Miscommunication and Unexpressed Feelings

Common themes running through Lahiri's, Interpreter of Maladies, are miscommunication and unexpressed feelings. “Mrs. Sen’s” and “A Temporary Matter” are two stories in which the characters long for a meaningful connection they never find. Characters try to adapt to an unfamiliar world and don’t succeed. Some are homesick, many are misunderstood.
In "Mrs. Sen's," Lahiri tells of a woman who finds herself completely isolated. The narrator is 11-year-old Eliot, and Mrs. Sen is his after-school babysitter. We learn early on that Mrs. Sen doesn't need to work; she's only looking for a way to fill up her lonely afternoons while her husband is at the University working. Eliot quickly becomes aware of Mrs. Sen's loneliness and dissatisfaction in a strange culture. Driving the point home, she asks: "Eliot, if I began screaming right now at the top of my lungs, would someone come?" At home in India, she explains, "...just raise your voice a bit, or express grief or joy of any kind, and one whole neighborhood and half of another has come to share the news, to help with arrangements."
When Eliot gets off the bus at the edge of the complex, Mrs. Sen is already there, and seems to have been waiting for some time. She gives Eliot some snacks she produces from her pockets, and then they get into the car and she practices driving around the complex awhile. She is not allowed to drive onto the main road without her husband. This is a perfect example of Mrs. Sen’s loneliness and confined isolation. Eliot becomes Mrs. Sen's companion and confidant, and ultimately, witness to her unraveling. He discovers that she lives for the two things that make her happy: letters from home and whole fresh fish from the sea. Since she can't drive, Mrs. Sen must rely on her husband to take her to the fish market, but he is busy and resentful of her persistent requests.
In "A Temporary Matter," a young couple, whose marriage is at an end, receives a notice from the power company explaining that their neighborhood will be without power one hour each evening.On the first evening, they sit down to a candlelit dinner, their first meal together in months. We learn that they had a baby who'd died at birth. Shoba, his wife, used to be very capable and organized. She paid bills on time, and was always prepared for surprises. Now she was distracted, her clothes left lying around the house. Their responses to grief are opposite: as Shoba stays away, working late, burying herself in work even at home, Shukumar becomes a hermit, and cannot focus on his work at all. During dinner, Shoba proposes a game she used to play with relatives during power outages in India, in which each person takes a turn sharing something with the others. She suggests they tell each other something they've never told before. What ensues is a series of disclosures exchanged between Shukumar and Shoba during the dark hour, revealing "the little ways they'd hurt or disappointed each other, and themselves."Although Shukumar is wary of this game at first, he begins to look forward to their meals and this exchange with anticipation. Shukumar becomes hopeful, seeing this as the beginning of the restoration of their relationship. On the fourth night, they make love.
Shukumar has misunderstood the point of Shoba's game. For during this time, when he thinks they are growing closer, when it seems they might survive their grief after all, Shukumar learns through Shoba's final admission that she has been planning to move out. She returns home on the fifth night to announce that she has signed a lease.
Shukumar reveals to us that Shoba's one consolation was that they did not know the sex of their baby. She believed keeping that information a mystery lessened the blow somehow, the only thing she'd ever wanted to remain a surprise. However, unbeknownst to Shoba, Shukumar had held the baby in the hospital before the doctor took it away, and he knew it had been a boy. Realizing the end, Shukumar makes this his final confession to Shoba. "A Temporary Matter" is the most moving of the nine tales in Lahiri's collection. It is so tenderly written that by the end, we feel sorrow for both Shoba and Shukumar, for what they shared and lost, "for the things they now knew."