#502 This Blessed House- Jhumpa Lahiri
Sanjeev “was lonely with an excessively generous income for
a single man.” His career is going well and his family has arranged a marriage
to a younger woman named Twinkle. Like her name would suggest, she is a free
spirit. “It was a quality he did not understand. It made him feel stupid, as if
the world contained hidden wonders he could not anticipate, or see,”
They have just moved into their new house and find Christian
artifacts all over the house. They are not Christian, but Twinkle is enamored
with the trinkets and insists that they not only keep them, but display them
openly on their mantel.
“They didn’t bother her, these scattered, unsettled matters.
She seemed content with whatever clothes she found at the front of the closet,
with whatever magazine was lying around, with whatever song was on the
radio—content yet curious.”
She won’t get rid of the paraphernalia and he relents,
although when all of his work friends and colleagues come for their
housewarming he is terrified of the impression it will make. His guest, it
turns out, are so taken with his wife and her stories of hunting down these
treasures throughout their new house, that they all as a group go hunting in
the attic to find the piece-de-resistance. Sanjeev is the only one not enjoying
himself, and he is once again literally left standing alone.
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