Jhumpa Lahiri, "Interpreter of Maladies: Stories from Boston, Bengal and Beyond”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

CORBETT: Welcome, on behalf of the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies and the Center for Bilingual and Bicultural Studies.

When I see a photograph of Jhumpa Lahiri in the New York Times or The New Yorker, I don't think hot young fiction writer, but instead, friend of my daughter Marni. And I remember the year or so that Jhumpa and Marni worked at WordsWorth bookstore in Cambridge. They tore up the place. I liked to go in and browse just to hear them laugh. They were at that stage of discovering their friendship when everything is hilarious. I can still hear them bawl out-- oh, my god!

[LAUGHTER]

At some juicy bit of gossip or off-the-charts exploit. Some time after this, Jhumpa asked me to read one of her early stories. I did so, felt lukewarm about it, and told her so. She never showed me another one of her stories.

[LAUGHTER]

I respect her for this. Writers ought to be ruthless about their art. And they need to know where to go to get what they require. Jhumpa began to find what she needed while in the BU writing program, and more and more in herself. As one thing led to another, and with the publication of Interpreter of Maladies, she became a star. She began as a paperback writer and graduated to hardcover.

Who knows how this happened? Bad things happen to good writers. And when good things happen to deserving ones, it's not easy to figure out why. A possible explanation occurred to me when I began to see Jhumpa grouped with Indian and Asian writers. Her work tells, at least on one level, the old American tale of here and there, the old country and the new world, the tale that has been ours since the Great Immigration at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, the tale told by Saul Bellow and James Baldwin, by Jamaica Kincaid, and writers will leap into all your minds. It is the American story of who we are, how we know it, and the anxieties and exhilarations involved.

Not that this answers the question, which in the end does not matter. Jhumpa's work has struck a nerve, or you wouldn't be here. Jhumpa, the audience is yours.

[APPLAUSE]

LAHIRI: Wow.

[LAUGHTER]

Good evening. I am very pleased to be here. Thank you all for coming. I want to thank everyone at MIT for having me here tonight. MIT was, as some of you may know, the first place my father worked in this country, when he moved here with me and my mother in 1969. And I'm honored that it's the first university in Boston that's asked me to read.

I especially want to thank Bill and his wife, Beverly Corbett-- I want to thank Bill for his very kind words just now-- but for their efforts and their generosity and their incredible hospitality, which I've been a recipient of for a long time now. I first met them 11 years ago, right around this time of year.

As Bill mentioned, I was-- I am a friend of their daughter Marni's. And at the time, I had just moved to Boston. I'd just graduated from college. And I moved to Cambridge. And I was living in a room of the home of a woman with these two, shall we say, very strident young children. And I sort of lived in this little room behind their living room, and felt very-- very not at home. There were all sorts of rules I had to abide by. I couldn't have visitors after a certain hour. I had to wipe down the stove every time I boiled water for tea-- all of these things. Was not a very ideal situation.

And it was around that time that Marni invited me to dinner at her parents' house. I remember it was a Sunday night. And I had directions to go to the South End. I'd never been to the South End before. I got on the Orange Line and went the wrong way; found myself heading rapidly toward Oak Grove. Turned back around and made it, eventually, to their house. And was immediately just so struck. Those first weeks of my life in Boston were very-- they weren't too pleasant. And all of a sudden, I felt wonderfully at home. And I discovered a beautiful home and beautiful people and good food, and rules that were decidedly relaxed--

[LAUGHTER]

Compared to my own lodgings. And that was the first of many nights I spent in their home, and many delicious dinners I ate at their table-- another of which I'm about to have in a few hours. I'm looking forward to it.

[LAUGHTER]

And I also want to say that it was also around this time that I went to my first reading in Boston. And that was one of Bill's readings. He was reading from his book On Blue Note up at Harvard. And I remember going with Marni and Beverly, and feeling very excited about this. Until I met Bill, I hadn't known a writer before. Writers were, to me, names on the covers of books. But they weren't people.

And I was amazed, over the months that I grew to know their family, that here was this man who had a family and a house, and wrote all these books, and had a life, and even managed to throw all these amazing dinner parties. And so I want to thank him for that wonderful example. And I think that if I could write half as many books and throw half as many successful dinner parties, I will be very grateful.

Anyway, so after Bill asked me to come up here, I realized-- this had not occurred to me until then-- but I realized that I mention MIT in not one but two of the stories in my book. Go figure. I didn't study here. But I thought I'd read from one of them in honor of my being here tonight. This one is called "This Blessed House." I'll read the whole thing.

They discovered the first one in a cupboard above the stove, beside an unopened bottle of malt vinegar. "Guess what I found?" Twinkle said. She walked into the living room, lined from end to end with taped-up packing boxes, waiving the vinegar in one hand and a white porcelain effigy of Christ, roughly the same size as the vinegar bottle, in the other.

Sanjeev looked up. 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. "Throw it away." "Which?" "Both." "But I can cook something with the vinegar. It's brand new." "You've never cooked anything with vinegar." "I'll look something up in one of those books we got for our wedding."

Sanjeev turned back to the baseboard to replace a Post-it scrap that had fallen to the floor. "Check the exploration. And at the very least, get rid of that idiotic statue." "But it could be worth something. Who knows?"

She turned it upside down, then stroked with her index finger the minuscule frozen folds of its robes. "It's pretty." "We're not Christians," Sanjeev said. Lately he had begun to notice the need to state the obvious to Twinkle.

[LAUGHTER]

The day before he had to tell her that if she dragged her end of the bureau instead of lifting it, the parquet floor would scratch. She shrugged. "No, we're not Christian. We're good little Hindus." She planted a kiss on top of Christ's head, then placed the statue on top of the fireplace mantle, which needed, Sanjeev observed, to be dusted.

By the end of the week the mantle had still not been dusted. It had, however, come to serve as a display shelf for a sizable collection of Christian paraphernalia.

[LAUGHTER]

There was a 3D 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 as he was installing extra shelving in Twinkle's study. There was a framed paint-by-number of the three wise men against a black velvet background tucked in the linen closet. There was also a tile trivet depicting a blond, unbearded Jesus delivering a sermon on a mountain top, left in one of the drawers of the built-in china cabinet in the dining room.

"Do you think the previous owners were born-agains?" asked Twinkle, making room the next day for a small plastic snow-filled dome containing a miniature nativity scene found behind the pipes of the kitchen sink. Sanjeev was organizing his engineering texts from MIT in alphabetical order on a bookshelf--

[LAUGHTER]

though it had been several years since he had needed to consult any of them. After graduating, he moved from Boston to Connecticut to work for a firm near Hartford. And he had recently learned that he was being considered for the position of vice president. At 33 he had a secretary of his own and a dozen people working under his supervision, who gladly supplied him with any information he needed. Still, the presence of his college books in the room reminded him of a time in his life he recalled with fondness, when he would walk each evening across the Mass Avenue Bridge in order to order mughlai chicken with spinach from his favorite Indian restaurant on the other side of the Charles, and return to his dorm to write out clean copies of his problem sets.

"Or perhaps it's an attempt to convert people," Twinkle mused. "Clearly the scheme has succeeded in your case."

[LAUGHTER]

She disregarded him, shaking the little plastic dome so that snow swirled over the manger. He studied the items on the mantle. It puzzled him that each was, in its own way, so silly. Clearly they lacked a sense of sacredness. He was further puzzled that Twinkle, who normally displayed good taste, was so charmed. These objects meant something to Twinkle, but they meant nothing to him. They irritated him.

"We should call the realtor, tell him there's all this nonsense left behind. Tell him to take it away." "Oh Sanj," Twinkle groaned. "Please, I would feel terrible throwing them away. Obviously they were important to the people who used to live here. It would feel-- I don't know, sacrilegious or something." "If they're so precious, then why are they hidden all over the house? Why didn't they take them with them?" "There must be others," Twinkle said. Her eyes roamed the bare off-white walls of the room, as if there were other things concealed behind the plaster. "What else do you think we'll find?"

But as they unpacked their boxes and hung up their winter clothes and the silk paintings of elephant processions bought on their honeymoon in Jaipur, Twinkle, much to her dismay, could not find a thing. Nearly a week had passed before they discovered, one Saturday afternoon, 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. Sanjeev had mistaken it for a window shade.

"Oh, we must! We simply must put it up. It's too spectacular."

[LAUGHTER]

Twinkle lit a cigarette and began to smoke it with relish, waving it around Sanjeev's head as if it were a conductor's baton as Mahler's Fifth Symphony roared from the stereo downstairs. "Now look. I will tolerate for now your little biblical menagerie in the living room. But I refuse to have this," he said, flicking at one of the painted peanut tears, "displayed in our home."

Twinkle stared at him, placidly exhaling, the smoke emerging in two thin blue streams from her nostrils. She rolled up the poster slowly, securing it with one of the elastic bands she always wore around her wrist for tying back her thick, unruly hair, streaked here and there with henna. "I'm going to put it in my study," she informed him. "That way, you don't have to look at it."

"What about the house-warming? They'll want to see all the rooms. I've invited people from the office." She rolled her eyes. Sanjeev noted that the symphony, now in its third movement, had reached a crescendo, for it pulsed with the telltale clashing of symbols. "I'll put it behind the door," she offered. "That way, when they peek in, they won't see. Happy?"

He stood watching her as she left the room with her poster and her cigarette. A few ashes had fallen to the floor where she'd been standing. He bent down, pinched them between his fingers, and deposited them in his cupped palm. The tender fourth movement, the adagiato, began. During breakfast Sanjeev had read in the liner notes that Mahler had proposed to his wife by sending her the manuscript of this portion of the score. Although there were elements of tragedy and struggle in the Fifth Symphony, he had read, it was principally music of love and happiness.

He heard the toilet flush. "By the way," Twinkle hollered, "if you want to impress people, I wouldn't play this music. It's putting me to sleep."

[LAUGHTER]

Sanjeev went to the bathroom to throw away the ashes. The cigarette butt still bobbed in the toilet bowl, but the tank was refilling. So he had to wait a moment before he could flush it again. In the mirror of the medicine cabinet he inspected his long eyelashes-- like a girl's, Twinkle liked to tease. Though he was of average build, his cheeks had a plumpness to them. This, along with the eyelashes, detracted, he feared, from what he hoped was a distinguished profile. He was of average height as well, and wished ever since he had stopped growing that he were just one inch taller.

For this reason, it irritated him when Twinkle insisted on wearing high heels, as she had done the other night when they ate dinner in Manhattan. This was the first weekend after they'd moved into the house. By then the mantle had already filled up considerably, and they had bickered about it in the car on the way down. But then Twinkle had drunk four glasses of whiskey in a nameless bar in Alphabet City and forgot all about it. She dragged him to a tiny bookshop on St. Mark's Place, where she browsed for nearly an hour. And when they left she insisted they dance a tango on the sidewalk, in front of strangers. Afterwards, she tottered on his arm, rising faintly over his line of vision in a pair of suede, three-inch leopard-print pumps. In this manner they walked the endless blocks back to a parking garage on Washington Square, for Sanjeev had heard far too many stories about the terrible things that happened to cars in Manhattan.

"But I do nothing all day except sit at my desk," she fretted when they were driving home, after he mentioned that her shoes looked uncomfortable and suggested that perhaps she should not wear them. "I can't exactly wear heels when I'm typing." Though he abandoned the argument, he knew for a fact that she didn't spend all day at her desk. Just that afternoon when he got back from a run, he found her inexplicably in bed reading. When he asked her why she was in bed in the middle of the day, she told him she was bored. He had wanted to say to her then, "you could unpack some boxes. You could sweep the attic. You could retouch the paint on the bathroom window sill. And after you do it you can warn me, so I don't put my watch on it.

[LAUGHTER]

They didn't bother her, these scattered, unsettled matters. She seemed content with whatever clothes she found at the front of the closet, with whatever magazine was lying around, with whatever song was on the radio-- content yet curious. And now all of her curiosity centered around discovering the next treasure.

A few days later when Sanjeev returned from the office, he found Twinkle on the telephone, smoking and talking to one of her girlfriends in California, even though it was before five o'clock and the long-distance rates were at their peak.

[LAUGHTER]

"Highly-devout people," she was saying, pausing every now and then to exhale. Each day is like a treasure hunt. I'm serious. This, you won't believe. The switch plates in the bedroom were decorated with scenes from the Bible-- you know, Noah's ark and all that. Three bedrooms, but one is my study. Sanjeev went to the hardware store right away and replaced them. Can you imagine? He replaced every single one."

Now it was the friend's turn to talk. Twinkle nodded, slouched on the floor in front of the fridge, wearing black stirrup pants and a yellow chenille sweater, groping for her lighter. Sanjeev could smell something aromatic on the stove, and he picked his way carefully across the extra-long phone cord tangled on the Mexican terracotta tiles. He opened the lid of a pot with some sort of reddish-brown sauce dripping over the sides, boiling furiously.

"It's a stew I made with the fish. I put the vinegar in it," she said to him--

[LAUGHTER]

Interrupting her friend, crossing her fingers. "Sorry, you were saying?" She was like that-- excited and delighted by little things, crossing her fingers before any remotely unpredictable event, like tasting a new flavor of ice cream or dropping a letter in a mailbox. It was a quality he did not understand. It made him feel stupid, as if the world contained hidden wonders he could not anticipate or see.

He looked at her face which, it occurred to him, had not grown out of its girlhood, the eyes untroubled, the pleasing features unfirm, as if they still had to settle into some sort of permanent expression. Nicknamed after a nursery rhyme, she had yet to shed a childhood endearment. 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.

They had met only four months before. Her parents, who lived in California, and his, who still lived in Calcutta, were old friends. And across continents, they had arranged the occasion at which Twinkle and Sanjeev were introduced-- a 16th birthday party for a daughter in their circle-- when Sanjeev was in Palo Alto on business. At the restaurant they were seated side by side at a round table, with a revolving platter of spare ribs and egg rolls and chicken wings which, they concurred, all tasted the same. They had concurred, too, on their adolescent but still persistent fondness for Wodehouse novels and their dislike for the sitar. And later, Twinkle confessed that she was charmed by the way Sanjeev had dutifully refilled her teacup during their conversation.

And so the phone calls began, and grew longer. And then the visits-- first he to Stanford, then she to Connecticut, after which Sanjeev would save in an ash tray left on the balcony the crushed cigarettes she had smoked during the weekend. Saved them, that is, until the next time she came to visit him. And then he vacuumed the apartment, washed the sheets, even dusted the plant leaves in her honor. She was 27 and recently abandoned, he gathered, by an American who had tried and failed to be an actor. Sanjeev was lonely, with an excessively generous income for a single man, and had never been in love.

At the urging of their matchmakers they married in India, amid hundreds of well-wishers whom he barely remembered from his childhood, in incessant August rains under a red and orange tent strung with Christmas tree lights on [? Mandavil ?] Road. "Did you sweep the attic?" he asked Twinkle later, as she was folding paper napkins and wedging them by their plates. The attic was the only part of the house they had not yet given an initial cleaning.

"Not yet. I promise, I will. I hope this tastes good," she said, planting the steaming pot on top of the Jesus trivet. There was a loaf of Italian bread in a little basket, and iceberg lettuce and grated carrots topped with bottled dressing and croutons, and glasses of red wine. She was not terribly ambitious in the kitchen. She bought pre-roasted chickens from the supermarket and served them with potato salad, prepared who knew when, sold in little plastic containers. Indian food, she complained, was a bother. She detested chopping garlic and peeling ginger, and could not operate a blender.

And so it was Sanjeev who, on weekends, seasoned mustard oil with cinnamon sticks and cloves in order to produce a proper curry. He had to admit, though, that whatever it was that she had cooked today, it was unusually tasty-- attractive, even, with bright white cubes of fish and flecks of parsley and fresh tomatoes gleaming in the dark-brown red broth. "How did you make it?" "I made it up." "What did you do?" "I just put some things into the pot and added the malt vinegar at the end."

[LAUGHTER]

"How much vinegar?" She shrugged, ripping off some bread and plunging it into her bowl. "What do you mean, you don't know? You should write it down. What if you need to make it again, for a party or something?" "I'll remember," she said. She covered the bread basket with a dish towel that had, he suddenly noticed, the 10 commandments printed on it.

[LAUGHTER]

She flashed him a little smile, giving his knee a little squeeze under the table. "Face it-- this house is blessed."

[LAUGHTER]

The house-warming party was scheduled for the last Saturday in October, and they had invited about 30 people. All were Sanjeev's acquaintances, people from the office and a number of Indian couples in the Connecticut area, many of whom he barely knew, but who had regularly invited him in his bachelor days to supper on Saturdays. He often wondered why they included him in their circle. He had little in common with any of them. But he always attended their gatherings, to eat spiced chickpeas and shrimp cutlets, and gossip and discuss politics, for he seldom had other plans.

So far, no one had met Twinkle. Back when they were still dating, Sanjeev didn't want to waste their brief weekends together with people he associated with being alone. Other than Sanjeev and an ex-boyfriend, who she believed worked in a pottery studio in Brookfield, she knew no one in the state of Connecticut. She was completing her master's thesis at Stanford, a study of an Irish poet whom Sanjeev had never heard of.

Sanjeev had found the house on his own, before leaving for the wedding, for a good price in a neighborhood with a fine school system. He was impressed by the elegant curved staircase with its wrought iron banister, and the dark wooden wainscotting, and the solarium overlooking rhododendron bushes, and the solid brass 22, which also happened to be the date of his birth, nailed impressively to the vaguely Tudor facade. There were two working fireplaces, a two-car garage, and an attic suitable for converting into extra bedrooms if, the realtor mentioned, the need should arise. By then Sanjeev had already made up his mind, was determined that he and Twinkle should live there together forever. And so he had not bothered to notice the switch plates covered with biblical stickers, or the transparent decal of the Virgin on a half shell, as Twinkle liked to call it, adhered to the window in the master bedroom.

[LAUGHTER]

When, after moving in, he tried to scrape it off, he scratched the glass.

The weekend before the party they were raking the lawn when he heard Twinkle shriek. He ran to her, clutching his rake, worried that she had discovered a dead animal or a snake. A brisk October breeze stung the tops of his ears as his sneakers crunched over brown and yellow leaves. When he reached her she had collapsed on the grass, dissolved in nearly silent laughter. Behind an overgrown forsythia bush was a plaster Virgin Mary as tall as their waists, with a blue painted hood draped over her head, in the manner of an Indian bride. Twinkle grabbed at the hem of her t-shirt and began wiping away the dirt staining this statue's brow.

"I suppose you want to put her by the foot of our bed," Sanjeev said.

[LAUGHTER]

She looked at him, astonished. Her belly was exposed, and he saw that there were goosebumps around her navel. "What do you think? Of course we can't put this in our bedroom." "We can't?" "No, silly Sanj. This is meant for outside, for the lawn.

[LAUGHTER]

"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."

[LAUGHTER]

"Why? For having a statue of the Virgin Mary on our lawn? Every other person in this neighborhood has a statue of Mary on the lawn. We'll fit right in."

[LAUGHTER]

"We are not Christian." "So you keep reminding me." She spat onto the tip of her finger and started to rub intently at a particularly stubborn stain on Mary's chin. "Do you think this is dirt, or some kind of fungus?"

[LAUGHTER]

He was getting nowhere with her, with this woman whom he had known only for four months and whom he had married, this woman with whom he now shared his life. He thought, with a flicker of regret, of the snapshots his mother used to send him from Calcutta of prospective brides who could sing and sew, and season lentils without consulting a cookbook.

[LAUGHTER]

Sanjeev had considered these women, and even ranked them in order of preference, but then he had met Twinkle. "Twinkle, I can't have the people I work with see this statue on my lawn." "They can't fire you for being a believer.

[LAUGHTER]

It would be discrimination." "That's not the point." "Why does it matter to you so much what other people think?" "Twinkle, please." He was tired. He let his weight rest against his rake as she began dragging the statue toward an oval bed of myrtle beside the lamppost that flanked the brick pathway. "Look, Sanj, she's so lovely."

He returned to his pile of leaves and began to deposit them by handfuls into a plastic garbage bag. Over his head, the blue sky was cloudless. One tree on the lawn was still full of leaves, red and orange, like the tent in which he had married Twinkle. He did not know if he loved her. He said he did, when she first asked him one afternoon in Palo Alto, as they sat side by side in a darkened, nearly empty movie theater. Before the film, one of her favorites-- something in German that he found extremely depressing-- she had pressed the tip of her nose to his, so that he could feel the flutter of her mascara-coated eyelashes.

That afternoon he had replied, yes, he loved her. And she was delighted, and fed him a piece of popcorn, letting her finger linger an instant between his lips, as if it were his reward for coming up with the right answer. Though she did not say it herself, he assumed that she loved him too. But now he was no longer sure.

In truth, Sanjeev did not know what love was, only what he thought it was not. It was not, he had decided, returning to an empty carpeted condominium each night, and using only the top fork in his cutlery drawer, and turning away politely at those weekend dinner parties when the other man eventually put their arms around the waists of their wives and girlfriends, leaning over every now and then to kiss their shoulders or necks. It was not sending away for classical musical CDs by mail, working his way methodically through the major composers that the catalog recommended, and always sending his payments in on time.

In the months before meeting Twinkle, Sanjeev had begun to realize this. "You have enough money in the bank to raise three families," his mother reminded him when they spoke at the start of each month on the phone. "You need a wife to look after and love." Now he had one, a pretty one from a suitably high caste, who would soon have a master's degree. What was there not to love?

That evening, Sanjeev poured himself a gin and tonic, drank it and most of another during one segment of the news, and then approached Twinkle, who was taking a bubble bath, for she announced that her limbs ached from raking the lawn-- something she had never done before. He didn't knock. She had applied a bright blue mask to her face, was smoking and sipping some bourbon with ice, and leafing through a fat paperback book whose pages had buckled and turned gray from the water. He glanced at the cover. The only thing written on it was the word "Sonnets" in dark red letters. He took a breath, and then he informed her very calmly that after finishing his drink, he was going to put on his shoes and go outside and remove the Virgin from the front lawn.

"Where are you going to put it?" she asked him dreamily, her eyes closed. One of her legs emerged, unfolding gracefully from the layer of suds. She flexed and pointed her toes. "For now I'm going to put it in the garage. Then tomorrow morning on my way to work, I'm going to take it to the dump." "Don't you dare." She stood up, letting the book fall into the water, bubbles dripping down her thighs. "I hate you," she informed him, her eyes narrowing at the word hate. She reached for her bathrobe, tied it tightly about her waist, and padded down the winding staircase, leaving sloppy wet footprints along the parquet floor.

When she reached the foyer Sanjeev said, "are you planning on leaving the house that way?" He felt a throbbing in his temples, and his voice revealed an unfamiliar snarl when he spoke. "Who cares? Who cares what way I leave this house?" "Where are you planning on going at this hour?" "You can't throw away that statue. I won't let you." Her mask, now dry, had assumed an ashen quality, and water from her hair dripped onto the caked contours of her face. "Yes I can. I will." "No," Twinkle said, her voice suddenly small. This is our house. We own it together. The statue was a part of our property. She had begun to shiver. A small pool of bath water had collected around her ankles. He went to shut a window, fearing that she would catch cold.

Then he noticed that some of the water dripping down her hard blue face was tears. "Oh god, Twinkle, please-- I didn't mean it." He had never seen her cry before, had never seen such sadness in her eyes. She didn't turn away or try to stop the tears. Instead, she looked strangely at peace. For a moment she closed her lids, pale and unprotected compared to the blue that caked the rest of her face. Sanjeev felt ill, as if he had eaten either too much or too little. She went to him, placing her damp toweled arms about his neck, sobbing into his chest, soaking his shirt. The mask flaked onto his shoulders. In the end, they settled on a compromise. The statue would be placed in a recess at the side of the house, so that it wasn't obvious to passers by, but was still clearly visible to all who came.

The menu for the party was fairly simple. There would be a case of champagne, and samosas from an Indian restaurant in Hartford, and big trays of rice with chicken and almonds and orange peels, which Sanjeev had spent the greater part of the morning and afternoon preparing. He had never entertained on such a large scale before and, worried that there would not be enough to drink, ran out at one point to buy another case of champagne just in case. For this reason he burned one of the rice trays, and had to start it over again. Twinkle swept the floors, and volunteered to pick up the samosas. She had an appointment for a manicure and a pedicure in that direction anyway. Sanjeev had planned to ask if she would consider clearing the menagerie off the mantle, if only for the party. But she had left while he was in the shower.

She was gone for a good three hours, and so it was Sanjeev who did the rest of the cleaning. By 5:30 the entire house sparkled, with scented candles that Twinkle had picked up in Hartford illuminating the items on the mantle, and slender stalks of burning incense planted into the soil of potted plants. Each time he passed the mantle he winced, dreading the raised eyebrows of his guests as they viewed the flickering ceramic saints, the salt and pepper shakers designed to resemble Mary and Joseph.

[LAUGHTER]

Still, they would be impressed, he hoped, by the lovely bay windows and shining parquet floors, the impressive winding staircase, the wooden wainscotting, as they sipped champagne and dipped samosas into chutney.

Douglas, one of the new consultants at the firm, and his girlfriend Nora were the first to arrive. Both were tall and blond, wearing matching wire-rimmed glasses and long black overcoats. Nora wore a black hat full of sharp thin feathers that corresponded to the sharp thin angles of her face. Her left hand was joined with Douglas's. In her right hand was a bottle of cognac with a red ribbon wrapped around its neck, which she gave to Twinkle. "Great lawn, Sanjeev," Douglas remarked. We've got to get that rake out ourselves, sweetie. And this must be--" "My wife, [? Donima." ?] "Call me Twinkle." "What an unusual name," Nora remarked. Twinkle shrugged. "Not really. There's an actress in Bombay named Dimple Kapadia. She even has a sister named Simple.

[LAUGHTER]

Douglas and Nora raised their eyebrows simultaneously, nodding slowly, as if to let the absurdity of the name settle in. "Pleased to meet you, Twinkle." "Help yourself to champagne. There's gallons."

"I hope you don't mind my asking," Douglas said, "but I noticed a statue outside, and--"

[LAUGHTER]

"Are you guys Christian? I thought you were Indian." "There are Christians in India," Sanjeev replied, "but we are not." "I love your outfit," Nora told Twinkle. "And I adore your hat. Would you like the grand tour?"

The bell rang again, and again, and again. Within minutes, it seemed, the house had filled with bodies and conversations and unfamiliar fragrances. The women wore heels and sheer stockings, and short black dresses made of crepe and chiffon. They handed their wraps and coats to Sanjeev, who draped them carefully on hangers in the spacious coat closet, though Twinkle told people to throw their things on the ottomans in the solarium. Some of the Indian women wore their finest saris, made with gold filigree that draped in elegant pleats over their shoulders. The men wore jackets and ties and citrus-scented aftershaves.

As people filtered from one room to the next, presents piles onto the long cherrywood table that ran from one end of the downstairs hall to the other. It bewildered Sanjeev that it was for him and his house and his wife that they had all gone to so much care. The only other time in his life that something similar had happened was his wedding. But somehow this was different, for these were not his family but people who knew him only casually and, in a sense, owed him nothing. Everyone congratulated him. Lester, another coworker, predicted that Sanjeev would be promoted to vice president in two months, maximum.

People devoured the samosas and dutifully admired the freshly-painted ceilings and walls, the hanging plants, the bay windows, the silk paintings from Jaipur. But most of all they admired Twinkle and her brocaded salwar kameez, which was the shade of a persimmon, with a low scoop in the back, and a little string of white rose petals she had coiled cleverly around her head, and the pearl choker with a sapphire at its center that adorned her throat. Over hectic jazz records played under Twinkle's supervision, they laughed at her anecdotes and observations, forming a widening circle around her while Sanjeev replenished the samosas that he kept warming in the oven, and getting ice for people's drinks, and opening more bottles of champagne-- with some difficulty, and explaining for the 40th time that he wasn't Christian.

[LAUGHTER]

It was Twinkle who led them in separate groups up and down the winding staircase to gaze at the back lawn, to peer down the cellar steps. "Your friends adore the poster in my study," she mentioned to him triumphantly, placing her hand on the small of his back as they, at one point, brushed past each other. Sanjeev went to the kitchen, which was empty, and ate a piece of chicken out of the tray on the counter with his fingers because he thought no one was looking. He ate a second piece, then washed it down with a gulp of gin straight from the bottle.

"Great house. Great rice." Junil, an anaesthesiologist, walked in, spooning food from his paper plate into his mouth. "Do you have more champagne?" "Your wife's wow," added Prabal, following behind. He was an unmarried professor of physics at Yale. For a moment Sanjeev stared at him blankly, then blushed. Once at a dinner party Prabal had pronounced that Sophia Loren was wow, as was Audrey Hepburn. "Does she have a sister?" Junil picked a raisin out of the rice tray. "Is her last name little star?"

[LAUGHTER]

The two men laughed and started eating more rice from the tray, plowing through it with their plastic spoons. Sanjeev went down to the cellar for more liquor. For a few minutes he paused on the steps in the damp, cool silence, hugging the second crate of champagne to his chest as the party drifted above the rafters. Then he set the reinforcements on the dining table. "Yes, everything. We found them all in the house, in the most unusual places," he heard Twinkle saying in the living room. "In fact, we keep finding them." "No!" "Yes. Every day is like a treasure hunt. It's too good. God only knows what else we'll find-- no pun intended."

[LAUGHTER]

That was what started it. As if by some unspoken pact, the whole party joined forces and began combing through each of the rooms--

[LAUGHTER]

Opening closets on their own, peering under chairs and cushions, feeling behind curtains, removing books from bookcases. Groups scampered, giggling and swaying, up and down the winding staircase. "We've never explored the attic," Twinkle announced suddenly, and so everybody followed. "How do we get up there?" "There's a ladder in the hallway, somewhere in the ceiling." Wearily Sanjeev followed at the back of the crowd to point out the location of the ladder, but Twinkle had already found it on her own. "Eureka!" she hollered. Douglas pulled the chain that released the steps. His face was flushed, and he was wearing Nora's feathered hat on his head.

[LAUGHTER]

One by one the guests disappeared, men helping women as they placed their strappy high heels on the narrow slats of the ladder, the Indian women wrapping the free ends of their expensive saris into their waistbands. The men followed behind, all quickly disappearing, until Sanjeev alone remained at the top of the winding staircase. Footsteps thundered over his head. He had no desire to join them. He wondered if the ceiling would collapse--

[LAUGHTER]

Imagined for a split second the sight of all the tumbling drunk, perfumed bodies crashing tangled around him. He heard a shriek, and then rising, spreading waves of laughter in discordant tones. Something fell. Something else shattered. He could hear them babbling about a trunk. They seemed to be struggling to get it open, banging feverishly on its surface. He thought perhaps Twinkle would call for his assistance, but he was not summoned.

He looked about the hallway and to the landing below, at the champagne glasses and half-eaten samosas, and napkins smeared with lipstick abandoned in every corner, on every available surface. Then he noticed that Twinkle in her haste had discarded her shoes altogether, for they lay by the foot of the ladder, black patent-leather mules with heels like golf tees, open toes, and slightly soiled silk labels on the instep where her soles had rested. He placed them in the doorway of the master bedroom so that no one would trip when they descended.

He heard something creaking open slowly. The strident voices had subsided to an even murmur. It occurred to Sanjeev that he had the house all to himself. The music had ended and he could hear, if he concentrated, the hum of the refrigerator and the rustle of the last leaves on the trees outside and the tapping of their branches against the window panes. With one flick of his hand he could snap the ladder back on its spring into the ceiling, and they would have no way of getting down--

[LAUGHTER]

Unless he were to pull the chain and let them. He thought of all the things he could do undisturbed. He could sweep Twinkle's menagerie into a garbage bag and get in the car and drive it to the dump, and tear down the poster of weeping Jesus, and take a hammer to the Virgin Mary while he was at it.

[LAUGHTER]

Then he would return to the empty house. He could easily clear up the cups and plates in an hour's time, and pour himself a gin and tonic, and eat a plate of warmed rice, and listen to his new box CD while reading the liner notes, so as to understand it properly.

[LAUGHTER]

He nudged the ladder slightly, but it was sturdily planted against the floor. Bodging it would require some effort. "My god, I need a cigarette," Twinkle exclaimed from above. Sanjeev felt knots forming at the back of his neck. He felt dizzy. He needed to lie down. He walked toward the bedroom, but stopped short when he saw Twinkle's shoes facing him in the doorway. He thought of her slipping them on her feet.

But instead of feeling irritated, as he had ever since they'd moved into the house together, he felt a pang of anticipation at the thought of her rushing unsteadily down the winding staircase in them, scratching the floor a bit in her path. The pang intensified as he thought of her rushing to the bathroom to brighten her lipstick, and eventually rushing to get people their coats, and finally rushing to the cherrywood table when the last guest had left, to begin opening their housewarming presents. It was the same pang he used to feel before they were married, when he would hang up the phone after one of their conversations, or when he would drive back from the airport, wondering which ascending plane in the sky was hers.

"Sanj, you won't believe this." She emerged with her back to him, her hands over her head, the tops of her bare shoulder blades perspiring, supporting something still hidden from view. "You got it, Twinkle?" someone asked. "Yes, you can let go." Now he saw that her hands were wrapped around it-- a solid silver bust of Christ, the head easily three times the size of his own.

[LAUGHTER]

It had a patrician bump on its nose, magnificent curly hair that rested atop a pronounced collar bone, and a broad forehead that reflected in miniature the walls and doors and lampshades around them. Its expression was confident, as if assured of its devotees, the unyielding lips sensuous and full. It was also sporting Nora's feathered hat.

[LAUGHTER]

As Twinkle descended, Sanjeev put his hands around her waist to balance her. And he relieved her of the bust when she had reached the ground. It weighed a good 30 pounds. The others began lowering themselves slowly, exhausted from the hunt. Some trickled downstairs in search of a fresh drink. She took a breath, raised her eyebrows, crossed her fingers. "Would you mind terribly if we displayed it on the mantle--"

[LAUGHTER]

"Just for tonight. I know you hate it."

He did hate it. He hated its immensity, and its flawless, polished surface, and its undeniable value. He hated that it was in his house and that he owned it. Unlike the other things they had found, this contained dignity, solemnity, beauty even. But to his surprise, these qualities made him hate it all the more. Most of all, he hated it because he knew that Twinkle loved it. "I'll keep it in my study from tomorrow," Twinkle added. "I promise." She would never put it in her study, he knew. For the rest of their days together she would keep it on the center of the mantle, flanked on either side by the rest of the menagerie. Each time they had guests Twinkle would explain how she had found it. And they would admire her as they listened. He gazed at the crushed rose petals in her hair, at the pearl and sapphire choker at her throat, at the sparkly crimson polish on her toes. He decided that these were among the things that made Prabal think she was wow.

His head ached from gin and his arms ached from the weight of the statue. He said, "I put your shoes in the bedroom." "Thanks, but my feet are killing me." Twinkle gave his elbow a little squeeze and headed for the living room. Sanjeev pressed the massive silver face to his ribs, careful not to let the feathered hat slip, and followed her.

Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]