Response to "Once in a Lifetime"

This is a beautiful story by Jhumpa Lahiri. The main character of this story is a young girl named Hema.  When the story begins she is six years old, but most of the story takes place when she is around thirteen.  The story is told in first person, but she is addressing one of the other characters in the story, named Kaushik.  When she is six and Kaushik is nine, her family throws Kaushik's family a going away party.  They move back to India from Cambridge.  But after about seven or eight years, Kaushik's family moves back and stays with Hema's family.  They seem to be very American and materialistic.  They don't have very good manners, especially compared to the very traditional habits of Hema's family.  Kaushik in particular seems to be very distant and ungrateful for the hospitality he is shown.  The whole conflict of the story seems to be trying to understand why he acts that way and what will happen to the growing tension between the families.  When it snows at the house, Kaushik shows some happiness and opens up to Hema a bit.  He reveals to her that his mother is dying of breast cancer, and that is why they moved back and she is living sort of like royalty.  Hema is terrified that a dying person is living in her house.  She is not used to the idea of death.  I believe this new knowledge of death is a farewell to the shelter of her childhood.

I get the idea that the narrator never talked to Kaushik again.  I think that the fact that she address him in the story is a very interesting method to use.  Kaushik's mother's cancer was a secret and Hema always kept the secret.  If she were to tell this story in any other fashion she would be breaking her promise to keep it secret.

The was no particular desire of the main character, except to gain the affections of Kaushik which I think was weak, but it worked with all the conflict going on.  I liked how she didn't reveal much about it except what the parents talked about at night.  When you're young you don't really know the details of the drama that goes on with your parents unless you catch glimpses of it like that.