Jhumpa Lahiri is an Indian-American author who enjoys writing primarily about the experiences of other Indian-Americans. She is a very successful author. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her first novel, and her fiction often appears in the New Yorker. One such work from 1998 is a short story, “A Temporary Matter,” about a husband and wife, Shukumar and Shoba, whose electricity will be temporarily cut off for an hour for five days. It seems simple enough, but as you read the story you discover that maybe it's their marriage that could be the "temporary affair" in itself. The title is interesting from the start. It gives us hints about the setting, the characters and their situation, and sets the whole theme of the story. The story revolves around two big things, the death of a baby and the breakdown of Shukumar and Shoba's marriage. While that is the case, it also focuses a lot on the little things. Lahiri uses small details to emphasize the pain and lack of communication between Shukumar and Shoba. When Shukumar thinks about the last time he saw Shoba pregnant, he doesn't remember if she looked happy or sad, he remembers much smaller things, like the taxi. “Whenever he thought about that moment, the last moment he saw Shoba pregnant, it was the taxi he remembered most, a station wagon, painted red with blue letters. It was cavernous compared to their own car. Although Shukumar was six feet tall and with hands too large to rest comfortably in the pockets of his jeans, he felt dwarfed in the back seat. As thoughtless as it may seem, this is actually how many people remember important events in their lives. Important events do not pass through our memory in sequential narratives, but in a series of random feelings, meaning...... middle of paper ... all the small, but important details. In the end, we understand that all this time Shoba was trying to tell Shukumar that she was looking for apartments and that she finally found one. Shukumar is relieved, but disgusted at the idea that she wants to live apart from him. This pushes him to share information sacred to Shoba in the hopes that it would always be his mystery; the sex of their baby. We find ourselves facing a cliffhanger. All we know is the information provided by the last sentence: "They cried together, for the first time in their lives, for what they now knew." » Perhaps their tears are a sign that they are coming together to grieve. This marks another turning point in their lives, much like when they lost their child. We just don't know if this turning point is them staying together or if they're crying knowing they're breaking up..