The Treatment Of Bibi Haldar by Jhumpa Lahiri, 1999
The magic trick:
A narrative perspective surprise about 350 words in
There is a shocking word in the middle of the third paragraph. About 350 words into the story, having established what we thought was third-person omniscient narration, we get the phrase “on the roof of our building.” Our. Our.
OK, so this is a very different kind of narration than we thought we were receiving. It’s a neat reframing and an important one too, because the story gets difficult and it’s important that the reader is able to identify with someone who is judging Bibi’s treatment.
And that’s quite a trick on Lahiri’s part.
The selection:
For Bibi’s sake we argued in favor of finding a husband. “It’s what she wanted all along,” we pointed out. But Haldar and his wife were impossible to reason with. Their rancor toward Bibi was fixed on their lips, thinner than the strings with which they tied our purchases. When we maintained that the new treatment deserved a chance, they contended, “Bibi possesses insufficient quantities of respect and self-control. She plays up her malady for the attention. The best thing is to keep her occupied, away from the trouble she invariably creates.”
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