Lahiri's "Once in a Lifetime"

          We talked in class about how some students found it difficult to get through this short story due to the level of detail - but I didn't find myself having a hard time. Yes, it was long and there were certainly a lot of details, but I think Lahiri's varying sentence structure really helped move the piece a long.  Lahiri integrates very short sentences, like "You were nine" (483), among longer ones, which really makes the specific detail pop, preventing it from getting lost in a long-winded string of details. 
        I also thought Lahiri has a good sense of time and placement throughout the story.  Time moves and jumps several times, but the reader isn't jarred or left confused.  
        I thought Lahiri's method of characterization was interesting - she related Kaushik to her parents rather than to herself, which reveals an element of both Kaushik's and her own personality.  I liked that the mother's sickness was not revealed to the readers until the end, because otherwise we would have perhaps perceived Kaushik's family in a different way - and in a way that the author may not have wanted us to see them necessarily (I'm not sure about that though).  
         I noticed, however, that because this story reads as a sort of letter to Kaushik, Hema might be seen as an unreliable narrator.  The thoughts and feelings presented by Hema are those only she would want to reveal to Kaushik, so there is no true way to know if they are honest or complete.  I don't think this impacts the 'validity' of the piece, but it's just something to point out.  
         Something about this story that I would be interested in incorporating in my own work would be the topic of change.  This story examines how relationships change over time, especially when there has been distance between people, and I think that'd be a really interesting emotion/experience/relationship to explore with my own characters.