Response to Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Once in a Lifetime”

Lahiri’s story encompasses many themes despite its relative brevity, so it is difficult to isolate any one of them and promote them to the prestigious title of “main theme.” I would contend that two of the larger ones could be described as a girl coming of age and illusions of a good life. The entirety of the story is told from the perspective of a middle school-aged girl named Hema. Her account is specifically addressed to a boy who, along with his mother and father, stayed in her house for several weeks one winter, Kaushik. Through intimate descriptions, Hema relates the colors, smells, textures, and sounds of her experience with this span of time.

I loved the way images drove this story. A great example of an image-driven memory appears on the second page which reads “I stood shivering, my fingertips puckered and white, as my mother threaded a length of thick drawstring through the giant waist of the pajamas with a safety pin, gathering up the stiff material bit by bit and then knotting the drawstring tightly at my stomach.” In this, I not only got an incredibly clear picture and sensory experience of this moment but also felt the character’s unease and discomfort.

            Characterization was also something that worked really well for this piece. Hema was especially vivid, and Lahiri did a wonderful job capturing the insecure thoughts of an adolescent girl. I particularly enjoyed how Hema kept expressing things like “I took it personally that nothing had inspired you” and “I felt flattered, though I had nothing to do with the weather,” which conveyed her pubescent self-consciousness in every situation even if she was not directly involved. All in all, Lahiri creates an engaging and enjoyable experience through her masterful use of description and characterization, two excellent literary aspects that I would be remiss not to pursue in my own writing.