Sexy

The two affairs that form the crux of “Sexy” dramatize the dynamics of male power in extramarital relationships. Although Miranda’s affair with Dev is foregrounded in the story, in the background is another affair that concerns Laxmi, her co-worker. This second affair involves Laxmi’s cousin, whose husband is having an affair with a much younger woman. Laxmi’s cousin is so distraught by the affair that she has taken to her bed and is unable to care for her school-aged son. The affair seems almost to have happened on a whim: he met the woman on an international flight, “had a conversation that had changed his life,” and chose not to return home. Later in the story Laxmi tells Miranda that her cousin’s husband has had several affairs and that her cousin is willing to accept him back, not for her own sake, but for their son’s. By the end of the story, the husband has decided to pursue a divorce after a failed attempt at reconciliation, once again leaving his wife powerless and bereft.

In the second, more prominent affair, Miranda accepts her status as Dev’s lover without demanding more from him, even as her life increasingly comes to center around him and their relationship. Despite Miranda’s efforts to understand Dev’s culture and to please him, she is powerless to request more of the relationship and has no choice but to accept whatever he is willing to give. That he controls the relationship from the beginning is reflected in how their time together is based upon his schedule, which is in large part determined by his home life and his relationship with his wife. It is also apparent in her gradual disappearance into the role of the occasional lover, to the point where even her efforts to imagine a life beyond the bedroom are defeated, symbolized by the dress she purchases for an evening out but never wears for him. The end of the relationship is much more due to his negligence than a lack of interest on her part; she is finally heartbroken at the awareness that the relationship can never be more than an affair. Her desires are finally secondary to his, leaving her at the end of the story where she began—mostly alone. By presenting marital infidelity from the dual perspectives of a betrayed wife and the lover of a husband betraying his wife—neither of whom has much power—the story suggests that women’s desires are often secondary to male power in such relationships.