Essay --

Jhumpa Lahiri is an Indian American author who likes to write mainly about the experiences of other Indian Americans. She is a very successful author. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her first novel and her fiction appears in The New Yorker often. One of those works from 1998 is a short story, â€Å"A Temporary Matter†, about a husband and a wife, Shukumar and Shoba, whose electricity will be temporarily cut off for one hour for five days. This seems simple enough, but as you read the story you find that maybe it’s their marriage that might be the â€Å"temporary matter† itself. The title is interesting from the beginning. It gives us hints about the setting, the characters and their situation, as well as plants the whole theme of the story. The story circles around two big things, the death of a baby and Shukumar and Shoba’s failing marriage. Although this is the case, it also focuses a lot on the little things. Lahiri uses small details to point out the pain and lack of communication between Shukumar and Shoba. When Shukumar thinks back to the last time he saw Shoba pregnant, he doesn’t remember if she looked happy or sad, he remembers the much smaller things, such as the cab. â€Å"Each time he thought of that moment, the last moment he saw Shoba pregnant, it was the cab he remembered most, a station wagon, painted red with blue lettering. It was cavernous compared to their own car. Although Shukumar was six feet tall, with hands too big ever to rest comfortably in the pockets of his jeans, he felt dwarfed in the back seat.† As incon siderate as it may seem, this is actually how many people remember important events in their lives. Important events don’t go through our memory as sequential narratives, but in a series of random feelings, sens... ... all of the little, yet important details. In the end, we understand that all this time Shoba has been trying to tell Shukumar that she has been looking for apartments and finally found one. Shukumar is relieved, yet sickened by the thought of her wanting a life separate from him. This shakes him into sharing information that is sacred to Shoba in hopes that it would always be her mystery; the sex of their baby. We are left with a cliffhanger. All we know is the information the last sentence provides us, â€Å"They wept together, for the first time in their lives, for the things they now knew.† Possibly them weeping is a sign of them coming together to grieve. It marks another turning point in their lives, much like when they lost their child. We just don’t know if that turning point is them staying together or weeping in knowing that they are going their separate ways.