Ad Man

The story “Jon,” the first one in Saunders’ collection, seemed like the weirdest story out of everything we had read up to that point. “Insanely inventive,” a quote from a New York Times book review on the front cover, is a good way to describe it. Jon, or Randy, works in this TV ad evaluation place,  and he is programmed so that his mind is taken up by every commercial he has ever seen. The main point I wanted to make is that I think he makes the right choice when he decides to go “Out” of this life and become a common person once again, but first I want to go back to a few of my favorite ads that are imprinted in his mind.

When Jon describes making love for the first time, he makes an elaborate comparison to Honey Grahams: “the stream of milk and the stream of honey enjoin to make that river of sweet-tasting goodness, […] they just become one fluid, this like honey/milk combo” (Saunders 26).

There is one meaningful moment when Carolyn is looking at Jon for a long time, anxious and worried for what is going to become of him, and the first thing that comes ­­to Jon’s mind is an ad about a Claymation chicken that gets crushed.

When Jon remembers his experience as a kid with fishing, he remembers an ad about Jesus making fish and loafs of bread. I loved this line: “…and then that one dude goes, Lord, this bread is dry, can you not summon up some ButterSub?”

Much of Jon’s life is made up of the ads he sees. His emotions, his feelings, his experiences, everything seems to be based on some commercial on TV. It often makes his narration funny and makes it easy for Jon to make a joke referencing some ad everyone around him is familiar with. There are some moments, however, when he would have been able to come up with more meaningful response and made a moment with Carolyn or another person more real if he didn’t speak in ads and had his own ideas and his own voice.

I think in the end Jon makes the right decision when he chooses to follow Carolyn and get the chip taken out of his neck. They’ll both talk nonsense at first but I have hope that the old lady was telling the truth and after a year or two they would be able to become normal people. They’ll still be able to reference commercials and have their private jokes, but their minds wouldn’t be taken over by these ads, and they would be able to have their own feelings and tell each other things they themselves believe in, rather than what they were preached in LI 6832934857.

Sanjeev vs. Twinkle

One of my favorite stories in “The Interpreter of Maladies” was the story This House is Blessed. It’s hilarious how ridiculous and gaudy all of Twinkle’s Christian “treasures” are and yet how much she cherishes them. I think most people in our class discussion sided with Twinkle, saying that the love for these objects is only a small whim and more of a joke for her than anything near a potential conversion, and that Sanjeev just isn’t in on the joke and needs to take things less seriously. I kind of see that and think the couple could have been happier if Sanjeev went along with Twinkle’s little wishes. When I was reading the story, however, I had different feelings about Twinkle and her obsession and felt myself siding much more with Sanjeev.

Throughout the story, Twinkle reminded me of a stubborn child who must always get her way and will find new arguments or excuses every time she is accused of something. She always gets hyper-excited whenever she finds a new Christian object in the house, yelling to Sanjeev “Guess what I found,” claiming that the huge Christ poster must be put up because it’s “so spectacular,” and bragging to her girlfriends that “each day is like a treasure hunt.”  When Twinkle finds the Virgin Mary statue in the yard, Sanjeev runs up to find that she had "collapsed on the grass, dissolved in nearly silent laughter,” from joy, like the reaction of a toddler to something exciting.

Of course it’s not a bad thing to sometimes have the personality of a little child and to find little things in life that bring you happiness, but I kept getting a feeling that maybe the main reason that Twinkle is so staunch about keeping the Christian paraphernalia isn’t as much her being inspired and fascinated by it as knowing that it annoys Sanjeev. This is only a theory and maybe is wrong, but it seemed like Twinkle has many characteristics of a small child, such as forming a strong opinion about something just because someone else has another opinion, to be able to argue and win the fight. We see Twinkle pleading, making excuses and compromises, and ending up almost storming out of the house half-naked to get her way and have the things she found displayed where she wants them. Kids often go through everything they can think of to get their parent to buy them something or let them do something, until in the most extreme cases it gets to tears, and then the parents often concede. I felt like Twinkle felt exactly in that role.

I like Twinkle for being so open and honest and for being the heart of the party when Sanjeev’s friends come over, but I do think she’s pretty silly and childish. I have a feeling that, if Sanjeev gave let her always have her way with keeping the religious figures and displaying them on the mantelpiece, she would soon get bored of this new passion and find something else to nag him about. I hope that once they live together longer, they might learn to understand each other better and become happier. But for now, I’m probably more on Sanjeev’s side.

Mrs. Sen and Love for Food

One of the characters from the Interpreter of Maladies I felt the most attached to is Mrs. Sen, and only after finishing the story I realized that maybe it’s because I’ve never seen a character who is a more exact copy of my grandmother. Maybe my grandma doesn’t have a full closet of saris or wear bright red lipstick, but I’m pretty sure the only things she cares about in her life are family and… food! (well, and maybe soccer matches) And I actually think there is nothing she likes more than fish. When I go to Russia in the summer, my grandmother seems to have a goal to feed me and my mom the most nutritious, freshest food, and get us to eat as much as possible. When I call her on a weekend, at any time I’ve learned to expect her to have to run turn off the stove because she has something cooking. Sometimes my mom and I can’t stand the food anymore, but I think after reading this story I sort of understand my grandmother better.

The first thing that appeals to Elliot about Mrs. Sen is her cooking. “He especially enjoyed watching Mrs. Sen as she chopped things […].” No wonder. I imagined if I were a little boy, I would have been fascinated by this lady’s cooking. 

“[…] she took whole vegetables between her hands and hacked them apart: cauliflower, cabbage, butternut squash. She split things in half, then quarters, speedily producing florets, cubes, slices, and shreds. She could peel a potato in seconds.”

It’s not just the cooking but also Mrs. Sen’s stories about her life in India that drew Elliot closer to his baby-sitter with each visit. One day, she explains the mysterious hour-long daily chopping routine by telling Elliot about a tradition in her “home”:

“’Whenever there is a wedding in the family, […] or a large celebration of any kind, my mother sends out word in the evening [and]  all the neighborhood women […]  sit in an enormous circle on the roof of our building, laughing and gossiping and slicing fifty kilos of vegetables through the night.”

The impression I got is that, yes, Mrs. Sen loves to have a good meal and to get a fresh fish from the store, but what’s more important isn’t the food itself but the connections of these foods to her heritage and to her home in India. While Mr. Sen is usually away at his work teaching classes, socializing with his American colleagues and students and slowly becoming more American himself, Mrs. Sen always wants to greet him with a traditional Indian dinner and to stick to the traditions of the many generations of her family.

It’s interesting what contrast Elliot sees between Mrs. Sen and his mother. Of course there are the cultural differences in clothing and the way they keep their homes, but I wanted to focus on food and cooking. It’s not just for her husband that Mrs. Sen cooks. When Elliot is over, she always makes sure he has enough food, giving him snacks like crackers with peanut butter, Popsicles, “peeled wedges of an orange, or lightly salted

peanuts, which she had already shelled,” and any food she and Mr. Sen happen to be eating while Elliot is over. Every day when Elliot’s mom comes to pick her up, Mrs. Sen makes sure to have her come inside and have some food as well (which Elliot’s mom never likes but calls “delicious” out of politeness). In contrast, we see Elliot’s mother who never eats lunch herself and, when she comes home, drinks wine and gorges herself on bread with cheese, often leaving the store-bought pizza for Elliot to eat alone. It’s true that Elliot’s mother can’t afford to spend the whole day cooking at home like Mrs. Sen, and I think Elliot understand that and seems to be okay with that lifestyle, but he’s surprised to see the values of his Indian babysitter so different from his mother’s. I also often got a feeling that he respects Mrs. Sen for putting so much care into preparing food and, maybe without realizing it, sometimes wishes his mother was more like her.

For Mrs. Sen, food helps her retain her family’s culture and remember her life before she came to America. It’s not as much about the pleasure of eating good food as the pleasure from sharing a traditional meal with someone. Somehow this care about food made Mrs. Sen very appealing to me, especially after contrasting her to Elliot’s mother and thinking about many other typical Americans who don’t consider family meals or family time in general as important.

Getting back to my grandma, I think the biggest reason she takes such care to cook a lot when my mom and I come over is to keep us healthy and vitaminized, but another big reason must be that it’s a family tradition. She wants me to have the traditional Russian food that can’t be quite the same if we cook it with American products, and she wants my mom to enjoy traditional well-cooked meals that she wouldn’t have enough time to cook after she gets back from work. My grandma enjoys sitting at a table and drinking tea and talking after each meal. I think I will now appreciate her efforts to feed me even when I’m full a little bit more.