Sexy

Flashback is a narrative time shift in which the past is portrayed, often as a memory in the mind of a character. In “Sexy,” flashback always occurs inside Miranda’s point of view and is generally associated with her romantic relationship with Dev. It occurs in the first half of the story and then stops, informing the shape and meaning of the narrative. 

Miranda’s flashbacks are her recollection of her affair with Dev, before the story’s present. Lahiri situating the relationship as existing in Miranda’s memory means that is characterized by longing and, perhaps, fantasy: by the time of the story’s action, the high point of Miranda’s affair with Dev is already in the past. The reader is informed of the affair’s start and trajectory through the prism of Miranda’s recollections, which deliberately allows for open questions around her reliability as a narrator, the nature of memory, and the escapist nature of the affair itself. In one of these flashbacks, the reader is told “Miranda thought him perfect, and refused to imagine him any other way” (90). This language encapsulates the paradox of their relationship; she spends most of her time remembering and/or imagining Dev, and her “refusal to imagine” him differently here hints at willfulness. As the narrative shifts from being predominantly flashback to being in the present, it is as if Miranda’s focus is moving away from the lyrical melancholic passages of past desire and facing up to the mundane and damaging reality of their affair. 

The final flashback in the story contains Miranda’s flashback to childhood and is notably different in character, detailing the shame she feels at her memory of the Indian Dixit family who was treated with open prejudice in the neighborhood, and her own response to them. This flashback sits at the center of the story and marks a shift in its tone and momentum: it segues straight into a passage about how she sees “deserts and elephants, marble pavilions” (91) when she and Dev make love, and how she now attempts to engage with the Bengali language and culture. This final flashback contextualizes Miranda’s fascination with Dev, Laxmi, and their Indian heritage, suggesting that she is at least partly motivated by shame and the need for performative engagement that, she hopes, will show she is not prejudiced. After this crux in the narrative, Miranda’s relationship with Dev is described in the present and no more flashbacks occur: after the childhood memory has been illuminated, the story gives an increasing sense that the affair has served its purpose in assuaging Miranda’s cultural shame.