“Sexy” by Jhumpa Lahiri

“Sexy” is a short story written by Jhumpa Lahiri in 1998. It is about a woman, Miranda, who lives in Boston and begins an affair with a married Indian man named Dev. All the while, Miranda’s best friend, Laxmi, is telling her of the way her cousin’s husband has begun an affair with a women from London. Miranda’s infatuation with the man, in part, revolves around the way that she finds Dev to be absolutely beautiful, and he, in turn, tells her that she is sexy, something no one had ever told her before. When Laxmi’s cousin’s son also calls Miranda beautiful, explaining it to mean “loving somone you don’t know,” Miranda has a revalation about her relationship with Dev and her attraction to Indian culture. She finds that, while she finds the culture beautiful and alluring, she is ruining Dev’s wife’s life and future by being involved with him. Slowly, the two dissolve the relationship with distance.

Lahiri’s story, specifically Miranda’s attraction to Dev and is culture, can be seen in many of the works we’ve looked into this semester. In particular, I am reminded of the way Marlow became fascinated by the river in Africa Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Both story seem to include the way we are intrigued and attracted to that which is foreign to us. The stories both also seem to have some negative connotations for what happens when we become to involved with these cultures. It is perfectly acceptable for Miranda to be interested Dev and his culture. By Rohin, the cousin’s son’s, lexicon, we can say that Miranda finds it “sexy;” she has fallen in love with it even though it is not her own. However, try as she may, it is not hers. She can admire it, but by staying with Dev, she begins to ruin it, just as she would ruin Dev’s family. In both Miranda’s relationship and the cousins, the women in the affair are both Western, Miranda being from America and the other mistress from London. They are outsiders to the culture that the men know. The culture fascination goes both ways, and in both cases contains the abiltity to destroy.