Olga Tovar
English Literature and Writing
Professor Johnson
9 February 2015

Forbidden Love

We have all experienced it. Maybe not everybody, but surely many people, and it sure isn’t the best feeling in the world. Falling in love or being attracted to someone, whom we deeply know doesn’t feel the same way, but we try to get carried away, because something of what they say, and another thing is what they do, actions speak lauder that words. A forbidden love is what Miranda experiences on Jhumpa Larihi’s story “Sexy”. The story starts with Miranda’s co-worker Laxmi, complaining of the behavior of her cousins husband, who had recently decided to go live with his mistress to London. This will be an important fact in how Miranda feels on the inside, and how she must act on the outside with Laxmi, probably her only friend. Miranda couldn’t bare the idea of telling Laxmi, because she was also playing the roll of a mistress, a roll that Laxmi openly and clearly despites. Laxmi said, shaking her head. "Not me. If my husband so much as looked at another woman I'd change the locks” (Lahiri), that statement says a lot about Laxmi’s tough behavior, and makes it impossible for Miranda to talk openly with her about her romance with Dev. The fact that Miranda must keep all to herself, makes it worse for her, because all of the doubts and the need of any advice, she has to look it up by herself in herself. Miranda and Dev met at a department store while he was buying some products for his wife, but that small detail didn’t stop Miranda to move forward towards a romance with him. It is clear how Miranda felt in love with him since the moment he saw him, she always thought he was perfect, even with the long hair that he didn’t like. It is also very clear how Miranda felt in love with him, he was handsome, wealthy, and was very attentive with her “Dev was the first always to pay for things, and hold doors open, and reach across a table in a restaurant to kiss her hand. He was the first to bring her a bouquet of flowers so immense she'd had to split it up into all six of her drinking glasses, and the first to whisper her name again and again when they made love” (Lahiri), that that Miranda wasn’t so used to, because she was a very lonely person and the fact that she found a man that gave her so much attention and also good looking with a calm and attractive personality was something very different to her. As the story develops we can see how little by little Miranda starts seeing everything instead with her heart but with her head. When Dev starts disappearing for days, or not showing her as much attention than before. What makes her come to her senses, is at the end, when she babysits