Sexy by Jhumpa Lahiri

Madhuri Dixit and Shah Rukh Khan in Devdas.

I mentioned in my review of Chekhov’s "The Lady with the Little Dog" how hard it must be to write a memorable story about an affair without sliding into boredom or cliché. Jhumpa Lahiri takes on that challenge in Sexy and while not spectacular, it’s thoughtful, observant, and refreshingly restrained. There is a pervasive melancholy that runs throughout the story, which adds to the emotional resonance. The story is less interested in scandal and more interested in exploring loneliness and the desperate need for genuine connection. 

Miranda is a white woman in her twenties who becomes involved with Dev, a married Indian man. It's a very simple story, but Lahiri fills it with small, telling details that reveal Miranda’s inner life, especially her shaky sense of self-worth. Despite going against her better judgment, she has accepted her position as the "other woman" knowing she’s on the outside of Dev’s real life. Her whiteness only reinforces that distance. A part of her is holding onto that tiny shred of hope that he might leave his wife one day and then they can be together happily. As the story unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear to her that Dev is never going to leave his wife.

In response, Miranda half-consciously tries to fold herself into Dev’s world. She watches Bollywood movies, befriends her coworker Laxmi, and latches onto pieces of Indian culture as if they might bring her closer to him emotionally. But these gestures feel forced and Lahiri subtly shows how cultural curiosity can slide into self-deception when it’s fueled by romantic desperation.

There is the obvious parallel between Miranda’s affair and the story Laxmi tells about her cousin’s marriage falling apart because the husband ran off with a younger woman. The echo is impossible to ignore, even if Miranda would rather not hear it. The title word, “sexy,” comes into focus when Miranda babysits Rohin, Laxmi’s cousin's son. Rohin casually calls her this, which she believes he’s heard elsewhere without fully understanding it's meaning. When he asks her what it means, she tells him: “loving someone you don’t know.” It’s a deceptively simple line. For Rohin, it's just another provocative word in our sex-obsessed western culture. For Miranda, it suddenly becomes a painfully accurate description of her own situation. 

Dev finds Miranda sexy, but only in the shallowest sense. Their relationship is almost entirely physical. She has fallen for him emotionally, while he remains detached, comfortable keeping her in a separate, consequence-free box. In that way, “sexy” becomes less about attraction and more about distance. Instead, it becomes desire without intimacy and closeness without real knowledge of the other person. I appreciate that Lahiri doesn’t judge her characters harshly and doesn’t let them off the hook either. Sexy is a story about longing, cultural misalignment and  self-deception. It captures that very human habit of building elaborate narratives in our own heads as a way to feel special or loved, especially when the reality of the relationship is very different. We convince ourselves that small gestures mean more than they do, that emotional distance is temporary, that silence is complicated rather than dismissive. These stories become a form of comfort, even protection, allowing us to hold onto desire without fully confronting disappointment. Lahiri shows how fragile and persuasive these internal narratives can be and how devastating it is when they finally collide with the truth.