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Mrs. Sen feels depressed by her loneliness at home, her homesick of India and her incapability of adapt to the new place she lives in. Instead, her husband
keeps urging her to get her driving license quickly. Refuse to continue her driving practice, Mrs. Sen finds another way to be independent. She takes the bus to go to
the fish market, but the passengers complain of the smell. Finally, she decides to give it a try, to drive by her own to take the fish, and she gets an accident.
The accident occurred quickly. After about a mile, Mrs. Sen took a left before she should have, and though the oncoming car managed to swerve
out of her way, she was so startled by the horn that she lost control of the wheel and hit a telephone pole on the opposite corner…Mrs. Sen cut her
lip, Eliot complained briefly of pain in his ribs, and the car’s fenser would have to be straightened 134.
The accident makes Mrs. Sen sadder. She is no longer a babysitter for
Eliot since Eliot’s mother takes him home and asks Eliot to be a ‘big boy’ that does not need babysitter anymore.
It can be implied from the explanation above that the main character in this short story still holds the tradition she inherited from her origin, but does not want
to involve in the new environment she has been thrust into. She has difficulties to adapting to her new surroundings and the feels left behind by her busy husband:
she sinks into a pool of sorrow.
2. This Blessed House
The main characters in this short story are Sanjeev and Tanima, called Twinkle, newlyweds who are trying to adjust their life of marriage. Both of them
have different personalities. Twinkle is free-spirited, spontaneous and lively,
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excited and delighted by little things. She also does not pay attention to details, while Sanjeev is the vice versa. He is unadventurous and craves for orders. He
pays much attention to organization and neatness. Now, in the second month of their marriage, certain things nettled him –
the way she sometimes spat a little when she spoke, or left her undergarments after removing them at night at the foot of their bed rather
than depositing them in the laundry hamper 142.
He tries hard to arrange every single part of their house in a right place and a right order when they move to the new place.
He was kneeling on the floor, marking, with ripped bits of a Post-it, patches on the baseboard that needed to be retouched with paint…Sanjeev
was organizing his engineering texts from MIT in alphabetical order on a bookshelf, though it had been several years since he had needed to consult
any of them 136-137.
They have met only four months before their wedding. In fact, their marriage was arranged by their parents who are old friends. Before leaving for the
wedding, Sanjeev has found a new house for a good price in a neighborhood with a fine school system 145. At first, Sanjeev is not bothered when he notices that
the switch plates covered with biblical stickers, or the transparent decal of the Virgin on the half shell 145.
However, when they begin arranging their house surprisingly they find ‘treasures’ hidden in every corner of their house in a form of Christian effigies
and its paraphernalia. They discovered the first one in a cupboard above the stove, beside an
unopened bottle of malt vinegar...a white porcelain effigy of Christ…There was a 3-D postcard of Saint Francis done in four colors,
which Twinkle had found taped to the back of the medicine cabinet, and a wooden cross key chain, which Sanjeev had stepped on with bare
feet…There was a framed paint-by-number of the three wise men, against
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the black velvet background…There was also a tile trivet depicting a blond, unbearded Jesus, delivering a sermon on a mountaintop, left in one
of drawers…a small plastic snow-filled dome containing a miniature Nativity scene, found behind the pipes of the kitchen sink 136-137.
When the first ‘treasure’ is discovered in that new house, and followed by
other ‘treasures’ and more ‘treasures’ come up in the upcoming days, Sanjeev gets frustrated. He asks Twinkle to throw away all the stuff found, but instead she
collects them on the mantle and shows them off at every chance. Sanjeev thinks that all items found by Twinkle lack a sense of the sacredness 138. However, he
cannot resist the display of Christian relics until one day when Twinkle finds a larger-than-life-sized watercolor poster of Christ, weeping translucent tears the
size of peanut shells and sporting a crown of thorns, rolled up behind a radiator in the guest bedroom 139.
“Now, look. I will tolerate, for now, your little biblical menagerie in the living room. But I refuse to have this…displayed in our home.”…“I’m
going to put it in my study…That way you don’t have to look-at it. “What about the housewarming. They’ll want to see all the rooms.”…
“I’ll put it behind the door,” she offered. “That way, when they peck in, they won’t see. Happy? 139”
Again, Sanjeev accepts his wife’s offer. Yet, when Twinkle once more
discovers another bigger ‘treasure’ in the weekend, this time Sanjeev loses his patience.
Behind an overgrown forsythia bush was a plaster of Virgin Mary as tall as their waists, with a blue painted hood draped over her head in the manner
of an Indian bride… “No, silly Sanj. This is meant for outside. For the lawn.”
“Oh God, no. Twinkle, no.” “But we must. It would be bad luck not to.”
“All the neighbors will see. They’ll think we’re insane.” “Why, for having a statue of the Virgin Mary on our lawn?”…
“We’re not Christian.” 146
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He decides to take an action to remove the Virgin Mary statue from the lawn, but Twinkle gets angry and cries.
“Where are you going to put it?”…“For now I am going to put in the garage. Then tomorrow morning on my way to work I am going to take it
to the dump.”…“Don’t you dare.”…”I hate you.”…“You can’t throw away that statue. I won’t let you.”…“Yes, I can. I will.”
“No,”…“This is our house. We own it together. The statue is part of our property.” She had begun to shiver 149.
Finally, they reach an agreement. The statue will be placed in a recess at
the side of the house, so that it is not obvious to passersby, but is still clearly visible to all who comes. Nonetheless, when the housewarming party runs,
Sanjeev is surprised to see her wife leads the guests to join the ‘treasure hunt’ at the attic. Surprisingly, the group finds a ‘big’ treasure, which is a solid silver bust
of Christ, the head easily three times the size of his own 156. In this point, Sanjeev questions himself about his ‘home’ and more
dangerously his relationship with his wife. In this continent, where he strives for the best opportunity, he feels that he is conquered by his own wife. He hates the
fact that he is not able to control the ‘treasures’, as he is usually in control over his surroundings. Twinkle, more easily adopts the American way of life, likes
smoking and drinking, she cannot cook Indian food well, and builds her town ‘language’ to experience life in the new continent, far from home. She seems to
embrace all new things with a delighted heart and without prejudice. In this case, religion is not the main conflict, but more the dislocation of
‘home’ in Sanjeev and the new definition of ‘home’ in Twinkle.
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3. The Third and Final Continent
