Role of Children in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Short Story Sexy
The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri is a collection of a variety of short stories that show the life of immigrants of India since the author is an immigrant novelist and writer of the Indian diaspora. In her collection of short stories, one element that is sparsely discussed is the role that children play in some stories.. In this essay, I shall be analyzing the role of children in Lahiri’s short story ‘Sexy’ since they contribute to the development of the main characters’ thoughts and feelings.
“Sexy” is about the illicit relationship between a white woman, Miranda, and a married Indian, Dev. Miranda falls deeply in love with Dev after he confesses to her “ You’re sexy”(51). That’s an adjective that has never been used by anyone to describe her, according to Miranda. Miranda gradually embraces her identity as a “mistress” by buying clothes that she thinks any mistress should possess- seamed stockings, black heels, a black slip, and a silver cocktail dress (52). She has not been felt truly loved before so is blinded by lust when she mistakes Dev’s sweet and romantic gestures for true love. However, when Dev’s wife comes back to town, his behavior towards Miranda gradually changes. As a result, Miranda’s relationship with Dev falls apart after she meets Rohin, a child, who tells her ‘true’ meaning of the adjective “sexy,” which influences Miranda’s whole perspective on life and love.
Rohin’s presence in the story emphasizes Miranda’s immaturities. In human development, children are naturally observant since, to them, the surroundings are new, and they are always willing to learn through their observation. In Rohin’s case, at the age of seven, he clearly shows his intelligence and knowledge by having acquired an adult-like manner: wanting to sip coffee instead of being completely satisfied with drawing paper and scattered crayons on the table (55). He is also portrayed as an insightful kid who alternatively can recite colonial American geography from memory. When Rohin arrives at Miranda’s apartment, he requests Miranda to ask a country, and he will provide the name of its capital.
Through that, Lahiri shows Rohin’s worldly understanding, aiming to emphasize Miranda’s ignorance and carelessness of the surrounding things in her life as she once thinks Bengali is a religion, and “she did not own an atlas, or any other books with maps in them”(48). These details present Miranda as a childish woman who lacks knowledge in geography, which can be read as a metaphor to Miranda not caring about the world outside of herself. Although Lahiri presents Rohin as a “genius” kid, she still maintains his innocence by noting that “when they [Miranda and Rohin] reached the last of the countries in Africa, Rohin said he wanted to watch cartoons”(57). As Rohin still enjoys the uncomplicated joys of childhood such as coloring pictures and watching cartoons, his perception is very absorbent and full of wisdom.
Through a conversation between Rohin and Miranda, Lihari wants to reveals the feeling of loneliness that Miranda and his mother experience. As she never gets a chance to wear the silver cocktail dress for Dev, Miranda reluctantly puts that dress on after Rohin begs her to “put it on”(58). When she asks him to stay outside the room so she can get changed, Rohin refuses and starts comparing his mother’s usual behavior to those of Miranda’s. “My mother always takes her clothes off in front of me,” he says, “she doesn’t even pick them up afterward. She leaves them all on the floor by the bed, all tangled”(58). “I’m not your mother,” Miranda simply responds (58). In Miranda’s mind, she believes that she is totally different from his mother, because she has embraced her identity as the mistress while Rohin’s mother is at the opposite end of the spectrum as the distressed housewife. Nonetheless, in Rohin’s mind, one can argue that these two women appear similar because they are both experiencing feelings of abandonment from their lovers.
In a way, Rohin presents as Miranda’s conscience since he helps her realize the problem with her affair as well as her choice of being a “mistress.” When Miranda asks Rohin to tell her the definition of “sexy,” he describes it in a fresh and touching way: “it [sexy] means loving someone you don’t know”(59). At the first when Miranda hears Dev compliments to her that she is “sexy,” she assumes that Dev says it because he admires her sexual feminine appearance. Nonetheless, Rohin’s idea about “sexiness” eventually changes Miranda’s previous definition, At that moment, although Miranda and Dev have been in an affair relationship for several weeks, Miranda realizes the fact that they do not know much about each other, which makes “she felt numb”(59). What Rohin does is he makes something that seems a complicated matter, into a simple form, which brings Miranda back to reality to realize the difference between lust and true love.
Last but not least, Rohin’s existence as a consequence of a failed marriage contrasts sharply with Miranda almost being the cause of a failed marriage, making she feel self-pity for herself when her relationship with Dev as breaking. Rohin is depicted with a ‘thin” body and “haggard” eyes, which Miranda associates with someone who “smoked a great deal and slept very little”(53). This image reveals how Rohin has been influenced by his parents’ failed marriage as well as reflects Miranda’s careless action of interrupting Dev’s marriage. As she says at the beginning, “Sometime, without the wife there, it didn’t seem so wrong”(50).
Eventually, after her encounter with Rohin, Miranda feels shameful in loving another woman’s husband. She is troubled by scenes of Rohin’s parents fighting, and his mother crying. Miranda finally acknowledges that falling in love with a married man is wrong because “it wasn’t fair to her, or to his wife [ Dev’s wife], that they both deserved better, that there was no point in it dragging on”(60).. As a result, the encounter with Rohin strongly impacts on Miranda’s life as it awakes her sense of morality and conscience.
Lahiri’s wise choice of using the character and voice of a seven year old to cause change in Miranda’s perception is a compelling one. Kids have a natural moral compass, that can often bring lost humans back to their senses. Moreover, Rohin’s character humanizes the abstract pain that Miranda and Dev’s relationship could or perhaps did cause in Dev’s marriage. Finally, in confronting with the kind of raw artlessness that Rohin’s voice offers, Miranda’s realizes that her relationship with Dev was a matter of convenience for a temporarily lonely man, that she deserved better than him.
