Post #5

Interpreter of Maladies p. 111 (chapter 5)

In the last chapter, I read another story about Boori Ma, a Pakistani woman that moved to India after partition. She used to be rich, but then she had to move. She lived in a complex and acted as a maid. She would clean the hallways and stairs, and made sure that only those that lived there were allowed to enter. Nobody paid much attention to her. She was an old woman who lived by herself, and she didn't talk much to the residents of the building. One day, one of the residents brought a basin, one for the building, and one for their own flat. Soon, the rest of the residents feel like they have to fix up the buildings. They start painting the walls, fixing the windows, and other parts of the buildings. Workers come in throughout the day, so Boori Ma can't clean the halls. She starts wandering the streets, going to markets, to the plaza, and all the way downtown. Someone ends up stealing her money, and also the keys to the building. When she gets back, she finds that everything is stolen. The residents of the building kick her out of the building, saying that they had trusted her, and she had taken advantage of them.

Going back to the posting on symbolism, one thing I noticed was how in this last chapter, Boori Ma's keys represented more than what met the eye. Throughout the chapter, each time Boori Ma adjusted her sari, it would be described with the jangling of the keys at the end of it. However, at the end of the chapter, once her keys got lost, when she adjusted her sari, the jangling was not there. They symbolize how she had some level of comfort, being safe, having a place she could stay. Once the keys were gone, this level of comfort was also gone.

I have already listed a lot of similarities in each novel in the last posts. What I have noticed, is that Jhumpa Lahiri uses death and secrets a lot in her plot. She incorporates different cultures and relationships to describe how each of these themes affects a character.

Another theme Jhumpa Lahiri uses in her novels is loneliness. So far, each story I have read of hers shows a character that is afraid of loneliness. From Gogol, to Boori Ma, each character felt lonely in their world. They were normal people, going about their average lives, yet something was missing from their lives. Something that didn't feel right. She uses this depiction of each of the main characters of her novel, that each character felt they were missing something in their lives.

Overall, Lahiri implies the information and emotions in her writing. Her symbolism is subtle, referred to throughout the entire book or passage, and only in the end do you realize the significance of it.