Mrs. Sen and the Refusal to Adjust

Several of the stories that take place in America in Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies" feature main characters who experience a great deal of nostalgia for their homeland of India. Some characters spend their time constantly reminiscing about their life before immigration in India, while others express desire to return in a more reserved manner, such as Mr. Pirzada. The character with the worst case of homesickness in all of Lahiri's stories, however, is Mrs. Sen. Mrs. Sen follows the former of these two ways of expressing her nostalgia, in that not a moment passes without Mrs. Sen mentioning something about her earlier life or childhood in India. Her life is very different America, as she is no longer surrounded by this sense of community that we have come to admire in all of Lahiri's stories that take place in India, but is instead left cooped up and isolated in her apartment while her husband goes out to work. This drastic change of cultures away from something she has been used to her entire life is in itself enough to cause Mrs. Sen to spend an excessive amount of time rekindling fond memories, along with the fact that in her solitary apartment, the only type of social interaction she gets on a daily basis is after school when she babysits Eliot. Not just her thoughts, but her actions as well, particularly her attitudes towards driving and fish, exemplify this notion of Mrs. Sen's nostalgia and ultimately, the underlying refusal to adjust that exists in her subconscious.

We first observe Mrs. Sen's lingering connection to her past in India from the description of the apartment that we receive in the third-person point of view, from Eliot's perspective: "Yet it was his mother, Eliot had though, in her cuffed, beige shorts and her rope-soled shoes, who looked odd" (112-113). Immediately after his mother steps into the room, Eliot comments on how her appearance clashes with that of the rest of the room. This is confusing at first, because Eliot describes his mother as wearing fairly typical American clothing. From this, we can deduce that the reason for this contrast is because the apartment itself resembles and represents India and its culture, likely designed this way by none other than Mrs. Sen. We can already see the persisting ties that Mrs. Sen has with India from her desire to rearrange her belongings in an attempt to make them resemble India. Instead of adjusting and familiarizing herself with the new life that is ahead of her in America, she feels the need to stick to her roots and instead opts to continue living in her past, so much so that it makes Eliot's mother, dressed in a common American outfit, look like an outsider. This idea is further grounded in Mrs. Sen's subtleties and tendencies in her interactions with Eliot. The major habit that Mrs. Sen expresses which leads us to believe she still heavily misses India is the consistency and casualness with which she refers to India as her home. In response to Mrs. Sen's use of the word home, Eliot observes: "The mention of the word seemed to release something in her. She neatened the border of her sari where it rose diagonally across her chest. She, too, looked around the room, as if she noticed in the lampshades, in the teapot, in the shadows frozen on the carpet, something the rest of them could not" (113). It important to note here not just that she refers to India as her home, but also that she doesn't associate her apartment in America with the word "home" at all, giving us the sense that she feels out of place here in America, and therefore still considers her childhood origin of India as her current "home". She does this several times throughout the story and each time expresses the same kind of nonchalance that any other person would use to refer to their home. The difference is that in actuality Mrs. Sen is using the word "home" not to refer to her current and future in America, but instead to the ever-present image of India that she still holds so dearly. Therefore, a normally taken-for-granted habit is alarming in Mrs. Sen's case, as the fact that she uses the term incorrectly in a technical sense shows her inability and lack of desire to adjust in a more emotional, psychological sense.

In conjunction with Mrs. Sen's constant thoughts and absentminded habits of reminiscing and referencing her previous home of India, there are the actions and wants of Mrs. Sen. The best examples of this are what the narrator describes, through Eliot's perspective, as the two things that make Mrs. Sen happy. The first of these is receiving a letter from her family back in India. Lahiri describes the process by which Mrs. Sen does this: "It was her custom to check the mailbox after driving practice. She would unlock the box, but she would ask Eliot to reach inside, telling him what to look for, and then she would shit her eyes and shield them with her hands while he shuffled through the bills and magazines that came in Mrs. Sen's name" (121). Mrs. Sen obviously heavily enjoys conversing with her family back in India through writing letters, as can be observed by the fervor with which she checks the mailbox after every single driving practice. Once she actually gets to the mailbox and unlocks it, instead of simply grabbing what's inside and looking through to see if a letter is there or not, she makes a small game out of it. She covers her eyes like that of a child when playing peek-a-boo and tells Eliot to search through the mail. The determination to check the mailbox everyday, along with her joviality before even seeing if a letter has arrives or not, both reinforce the idea that she is still very much attached to India, as besides this (and fish), not much else brings Mrs. Sen joy. In addition to a letter from her relatives, Lahiri states that the other thing that bring Mrs. Sen joy is fish from the seaside, which seems fairly inconspicuous at first, until we discover the reason why she loves fish so much: "She added that in Calcutta people are fish first thing in the morning, last thing before bed, as a snack after school if they were lucky. They ate the tail, the eggs, even the head" (123-124). Again, we see Mrs. Sen's desire to reconnect with her past, this time through a favorite food of fish. This in itself seems acceptable, but later we see just how attached Mrs. Sen still is to her fresh fish eating rituals in India when she refuses to buy fish from the supermarket, claiming that she doesn't like a single fish there. Finally, Mrs. Sen's refusal to adjust to America culminates with her learning to drive throughout the course of the story. Lahiri narrates that Mrs. Sen is really very awful at driving and she certainly doesn't enjoy it, always more apprehensive than eager to practice. At one point she drops her head on the wheel in defeat, claiming that she hates driving. It's as if Mrs. Sen's lack of motivation to learn how to drive stems from the hope, and maybe even belief, that her and her husband's stay in America is temporary, and therefore there is no real use in learning how to drive. Her refusal to learn how to drive serves as a perfect analogy to her refusal to adjust to America as a whole. Whether she does it on purpose or not, her lack of desire and enthusiasm to adjust to driving, and overall America, show her ever lasting attachment to India and lasting desire to return.