married. When Eliot’s mother comes to pick him up, Mrs. Sen hides all evidence of food preparation. Eliot’s mother seems uncomfortable in the apartment, and she tries to refuse the food that Mrs. Sen offers her. When she and Eliot get home, she always drinks wine and orders pizza for dinner.
Eliot notices that every afternoon, Mrs. Sen arrives early to wait for Eliot at the bus stop. He finds it unusual and feels that in some ways, Mrs. Sen is more responsible than his own mother who would often keep her secluded, away from him. Mrs. Sen practices driving each day with Eliot in the car. Mrs. Sen prefers to have Eliot in the car with her because driving scares her. She’s nervous and distracted while driving, and she’s too afraid to drive on the main road with other cars. One day a letter informs her that her sister has given birth to a baby girl. Mrs. Sen is thrilled by this news, but sad that the girl will be three years old by the time she first sees her. She hugs Eliot and reads it excitedly, reminiscing about her home and family members in India. She gives Eliot updates on family members and grieves that she will not be able to see them for another three years because of Mr. Sen’s work schedule. Mrs. Sen asks if Eliot misses his mother these afternoons. The thought hadn’t occurred to him. She says he is wise – he already tastes the way things must be, that people are distant from each other. She suggests that there is no escape from loneliness. Eliot seems to agree.
Mrs. Sen mentions that she loves fish but she doesn’t like the packed fish sold in the supermarket. She mentions how she used to get fresh fish back in Calcutta. She tells Eliot that, in India, people eat fish twice a day and it frustrates her to live near the coast without access to fresh fish. She likes to reserve fish at a market near the beach, which Mr. Sen picks up for her. One day, though, Mr. Sen tells Mrs. Sen that he won’t have time to get the fish anymore because he needs to hold office hours. Mrs. Sen is upset, and she confides in Eliot about how unhappy she is in America. She leads Eliot into her bedroom to display to him her large collection of saris, none of which she now wears. Her family thinks that she must be happy and rich here, but she isn’t. Later that evening, Mr. Sen relents and drives Mrs. Sen and Eliot to get the fish.
In November, Eliot notices that Mrs. Sen is sad and depressed. She paces the apartment and plays a series of audiotapes. She tells Eliot she has learned by letter that her grandfather is dead. A week later, Mr. Sen arranges an expedition to the beach, and the group buys lots of fish at the market. After they visit the market, they enjoy baskets of clam cakes at a take-out restaurant and walk for a while along the beach. They take some photos. Mr. Sen tells her to drive home and it is a disaster. She goes too slowly, becomes distracted by the radio, and finally pulls over to the side of the road. She hates driving and refuses to drive again.
Mrs. Sen learns the bus route and begins to take Eliot to the shore herself. On the bus, Mrs. Sen notices that there are a bunch of seniors because the bus stops at a nursing home. So that prompts her to ask Eliot whether or not he would place his mother in a nursing home. Eliot says maybe, but that he'd visit her every day. Mrs. Sen denies this possibility: “You say that now, but you will see […] you will miss one day, and another, and then she will have to drag herself onto a bus just to get herself a bag of lozenges.” She suggests that distance and practicalities prevent people from connecting in the long term and, this is why loneliness is often permanent. A passenger on the bus notices the smell of fish and complains about it. Mrs. Sen is confronted and embarrassed by the bus driver.
A few days later, when the next fish arrives, Mrs. Sen tells Eliot to put on his shoes. They pile into the car and Mrs. Sen attempts to merge onto the main road. Mrs. Sen gets Eliot and herself into a minor car accident. Mr. Sen arrives at the spot and takes care of the police officer and then he talks to Eliot, but ignores Mrs. Sen, showing his frustration at her. Although the damage is insignificant, After returning home, Mrs. Sen is very upset. She just totally shuts down. She goes into her room, shuts the door, and lets Mr. Sen explain to Eliot's mom what happened. When Eliot's mother returns that evening, Mr. Sen apologizes for his wife and returns the past month's babysitting money. Eliot can hear Mrs. Sen crying in the other room. Eliot’s mom tells him that she is relieved he will not have to go to Mrs. Sen’s anymore and that he can watch himself after school. When she asks Eliot if he is okay, he stares out at the gray waves and says he is fine.
The gray waves outside show his inner turmoil, but he knows he has no other way but to face the gloominess of loneliness, just like Mrs. Sen will have to.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of Indian English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
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