Dear Mrs. Sen

To Mrs. Sen, who never got to drive the way she always wanted. To Mrs. Sen, who's vegetable cutting blade I envy, and to Elliot, who only got a little bit to have a Mrs. Sen.

A few days before summer vacation ended, I lay awake reflecting, as any other person would, on the year to come and the year that had ended. I feared what was to come, and as I looked at my sister, asleep in her bed, I longed to be back in the perfection of 2nd grade, or shall I just say, elementary school, where drawing a picture seemed to be a lot of work.

I saw that 8th grade was here and there were no more summer days to anticipate the arrival.

But then again, I hadn't touched my blog since August, and I did know that with a new year came new reading, and with new reading came new writing.

I was next to my sister Lois when my mom came up to me. It was about 11:00 and we were both reading. My sister is one of the biggest readers I know, I believe she read 15 books over the summer. As much of a committed reader as I am, I could never, ever do that. I was reading a Woody Allen book that was funny, but didn't quench my longing for a satisfying book to end the vacation. Over the summer I never stopped reading, but I did lose touch a bit, and I feel like I got caught up in a vacation mode that it wasn't as much of a reflex to pick up a book the minute I saw as it was before.

Throughout reading the Woody Allen book, my mom could also see, as well as me, that I wasn't loving it. For a while before then my mom kept trying to introduce me to a writer whose name I never could pronounce, thus I wasn't ever going to read it. Maybe the fact that I wasn't enjoying what was currently in my hands motivated me to try this mysterious author.

And now, Jhumpa Lahiri has come into my life. As I said while describing her writing to my English teacher Ms. Robbins at the beginning of the year, her words are so smooth and in a way give off a creamy factor. There's such a flow and in a way it's easy to read everything she has to say. Jhumpa, I feel , has the ability that not many authors have which is to be able to appeal to all audiences. And while my sister Minna would never be able to read Jhumpa Lahiri's book on her own, she sure could listen and I promise you she would like it.

Anyway, on the occasion of this fine day where I get to write my first blog entry of the year, I decided (obviously) to devote it to Jhumpa Lahiri, especially one of her short stories from the book Interpreter of Maladies, "Mrs. Sen."

I'm sorry, but I think Mrs. Sen is just the coolest person in the world. I can't get over it.

She does this thing where she sits on the floor, newspapers laid out everywhere, and she cuts vegetables. Sometimes, when she's done, she puts them in a pot and makes dinner, and sometimes she just throws them out.

And why would cutting vegetables be such an important element in my annotating of books? Well, Jhumpa, being Indian herself, incorporates very important craft moves intentionally. In Jhumpa Lahiri's stories, it's as if she's made a little stamp on each and every character; every character has left India so go live some where else. This cutting of vegetables just brings up the fact that this is one of the things that Mrs. Sen did back at home.

One of my favorite parts of the story is when Mrs. Sen is shares a story with Elliot, whom she babysits after school. Mrs. Sen tells Elliot of how, back in India, she and all of her friends and her mother and all of her friends you sit to around for hours gossiping, and yes, cutting vegetables.

Yesterday at the Bard Assessment I responded to a poem about shooting a basket while playing basketball. I had a hard time digging deep and I didn't find myself having as many annotations as I did for, say, Charlotte's Web; but I did find one thing that reminded me of the little idea of cutting vegetables becoming so much. I found a line in the poem that consisted of 3 words, but said so, so much. I read it thinking about how beautiful and hard I think it is as a writer to get across a bigger message is something so small.

Though maybe cutting vegetables isn't as much of a message as what I read in the poem, it still had more meaning to me then I thought it would the first time I read it. I also think it's such a treat when you rarely come across little crafts like that, and I hope that for the few occasions I do, I hope to soak up as much of its goodness as I possibly can.

Here's to another great year of blogging!
Audrey:)