#481 Mrs. Sen’s- Jhumpa Lahiri
Eliot has a new afterschool babysitter. He goes to Mrs Sen’s
house. She is a very proper, but pleasant Indian Woman, the wife of the
Mathematics Professor at the University. Eliot is the only one in her care.
They spend the afternoons in normal rituals, he sits eating crackers and read
the comics while she meticulously prepares dinner for her and her husband.
Mrs. Sen seems like a very lonely woman. She misses her
home, the people, the closeness of the neighbors, the smells, the fresh fish,
etc. It might be possible that she watches after Eliot because she likes the
company, not that she needs the money. Back home she had enough money to have
her own driver.
This story is strong on the senses; we notice the
temperatures, the smells, the colors, the touch of other humans, or the lack of
these things—in the case of being able to scream and having nobody hear. There
is deep, but understated emotion as we find in most of Lahiri’s stories.
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