Sexy One of only two stories in this collection told by a non-Indian narrator, Sexy tells the story of a young

woman, Miranda, and her affair with a married Indian man named Dev. Aside from what she hears from her one Indian friend at work, a woman named Laxmi, Miranda knows very little about India and its culture. The first time she meets Dev, she is not able to discern his nationality. However, she is instantly captivated by his charm and the thrill of being with an exotic, older man. The title of the story refers to something he whispered to her in the Christian Science centers Mapparium, a moment that she would remember for its intimacy but would later come to be seen as a sign of an unhealthy relationship. She has pangs of guilt because he is married, and this is highlighted by the fact that Laxmis cousin has recently been abandoned by her husband for a younger woman. One day, Laxmis cousin comes to Boston and Miranda is asked to babysit her seven-year-old son, Rohin. Rohin ends up giving Miranda some insight into his mothers grief and calls to her attention the more unglamorous aspects of being the other woman. This experience eventually leads her to call off her affair

Analysis of A Temporary Matter, This Blessed House, Sexy Lahiri's objective in opening her collection with "A yo Matter" is to start from nothing; tmme story is clearly about a failed relationship. By starting with a defeat, Lahiri seems to foretell that her stories will be about the hardships of communication and relationships, but that each has the possibility of success. Even in "Sexy," where the featured couple ends up separating, Miranda is actually stronger for ending her relationship with Dev because she can see that it has no potential.[1] Food is also a common theme among the stories. In "A Temporary Matter", the haunting absence of food in the household is a parallel to the lack of affection in their marriage. In "This Blessed House", Twinkle is not at all the accomplished cook that Shoba is. Having grown up in California instead of in India like Sanjeev, she doesn't seem to have any background knowledge in Indian cooking. However, she surprises Sanjeev with her spontaneous creative streak in the kitchen. Although he's annoyed that she cannot cook authentic Indian food, he is still pleasantly surprised by the meal she serves him. His attitude toward her food mirrors his attitude toward her. In "Sexy" food plays a much smaller part. Miranda's only significant encounter with Indian food in the story is when she visits an Indian grocery looking for a movie.

She comes across the Hot Mix that Laxmi is always eating, but the grocer tells her it is too spicy for her. Miranda feels uncomfortable in the grocery store, and doesn't buy the Hot Mix for Laxmi because she feels like she needs to give an excuse for being in an Indian store in the first place. This guilt or feeling of ostracism highlights the fact that she feels uncomfortable with Dev; she knows so little about him and his background, and yet their relationship is so intimate that it seems inappropriate for her not to understand more about India.[2]

This story Sexy intercuts two stories about extramarital affairs that come to reveal what the term sexy means. The story starts: It was a wifes worst nightmare. Mirandas co-worker Laxmi is continually updating Miranda about her cousin, who has been left by her husband for a younger woman. Miranda keeps hearing parts of this story while keeping her own secret, she has started having an affair herself. Laxmi details how her cousins husband is leaving her for a young woman in London, and how her cousin hasnt gotten out of bed since learning the news. The cousins son hasnt been to school for the past week. Meanwhile, Miranda met her lover in a Filenes. Dev spends every day with Miranda while his wife is away on a trip. He buys her flowers, they go to movies and to dinner each night. At one point, as they visit the Mapparium, Dev whispers to Miranda, Youre sexy. Miranda feels the shift occur as Devs wife returns to the States. While Dev was at the airport, Miranda went to Filenes Basement to buy herself things she thought a mistress should have.

Of course, the intensity of the affair cools off. Dev tells his wife he is going to run along the Charles River on Sunday mornings, but instead sees Miranda. He shows up in sweatpants and only stays a short time each week. As the story progresses, Laxmis cousin and her young son come to visit Boston and Laxmi asks Miranda to watch the boy for a day. The boy is precocious, and asks personal questions of Miranda. He finds Mirandas slinky cocktail dress that she has bought to play the role of the mistress, but now she never wears it since Dev only comes over for a quickie once a week.

The boy asks Miranda to put the dress on. An odd request, but she is kind of bemused and flustered and so she does. You are sexy, the boy tells her. She is taken back that the boy would use this word. She asks him to define sexy and he does so, as a child whose father has left his mother, would. But his response reveals a larger truth about what the word sexy means and how its interpreted in our culture today.

This particular short story is about a woman who has an affair with a married man. He picks Miranda up in a department store. To her, Dev is exotic and charming. He woos her while his wife is out of town, making her feel sexy and beautiful. When the wife returns, however, their situation changes. Their dalliances are confined to her home on Sunday afternoons. A coworker whose cousin's husband left her for a woman he met on an airplane talks nonstop on the phone to her family about her cousin's situation and Miranda cannot help but overhear. When the cousin and her young son come for a visit, Miranda is enlisted to babysit. That one visit proves to be an eye opener for Miranda. Jhumpa Lahiri captures the various emotions that Miranda goes through--the thrill of the relationship, the rationalization that it is okay, and then the reality of the situation. Miranda longs for someone to love her, but the question is, is she willing to settle? The author continues to demonstrate what a gifted story teller she is. After lunch they made love, on sheets covered with crumbs, and then Dev took a nap for twelve minutes. Miranda had never known an adult who took naps, but Dev said I was something he'd grown up doing in India, where it was so hot that people didn't leave their homes until the sun went down. "Plus it allows us to sleep together," he murmured mischievously, curving his arm like a big bracelet around her body. Only Miranda never slept. [ pg 94]

The high intoxication of love.

It was a wifes worst nightmare. After nine years of marriage, Laxmi told Miranda, her cousins husband had fallen in love with another woman. He sat next to her on a plane, on a flight from Delhi to Montreal, and instead of flying home to his wife and son he got off with the woman at Heathrow. He called his wife and told her hed had a conversation that had changed his life, and that he needed time to figure things out. Laxmis cousin had taken to her bed. Not that I blame her," Laxmi said. She reached for the Hot Mix she munched throughout the day, which looked to Miranda like dusty orange cereal. Imagine An English girl, half his age. Laxmi was only a few years older than Miranda, but she was already married, and kept a photo of herself and her husband, seated on a white stone bench in front of the Taj Mahal, tacked to the inside of her cubicle, which was next to Mirandas. Laxmi had been on the phone for at least an hour, trying to calm her cousin down. No one noticed; they worked for a public-radio station, in the fund-raising department, and were surrounded by people who spent all day on the phone, soliciting pledges. I feel worst for the boy, Laxmi added. Hes been at home for days. My cousin said she cant even take him to school. It sounds awful, Miranda said. Normally Laxmis phone conversations distracted Miranda as she typed letters. She could hear Laxmi clearly her sentences peppered every now and then with an Indian word, through the laminated wall between their desks. But that afternoon Miranda hadnt been listening. Shes been on the phone herself, with Dev, deciding where to meet later that evening. Then again, a few days at home wont hurt him. Laxmi ate some more Hot Mix, then put it away in a drawer. Hes something of a genius. He has a Punjabi mother and a Bengali father, and because he learns French and English at school he already speaks four languages. I think he skipped...

Sexy
SUMMARY

Miranda is a young, somewhat aimless, woman who works in fundraising for a public radio station in Boston. Her coworker Laxmi, already married and settled despite being only a few years older than Miranda, alerts Miranda to a personal disaster. Her cousins husband had a lifechanging conversation on an airplane and has left his family. Laxmi doesnt blame her cousin for taking to bed, but her grief has made her unable to care for her son. Usually, Laxmi doesnt need to tell Miranda family gossip, as Miranda can hear Laxmis phone calls through her cubicle.

Today, however, Miranda is engrossed in her own phone call. She talks with her married lover Dev. Laxmis nephew is a genius and part Bengali, like Dev. At first Miranda thought it was a religion, but Dev pointed out the West Bengal state on a map of India. He brought the map, printed in an issue of the Economist, to show where his father had been born. When she asks about the article it appears in, he taps her playfully on the head with the magazine. He says its nothing shell ever need to worry about. But later, when he leaves, she pulls the article from the trash and looks for photos of where Dev was born. They met a week before at a makeup counter in a department store in Boston. As she paused to smell a fragrance card, her eyes found Dev, an elegant man, purchasing toiletries for a woman. Miranda engages a saleswoman so she can stay near to Dev. He watches her as the woman applies cream to her face. She tries to place his accent, guessing he is Lebanese or Spanish. They meet at the exit and Miranda inquires about the creams. They are for his wife who will be leaving for India for a few weeks. Those few weeks, Miranda and Dev spend nearly every night together at her apartment. Dev races back to his home in the suburbs in the early mornings for a pre-arranged daily phone call with his traveling wife. He calls frequently, leaving his voice on her answering machine. He is charmed by her tiny apartment, and her bravery in moving to a city where she knows no one, and also by her long legs. Miranda and Dev both admit to their loneliness and Miranda thinks he understands her. Dev is the first man she has dated who is thoughtful, romantic, and chivalrous. Miranda keeps Dev a secret, only occasionally wanting to tell Laxmi. Dev shows Miranda his favorite parts of Boston, including the Mapparium a domed building with a room that looks like you are standing inside a globe, with glowing stained glass panels that look like the outside of a globe. Devs voice echoes alluringly as he shows her details of the world. The acoustics make each sound feel as if a whisper in her ear. He stands across the room from her and whispers into the corner of a wall. She feels his voice under her skin. She says Hi, and he responds, Youre sexy. It was the first time shed been told she was sexy. Hearing his voice in her head, Miranda goes back to the department store and buys clothes she thinks a mistress should have seamed

stockings, black heels, a black slip, and a silver cocktail dress. She imagines wearing the ensemble at dinner with Dev. But when his wife returns, he appears at Mirandas in gym clothes, having told his wife he was out running. The lingerie remains unworn at the back of her drawer, and the silver dress often slips off its hanger and falls to the floor of her closet. But the affair continues. Dev shares more about his life and asks Miranda about her own. He takes naps during their trysts, accustomed to taking them during hot summers as a boy. Miranda doesnt sleep, but studies his body during, what Dev calls, the best twelve minutes of the week. After waking up, he goes home to his wife. Miranda recalls the Dixits, an Indian family who moved into her neighborhood when she was a child. Her peers would make fun of their name and frown upon their differences. Miranda went over to their house once for the daughters birthday and was so frightened by a painting of the fierce goddess Kali, that she never returned. Now, Miranda is ashamed of her behavior. When not with Dev, she walks to an Indian restaurant and tries to remember Hindi phrases from the bottom of the menu. She even tries to learn how to write her name in Bengali. Mirandas boredom wanes during the week, but her guilt rears its head when Laxmi talks about her cousin. On Sundays, Dev would come. She asks him what his wife looks like and he responds that she looks like an actress, Madhuri Dixit. For a moment, Mirandas heart stops. She knows she could not be the girl from her childhood, but it still spooks her. Miranda finds her way to an Indian grocery that rents videos, on the hunt to find out what Madhuri Dixit looks like. A Bollywood video plays in the deli, and she knows she must look like one of those women. Beautiful. Miranda notices a snack that Laxmi eats and the grocer tells her its too spicy for her. Laxmis cousin comes to Boston to get away from her drama. Laxmi treats her to a spa day, asking Miranda to babysit the cousin's son for the day. Rohin comes to Mirandas apartment with a backpack full of books and a sketchpad. For a boy of 7, he looks haggard and weary. Rohin demands Miranda quiz him on world capitals, as he is having a competition with another student to memorize them all. He announces he will win. He is precocious and makes more demands of Miranda throughout the afternoon. For coffee, to watch cartoons, to look through her toiletries and to draw a picture of their day together. He says, with a precision that startles Miranda, that they will never see each other again.

Rohin drags himself to her room and starts going through her closet, finding the silver dress on the floor. Rohin asks that she put it on. Miranda knows she will never wear it on a date with Dev. Now that his wife is back in town, she is nothing but a mistress. She makes Rohin wait outside, latching the door to make sure, while she changes. His eyes open wide when he sees her. Rohin tells her shes sexy. After her heart skips a beat, Miranda asks him what it means. The boy blushes and finally admits that it means loving someone you dont know. His father had sat down next to someone sexy on a plane and now loves her instead of his mother. Miranda goes numb. Rohin curls up for a nap and Miranda takes the dress off. Back in her jeans, she lies down next to the boy and imagines the arguments his parents must have had. Thinking about her own situation, she begins to cry. When she wakes up, Rohin is holding the issue of the Economist. He asks who Devjit Mitra is. Miranda doesnt know what to say. The next time Dev calls, she tells him not to come. She asks him what he said to her in the Mapparium, but he answers incorrectly. The following Sunday, it snows. The Sunday after that, Miranda makes plans with Laxmi and he doesnt ask her to cancel. The third Sunday, she walks alone to the Mapparium and studies the city. ANALYSIS Sexy is a story that is centered on gender and race and the confusion they can inspire. Miranda, the main character, is having an affair with Dev, an older, married Indian man. She is attracted to Dev, it is suggested, for two primary reasons his age and his race. Dev is the first adult man that Miranda has dated. He is mature, wealthy, and complementary to Miranda in a way that she has not known before. Dev is also exotic to her. When they first meet, Dev remarks that part of her name is Indian (Mira) and she is entranced by this. Dev can open up another world for Miranda. But appearances fall flat. Miranda decides to purchase a silver dress, black stockings and slip and high heels, fantasizing about the restaurant Dev will take her to. In a way, Miranda is playing dressup. Since she talks about the high school and college boys shes dated, we assume that she has recently graduated from college herself and is somewhat aimless. Dev represents an adult, masculine world that Miranda wants to understand. By buying clothes suitable for a mistress, she intends to play dressup as a woman. The clothes, and the fantasy surrounding them, represent the

tropes of gender that Miranda believes in. Wearing the dress, like dating Dev, will make her an adult. Dating Dev will also broaden her world. Her coworker Laxmi tacks a photo of herself and her husband at the Taj Mahal to her cubicle. Laxmi says it is the most romantic place on earth. Miranda fantasizes that she and Dev are in the photo and she secretly yearns to tell Laxmi about the affair. To Miranda, Dev is exotic and worldly. Dating him will transfer those experiences to her own life. She moved alone from the Midwest and her isolation is coupled with a feeling of inexperience. She tries to learn Bengali, write her name in Devs language, try more Indian cuisine and recalls with shame an incident of mild xenophobia from her childhood. She is ashamed that she was not more understanding with the Dixit family and dating Dev can absolve her of that shame. However, she loves Dev for what she knows about him which is not much. In the end, she realizes that she has fallen for the surface and not the person. When the grocer tells Miranda that the Hot Mix that Laxmi eats is too spicy for her, she is dismissed with an appraisal of her race. Though she is attracted to Dev, she practices a version of exoticism that is equally damaging. There is a balance to Sexy that is created by characters that are mirror images of one another. Laxmis cousin is on the receiving end of infidelity. It is through her stories that Mirandas guilt first comes to pass. Through these two women, we see the opposite sides of an affair the mistress and the wronged wife. In this way, we do not need exposition of Mirandas guilt because the uncomfortable situation puts the reader in discomfort as well. Children in Lahiris stories have definitive points of view and can affect the narrative in important ways. Lilia, the main character of When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine, possesses a childlike innocence that expresses the theme of Partition and its indictment. Eliot inMrs. Sens is a conduit for the loneliness of both his mother and Mrs. Sen. Rohin in Sexy is Mirandas conscience. The simplicity of his definition of sexy is remarkably prescient. Loving someone you dont know is precisely what Dev, Miranda, and his father are doing. In his phrase, Miranda understands both that she is drawn to Dev for his surface value and also that Dev does not love Miranda for who she is. Even without the dress, she is simply a mistress not a woman. That Dev cant remember what he told her at the Mapparium is the death knell for the affair.

Summary of Sexy by Jhumpa Lahiri. Jhumpa Lahiris short story Sexy dabs into the lives and culture of Bengali people and their journey to America. Lahiri uses the story Sexy to portray that four locations in two hemispheres, an ocean and a continent apart, indicate the world that people with family backgrounds in India share when they become Americans. These people, like millions of other immigrants, feel an immediate disconnection from their old lives and cultures. In this short story, the protagonist Miranda consistently creates comparisons between herself and people of the Indian culture who she meets and builds relationships with while living in Boston. Mirandas sexual relationship with Dev, friendship with Laxmi, and encounter with Rohin and his mothers situation all motivate her to learn about the Indian culture and create morality in her life through experiences with them. Miranda first meets Dev in a department store and falls for him instantly. While Americans are considered to be less family oriented in comparison to Indians, Dev proves this to be wrong when he allows himself to have an affair on his Indian wife with Miranda, an American girl. Dev was still a gentleman to Miranda, regardless of his infidelity, and was always the first to pay for things, and hold doors open, and reach across a table to kiss her hand. She becomes interested in his culture through their outings to Indian restaurants and his gestures to show her maps of where he was from and what he did there as a child. Dev compared his and Mirandas loneliness and journeys from place to place and said he admired her for moving to Boston, where she knew no one, instead of remaining in Michigan, where shed grown up. Although, in Devs case, this is not necessarily true because in the end he has his beautiful Indian wife and Miranda is left with no one. As time goes by and Devs wife is soon to return, Miranda begins to realize that she is not of the Indian culture and is not the Indian mistress that Dev looks for in his wife. She had never seen the world like Dev had. The farthest Miranda had ever been was the Bahamas once when she was a child. Miranda began questioning Dev about his wifes looks and comparing herself to the beautiful women that she saw on the cover of Indian videos. Rohins father proves this to be untrue due to his affair and betrayal of his family. This fact leads us to wonder if coming to America had anything to do with his change of heart and moral

belief towards family. We also see this betrayal through Dev, who seems to have the Indian woman of his dreams, however, he still has an affair on her because of his interest in American culture and women. Many grown-up immigrants encounter the alienation from their close family and friends and automatically become an outsider to the people around them. This is shown through Laxmi in the story and her reliability on her husband because of the fact that they are both from India. The immigrant children in todays society, such as Rohin in the story, usually view their culture in a different sense because of the fact that they are being raised in the states and can adapt as they grow. Home for them is the house that they live in America; whereas Rohins mother still considers herself a Punjabi and his father a Bengali. Therefore in their situation, it is relevant that culture is brought up throughout the story because of the fact that Rohin is a child of immigrants,