Quiet, Powerful Moments in Sexy and The Third and Final Continent

Miguel Cervantes

11/6/17

           There’s great power in quiet moments.  In reading Sexy and The Third and Final Continent I am reminded of this power, moments of recognition where a special kind of clarity is gained.  It is not the clarity that comes at the end of monumental effort, nor is the kind of clarity that protagonists earn through extraordinary gestures of faith, heroism or even betrayal.  In the writing of Jhumpa Lahiri, I am left with the indelible sense of revelation coming forth in unguarded moments where life is simply allowed to unfold, where people are allowed to be just who they are and where clear vision intersects with our awareness of ourselves and our world.  

In Sexy, this is just the case with Miranda, whose affair with Dev exposes her to a much deeper and palpable sense of herself and the life she currently lives.  Miranda comes to idolize Dev.  He is older, wealthier and seems to hold - somewhere in the depths of his well-tailored suits and artful conversation - a deeper and far more meaningful vision of the life she lived before meeting him. 

“ ‘I know what it’s like to be lonely,’ he said, suddenly serious, and at that moment Miranda felt that he understood her – understood how she felt some nights on the T, after seeing a movie on her own, or going to a bookstore to read magazines, or having drinks with Laxmi, who always had to meet her husband at Alewife station in an hour or two.” (p. 89)

A connection is established during their trysts together.  Miranda has never known this level of intimacy, and in the ensuing days and weeks that follow she puts her faith in the vision of herself and Dev together – a happier life, a better life than she has yet to experience.  As a reader I was fascinated, but worried.  Their relationship began easily enough, indicating a strong willingness, a desire for something more, but extra-marital affairs seldom have happy endings in literature, and with Dev’s wife returning from India in a few weeks I couldn’t help but wonder how their relationship would change. 

I considered the possibilities: perhaps Dev would abandon her, suddenly and without warning.  Or maybe Miranda, in a sudden and unexpected burst of anger, would confront Dev about his sweatpants, his naps or the casual way he’d relegated her to being his Gal-Sunday.  Rather than follow these routes, Lahiri opted instead to allow Miranda to find her own way.  Miranda had already begun to feel a sense of discontent after the return of Dev’s wife, but in a very beautiful and unexpected way we find Miranda recognizing her own deep sense of unhappiness through her interaction with seven-year old Rohin, a boy with very little outward connection to Miranda, but who in fact holds the key to the epiphany that sets her free. 

When pressed about the meaning of that magical word, ‘Sexy’, it is the innocence of Rohin and his pure interpretation that causes Miranda to recognize her true disconnection from Dev.

“He cupped his hands around his mouth, and then he whispered, ‘It means loving someone you don’t know.’  Miranda felt Rohin’s words under her skin, the same way she’d felt Dev’s.  But instead of going hot she felt numb.” (p. 107-08)

This is one of my favorite elements of Lahiri’s writing.  There are quite a few ways that Miranda’s affair could disintegrate, and with it, her newfound sense of elation.  But rather than hurry this moment or presage it through confrontation Lahiri simply allows it to unfold in a quiet moment, a deep and abiding truth floating atop the hushed whisper of a seven-year old boy. 

There’s something very real about the scene between Miranda and Rohin, a gradual unfolding of words and motions that gives Miranda the gift of clarity, one that doesn’t cause her to rush out and condemn her lover, but a newfound vision that gently takes her away from the path that had enshrined him every Sunday, relegating her life to the background, all in deference to Dev and the false hope he represented.  Towards the end of the story, as the two softly begin to drift apart, there’s a feeling of true hope emerging, too, the possibility of Miranda coming to see herself as independent from Dev yet still happy and capable of creating a fulfilling life for herself.  No arguments or dramatic overtures precede the dissolution of their relationship, and because of this I too felt much better, seeing in their separation a natural, almost mystical flow that was guiding them along different life paths. 

In The Third and Final Continent a similar feeling arises as we witness our narrator interacting with his landlady Mrs. Croft.  The two form an endearing odd-couple, the young Indian immigrant trying to establish a new life in America and the elderly, eccentric centenarian living her last days isolated and alone.  In the brief time our narrator spends as a boarder in Mrs. Croft’s house, both come to understand an unspoken kinship, as seen in the quiet moments when he returns from work at night, spending time talking to (and humoring) Mrs. Croft as they discuss the same things over and over. 

Once again, Lahiri allows us to see her characters living their lives in a way that does not call for overt conflict or drama.  The young narrator spends time with Mrs. Croft because he respects her, pities her and eventually comes to care for her.  Even Mrs. Croft, inscrutable in her old age, evinces signs of respect and admiration for her young boarder.  It is a brief relationship, but an impactful one, and when the narrator returns one evening with his new wife it is Mrs. Croft and her eccentricity that lights the spark of comfort and familiarity between them.

“At last Mrs. Croft declared, with equal measures of disbelief and delight I knew well: ‘She is a perfect lady!’ Now it was I who laughed.  I did so quietly, and Mrs. Croft did not hear me.  But Mala heard, and, for the first time, we looked at each other and smiled.’ (p. 196)

These are the sort of moments that are so powerful, so guileless yet so effortlessly exact, that they cannot be planned for, cannot be anticipated or contrived.  For our young narrator, this becomes the first time he truly connects with his wife, a moment that heralds their entire life together as husband and wife.  It is true power, the revelation of the self, and as the narrator reflects on all the many years that have passed since then, the memory of his time with Mrs. Croft holds strong. 

There’s a very dreamy, meta-physical sense of time here, one that allowed me to resonate with the narrator’s view of time, it’s passage and all the many things that had occurred in his life since his arrival in America.  And it stems from quiet moments, brief, isolated pockets of time that create for Lahiri’s characters a sense of the timeless, a place where clarity and compassion meet and rejoice, allowing us to share in the experience of people coming to know themselves by being themselves.