Interpreter of Maladies

Shukumar and his wife, Shoba, receive a notice from the city that their street in a Boston neighborhood will have its power turned off for one hour each evening at eight o’clock for the next five days. The couple has suffered a miscarriage in the past six months, and Shukumar was at a conference out of town when it happened and did not return until after the baby was gone. Now the two of them are withdrawn and distant with each other, though they cope in different ways. Shukumar is a graduate student who has been staying home to work on his dissertation, and he does not leave the house for days at a time; Shoba has taken on a great deal of extra work and has stopped taking care of her appearance in the way she used to prioritize.

On the first night of the power outage, Shukumar makes dinner and realizes it won’t be ready in time; Shoba says they will have to eat in the dark. As she showers, he thinks about the ways she used to be organized and prepared, particularly the full pantry she kept and the freezer full of homemade foods, all of which have been used up in the past six months.