Interpreter of Maladies: "The Third and Final Continent"

I left India in 1964 with a certificate in commerce and the equivalent, in those days, of ten dollars to my name.

I spent my first night at the YMCA in Central Square, Cambridge, an inexpensive accommodation recommended by my guidebook.

Each night I had to keep the window wide open; it was the only source of air in the stifling room, and the noise was intolerable.

Each night I had to keep the window wide open; it was the only source of air in the stifling room, and the noise was intolerable.

“Who is speaking?’’ a woman demanded. Her voice was bold and clamorous.

In the mornings when I left for the library Mrs. Croft was either hidden away in her bedroom, on the other side of the staircase, or she was sitting on the bench, oblivious to my presence, listening to the news or classical music on the radio.

For the first time Mrs. Croft seemed vulnerable.

I was mortified. I had assumed Mrs. Croft was in her eighties, perhaps as old as ninety. I had never known a person who had lived for over a century. That this person was a widow who lived alone mortified me further still. It was widowhood that had driven my own mother insane.

Although Helen had seemed friendly enough, a small part of me worried that she might accuse me of negligence if anything were to happen.

I remembered my first days in London, learning how to take the Tube to Russell Square, riding an escalator for the first time, being unable to understand that when the man cried “piper” it meant “paper," being unable to decipher, for a whole year, that the conductor said "mind the gap” as the train pulled away from each station. Like me, Mala had traveled far from home, not knowing where she was going, or what she would find, for no reason other than to be my wife.