Interpreter of Maladies: Style 1 key example

The following passage captures Lahiri’s straightforward style alongside her use of imagery:

[T]hey had two boys, Ronny and Bobby, who appeared very close in age and had teeth covered in a network of flashing silver wires. The family looked Indian but dressed as foreigners did, the children in stiff, brightly colored clothing and caps with translucent visors. Mr. Kapasi was accustomed to foreign tourists; he was assigned to them regularly because he could speak English. Yesterday he had driven an elderly couple from Scotland, both with spotted faces and fluffy white hair so thin it exposed their sunburnt scalps.

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Here Lahiri describes the tourists Mr. Kapasi works with (as a tour guide) with simple words and sentences. The way she uses imagery is not extravagant but still notable, as seen in her description of braces as “a network of flashing silver wires” and her notes about the Das children’s “stiff, brightly colored clothing” and the Scottish couple’s “spotted faces and fluffy white hair so thin it exposed their sunburnt scalps.”

Though Lahiri does not directly describe Mr. Kapasi’s feelings about his clients’ various appearances here, she hints at his sense of alienation from them in the way she uses language. For example, Mr. Kapasi’s unusual description of the children’s braces communicates that it’s likely he does not know what braces are (since cosmetic orthodontic treatments like this would not have been common in India at the time). Likewise, by zeroing in on the details about the “stiffness” of the children’s clothes and the redness of the Scottish couple’s scalps, Lahiri suggests that Mr. Kapasi is not often exposed to certain Western clothing textures or pale skin and views them as strange. In this way, Lahiri’s style, though sparse, contains important information about the characters and especially the culture clashes between them.