Saturday, April 16, 2022

For Monday: Lahiri, "This Blessed House," and "The Treatment of Bibi Haldar"



Answer TWO of the following for Monday's class:  

Q1: The wife in "This Blessed House," Twinkle, becomes obsessed with the Catholic left-overs in their new house--plates, statues, and even a bust of Jesus. Why does she take such interest in these relics, and why does her husband disapprove, finding it an example of "bad taste"?

Q2: When Bibi is banished to the storage room for fear of infecting the child, she tells her friends, “Don’t worry, it’s not as if they’ve locked me in here...The world begins at the bottom of the stairs. Now I am free to discover life as I please” (170). What does she mean by this, and why might this be the beginning of her “treatment”?

Q3: How is Bibi a lot like Boori Ma from “A Real Durwan”? Though both are outcasts, why are they also necessary to their little neighborhoods? Similarly, why are they both undervalued by those closest to them?

Q4: "This Blessed House" seems to show the story “Sexy” from the other side—this time, from the wife’s perspective. While in “Sexy” our narrator is jealous of the movie-star beauty of Dev’s wife, why might this story suggest that their experiences are remarkably similar, and that both are “exiles” from the man they love?

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