I for one think it is very interesting that Lahiri's collection of short stories that we have read thus far all seem to revolve around the idea of marriage, the sanctity of marriage, the art of getting married, and, briefly, the consequences of not getting/being married. I believe that the pain point Lahiri makes about marriage in these four short stories is that marriage is a necessary aspect of life, something needed in order to live happily and feel fulfilled. It is a tradition heavily ingrained in Indian culture.

Marriage might not be a concept that is deeply engraved into American culture—as is evident by the inclining divorce rate nowadays—but it is still something most women think about and dream of. Personally, it’s one of my own goals in life: get married, settle down, start a family, et cetera. I think most girls want that at some point.

Maybe that is what enables me to enjoy these stories so much. I was really glad, at the end of “A Temporary Matter” that, after the husband—angry and hurt that his wife was going to move out on her own, thus leaving him—told his wife the secret he’d been keeping, and it touched her so much that she turned out the lights again and sat down. I know that there wasn’t much more of a conclusion to this story, but I got the vibe that things were going to work out for them—they might be rough, but I felt that everything would be okay, eventually. And while we don’t know what exactly happened to Bibi, I was glad that she was “cured” in the end by the birth of her child. I’m glad that Mr. Kapasi did not soil his marriage—as I figured his thoughts were leading to—and I was glad that Mrs. Das had stuck it out with Mr. Das; I felt as if when their son was attacked by the monkeys that it brought the both of them just that much more closer together. I figured that was some kind of happy ending. And I was really especially glad for the distance between the narrator of “The Third and Final Continent” and his wife Mala had shrank, and that they had fallen in love. I am quite a sucker for happy endings, I suppose.

Although I guess not all marriages end up happily ever after, these ones seemed to (some more than others), and that is why I have really enjoyed reading Lahiri’s short stories thus far.