THE OTHER

Jaycob A. Bustamante

ENLIT 12 ZZ

jaycob.bustamante@obf.ateneo.edu

Love has always been the most caroled of subjects. Various poets, artists, and even

common people have dedicated their entire lives to express and experience this feeling of strong

affection towards another individual. While this remains as one of most adored subjects in

literature, various dynamics and perspectives are written to represent a conflict within the text.

And one of the most significant dramas which can cause a disruption within a relationship is

infidelity. A phenomenon wherein one of the individuals in the relationship has become unfaithful

due to various reasons, and has resorted to the seek and feel the affection of a different person.

When this happens, the withdrawal of information or maybe even the exclusion of the whole

person from the relationship occurs, this is called othering. The concept of othering involves the

exclusion of an individual from a relationship resulting to the individual being ousted to a degree

and classified as the “other”. (Joniak-Luthi 5) Now, in the context of infidelity, othering can be

used to better read and understand the emotions and experiences of not only the people that are in

the relationship, but also the individuals that are interacting with those people. Hence, this essay

aims to discuss the concept of othering in the context of three characters in the short story “Sexy”

by Jhumpa Lahiri: Miranda, Laxmi, and Dev’s wife.

In the context of Miranda, the feeling of being excluded from the relationship happens in

the later part of the story. The interaction between a rather precocious seven-year-old boy named

Rohin is what made her perspective on herself shift. His first words to Miranda takes in the form

1 Bustamante, ENLIT 12 ZZ
of a cartographical demand, “Ask me a capital.” (Lahiri 10) Following it were request for coffee,

explanations for the makeup canisters that she has purchased, a demand to wear the silver cocktail

dress, and the adjective that he gave to her after she wore it. Yet these were not the empty demands

and request of a spoiled brat, each one of them juxtaposes the experiences of his mother, Laxmi’s

cousin. The coffee reminded him of a beautiful stewardess that gave him the drink, while also

remembering that his father “met a pretty woman in the plane too.” (Lahiri 11) The makeup

canister, specifically the eye cream, a product used to hide the puffiness underneath the eyes

reminded him of the sadness that his mother is experiencing resulting to her eyes to “puff up like

bullfrogs”. (Lahiri 13) This strikes Miranda, and it began the realization what she was truly causing

in the relationship. The crumpled silver cocktail dress that has fallen from the hanger reminded

him of the clothes that his mother has failed to attend to because of her grief. Each demand recasts

the story of his mother, but now told in the perspective of an individual that can physically see her

emotions. What completes this realization of her true condition is the command of Rohin to put on

the crumpled silver cocktail dress. At this moment, she began to reflect why she had bought this,

lines from the text read “… as long as she was with Dev she knew she never would. They would

never go to restaurants where he would reach across the table to kiss her hand. They would meet

in her apartment, on Sundays, he in his sweatpants and she in her jeans.” (Lahiri 14) This statement

has made her realization concrete, yet still unfinished, she now knows and acknowledges that she

shouldn’t exist in the relationship yet she still does, under specific circumstances, in terms of place,

time, but most importantly feeling. She still clings on to the idea that she and Dev are a couple, a

taboo couple but a couple nonetheless. Instances where Miranda fantasizes about herself and Dev,

lines from the text read “Miranda pictured the two of them at a restaurant in the South End they'd

been to…” (Lahiri 6) This, however, will change as the eerie adjective that Rohin said and

2 Bustamante, ENLIT 12 ZZ
explained, accurately depicts on her state in the life of Dev. As Rohin zips the back of the dress,

he describes her firmly as sexy. “You’re sexy” , a sentence that shocked Miranda and made her

reassess the same statement which was said by Dev. (Lahiri 15) After questioning the boy, he

finally revealed an accurate description of her state in Dev’s life “It means loving someone you

don’t know”. This moment evokes a feeling of grief within Miranda as this depiction shows her

true state in Dev’s life, a stranger that he can routinely go to and make love with. All of the words

that Dev have said to her, and all of the experiences the have had together are all torn and shattered

to reveal their true form. This was confirmed with the lines from the text “Do you remember the

day we went to the Mapparium? Of course. Do you remember what we whispered to each other?

I remember. Do you remember what you said? After a slight pause, “Let’s go back to your place.”

(Lahiri 17) She neither feels empowered nor aroused by Rohin’s depiction, she now feels like the

other, excluded from Dev’s personal life serving only the purpose of someone “sexy” only to

satisfy his sexual desire. Not only does the mistress experiences the othering in the relationship

can also happen to the individuals that are interacting with the people in the relationship.

In the context of Laxmi, her appearances in the text drives the story to the point where

Miranda can have this catharsis of her own state in Dev’s life. She is also used as the character

which has strong disdain for infidelity, ironically, expressing all of these information to a mistress,

Miranda. Throughout the text, Laxmi did not feel the grief of exclusion because she did not know

that information about Miranda’s relationship is being withdrawn from her. Even though she did

not feel the othering, the exclusion of her from an important part of Miranda’s life is evident.

Various reasons within the text can explain the withdrawal of the information of Miranda’s

relationship with Dev. Primarily, it is the outright disdain that Laxmi has towards infidelity. Lines

from the text read “But Laxmi spoke of nothing else. If I were her I’d fly straight to London and

3 Bustamante, ENLIT 12 ZZ
shoot them both” and “I don’t know how she can just wait this way.” (Lahiri 9) This disdain and

updates on the infidelity experienced by her cousin can surely give enough reason to Miranda to

not give information about her own infidelity. This discomfort is evident within the text as one

line reads “…during which Laxmi reported the latest status of her cousin's marriage. Sometimes

Miranda tried to change the topic…”(Lahiri 9) While the relationship between Laxmi and Miranda

continues it gives the impression that it is not quite complete as Miranda still excludes Laxmi from

that one important aspect in her life. Subsequently, the harsh and outright disdain for infidelity

creates a certain discomfort for Miranda which results to her feeling excluded once more not just

by Dev but also Laxmi as she might despise her if she knew the truth. This adds dynamics within

the concept of othering, as it can also be a product on an initial othering by another individual.

Finally, similar to both Laxmi and Miranda, the wife, an absent yet powerful character in the story,

also experiences the othering in the relationship.

In the context of Dev’s wife, the text minimizes the exposure of this character through the

narration of the story. While her exposure is minimal, her impact within the relationship of the

characters is immense. The narrative of the story acknowledges the existence of the wife yet it

immediately dismisses her after the acknowledgement, a line from the text reads “They're for my

wife.", "She's going to India for a few weeks.” He rolled his eyes. “She's addicted to this stuff.”

Somehow, without the wife there, it didn't seem so wrong. At first Miranda and Dev spent every

night together, almost.” (Lahiri 4) The absence of the wife is used to progress the relationship of

Miranda and Dev, and within the early stages of the story, it was presented as if they were new

lovers. And within this timeframe can one prominently see the exclusion of the wife from the

relationship. Through the perspective of how the writer tells the story, the readers can view their

roles reversed as Miranda being the main woman that Dev is attracted to while the wife is just a

4 Bustamante, ENLIT 12 ZZ
side note within the relationship, lines from the text read “They went to movies at the Nickelodeon

and kissed the whole time. They ate pulled pork and cornbread in Davis Square..” (Lahiri 5) She

now becomes the other woman in the relationship, Dev having minimal time and interaction just

enough for her not to suspect anything. This narration of the story, in its early stages, somehow

erases the wife and decreases her to, at best, a background figure and just a nuisance to obtain the

affection that the man needs. And this now becomes the othering of the wife, the most prominent

exclusion done because she was outsed to a point where she was not viewed as a human anymore,

just a hindrance for the love story of Miranda and Dev to prosper, however it did not.

In the later parts of the story, the wife comes back from India and the romantic meals, hot

nights, and flirtatious make out sessions, are all reduced to a quick coupling every Sunday lasting

to at most 12 minutes. Dev now only wears sweatpants instead of suits, and the attempts of Miranda

to dress up are shunned by him as he can not see her body with a robe, and the symbol of

empowerment for Miranda, the silver cocktail dress, is now curled up and on the floor, reducing

the relationship to that of solely sexual pleasure. That reduction lead to the othering of Miranda,

the same exclusion that the two other characters experienced. These evidences show that not only

do the three characters experience the othering, but it also has a dynamic wherein they all relate

and interconnect the feeling of exclusion, they all have their own contribution to the exclusion that

they are experiencing, or present in the relationship. This happens when they do not see each other

as humans, the first sentence of the text reads “IT WAS A WIFE’S WORST NIGHTMARE”, this

statement acknowledges the feelings of jilted wife as infidelity happens in her relationship, the

human response of a person feeling betrayed. (Lahiri 1) This concept one can carry not only in the

context of a wife, but the context of interacting with people, that they all have human responses

and that promotes inclusive dialogical interaction, where one will not feel as the other but as human

5 Bustamante, ENLIT 12 ZZ
 Works Cited:

Joniak- Luthi, Agnieszka “OTHERING, EXCLUSION, AND DISCRIMINATION.” The Han:

China's Diverse Majority, University of Washington Press, SEATTLE; LONDON, 2015,
pp. 90–114. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvbtzmcr.9.

Jhumpa Lahiri. "Sexy." The Antioch Review62.3 (2004): 581.

https://bookersblogdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/sexy-by-jhumpa-
lahiri_bookers.pdf

6 Bustamante, ENLIT 12 ZZ