THE THIRD AND FINAL CONTINENT

JHUMPA LAHIRI

WHEN AND WHERE:

LONDON, ENGLAND, CAMBRIDGE, AND BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS, 1969

CHARACTERS:
THE Y OUNG INDIAN IMMIGRANT MAN (NARRATOR) The young character whose ambition led
him to travel abroad. His struggles to adjust to his new home and new bride took him
to attend many great learning institutions.
MALA A dutiful daughter, a dutiful wife. She doesnt really break out of this mood, but
becomes something more than she could have.
MRS. C ROFT - The elderly widow landlady who served as the eccentric heroine who
managed to help the young Indian man feel less lonely. She showed him qualities in his
wife that he had not noticed and provides him with a model for his future life. She is
one of the great modern characters. Her life is a mystery what she had been doing for
the 103 years prior to meeting the narrator, besides playing the piano. But her own
way of communicating, and her sense of decorum especially when her daughter and
the narrator are alone upstairs that is precious.
HELEN CROFT The daughter of Mrs. Croft who exemplifies a woman of modern age

THEME:
LIFE IS PRETTY MUCH MADE OF ORDINARY MOMENTS , BUT SOMETIMES WE ARE GIVEN SPECIAL GIFTS TO SEE
OUR LIFE S MOMENTS AGAIN AND LIVE OUR LIFE FRESH AND CREATE SOMETHING EXTRAORDINARY .

SUMMARY:
The young Indian man left India in 1964 with a certificate in commerce. He sailed on the S.S.
Roma, an Italian cargo vessel, across the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, The Mediterranean, and
finally to England. He lived in London, particularly in Finsbury Park, together with other
penniless Bengali bachelors like him who struggled to educate and establish themselves
abroad. He attended lectures at L.S.E. and worked at the university library to get by. He lived in
a small room together with other two or three bachelors, helping one another in making them
survive with what they have. But every now and then, someone in their house moved out to live
with a woman whom his family back in Calcutta had determined he has to wed. It was when he
was 36 years old in 1969 that his own marriage was arranged and at around the same time, he
was given a full job opportunity in America in a processing department of a library at MIT. Since
it was a great honor for him to be hired by a world-famous university and his salary was
generous enough to support a wife, he obtained a green card, and prepared to travel farther
still.

When he had enough money for plane transportation, he first flew to Calcutta to attend his
wedding, and a week later to Boston for him to begin his job. While on his way to Boston in his
flight, he learned a lot of things about North America the peoples way of life and their daily
practices. When the plane began its descent over Boston Harbor, President Nixon had had
declared a national holiday: two American men had landed on the moon.

He spent his first night at the Y.M.C.A. in Central Square, Cambridge, an inexpensive
accommodation recommended by his guidebook which was within walking distance of M.I.T. In
that abode, cooking was strictly forbidden. Throughout the night, the noise was constantly
distracting, at times suffocating. He got too tired to pace the gloomy corridors of the Y.M.C.A. in
his pajamas. Instead he sat at the desk and stared out the window. In the morning, he reported
to his job at the Dewey Library. He also opened a bank account, rented a post-office box, and
bought a plastic bowl and a spoon. He went to the supermarket, wandering up and down the
aisles, and comparing prices with those in England and in the end, bought a carton of milk and
a box of cornflakes.

Doing all these things was really new to him, and in a week he had adjusted, more or less. He
ate cornflakes and milk morning and night, and bought some bananas for variety. Despite of
the uneasiness in his environment, he resolved to stay at the Y.M.C.A. for six weeks, until his
wife's passport and green card were ready. Once she arrived he would have to rent a proper
apartment, and from time to time he studied the classified section of the newspaper, or
stopped in at the housing office at M.I.T. during his lunch break to see what was available. It
was in this manner that he discovered a room for immediate occupancy, in a house on a quiet
street, the listing said, for eight dollars per week. He dialed the number from a pay telephone,
and to his luck, he was able to avail the room for the landlady only accepts boys from Harvard
or Tech.

He was given an address and an appointment for seven o'clock that evening. Thirty minutes
before the hour he set out. He turned down a street shaded with trees, perpendicular to
Massachusetts Avenue. In spite of the heat he wore a coat and tie, regarding the event as he
would any other interview; he had never lived in the home of a person who was not Indian.

The house was owned by a tiny, extremely old woman. A mass of snowy hair was arranged like
a small sack on top of her head. As he stepped into the house she sat down on a wooden bench
positioned at the bottom of a narrow carpeted staircase. Once she was settled on the bench, in
a small pool of light, she peered up at me, giving me her undivided attention. She wore a long
black skirt that spread like a stiff tent to the floor, and a starched white shirt edged with ruffles
at the throat and cuffs. Her hands, folded together in her lap, had long pallid fingers, with
swollen knuckles and tough yellow nails. Age had battered her features so that she almost
resembled a man, with sharp, shrunken eyes and prominent creases on either side of her nose.
Her lips, chapped and faded, had nearly disappeared, and her eyebrows were missing
altogether. Nevertheless she looked fierce.

His encounter with the landlady had become a daily routine between him and the mysterious
woman. He knew nothing about the ladys past, but then he felt somewhat comfortable living
with the old non-Indian lady, until he knew that this old woman had been alive for already 103
years. When he knew that fact, he started to care and worry for the old woman, as he
wondered how could that old woman live with herself alone when in fact she is already 103
years old?

That evening, when Helen had gone and he and Mrs. Croft were alone again, he began to worry.
Now that he knew how very old she was, he worried that something would happen to her in the
middle of the night, or when he was out during the day. As vigorous as her voice was, and
imperious as she seemed, he knew that even a scratch or a cough could kill a person that old;
each day she lived, he knew, was something of a miracle. Helen didn't seem concerned. She
came and went, bringing soup for Mrs. Croft, one Sunday after the next.

In this manner the six weeks of that summer passed. He came home each evening, after his
hours at the library, and spent a few minutes on the piano bench with Mrs. Croft. Some
evenings he sat beside her long after she had drifted off to sleep, still in awe of how many years
she had spent on this earth.
He was not touched by her words. They had spent only a handful of days in each other's
company. And yet they were bound together; for six weeks she had worn an iron bangle on her
wrist, and applied vermillion powder to the part in her hair, to signify to the world that she was
a bride. In those six weeks he regarded her arrival as he would the arrival of a coming month,
or seasonsomething inevitable, but meaningless at the time. So little did he know her that,
while details of her face sometimes rose to my memory, he could not conjure up the whole of it.

When Mala had come to live with him, he waited to get used to her, to her presence at his side,
at his table and in his bed, but a week later they were still strangers. He still was not used to
coming home to an apartment that smelled of steamed rice, and finding that the basin in the
bathroom was always wiped clean, our two toothbrushes lying side by side, a cake of Pears
soap residing in the soap dish. He was not used to the fragrance of the coconut oil she rubbed
every other night into her scalp, or the delicate sound her bracelets made as she moved about
the apartment. In the mornings she was always awake before he was. The first morning when
he came into the kitchen she had heated up the leftover sand set a plate with a spoonful of salt
on its edge, assuming he would eat rice for breakfast, as most Bengali husbands did. He told
her cereal would do, and the next morning when he came into the kitchen she had already
poured the cornflakes into his bowl. One morning she walked with me to M.I.T., where he gave
her a short tour of the campus. The next morning before he left for work she asked me for a few
dollars. He parted with them reluctantly, but he knew that this, too, was now normal. When he
came home from work there was a potato peeler in the kitchen drawer, and a tablecloth on the
table, and chicken curry made with fresh garlic and ginger on the stove. After dinner he read
the newspaper, while Mala sat at the kitchen table, working on a cardigan for herself with more
of the blue wool, or writing letters home.

On Friday, he suggested going out. Mala set down her knitting and disappeared into the
bathroom. When she emerged he regretted the suggestion; she had put on a silk sari and extra
bracelets, and coiled her hair with a flattering side part on top of her head. She was prepared as
if for a party, or at the very least for the cinema, but he had no such destination in mind. The
evening was balmy. We walked several blocks down Massachusetts Avenue, looking into the
windows of restaurants and shops. Then, without thinking, he led her down the quiet street
where for so many nights he had walked alone. They visited Mrs. Crofts house.

When they entered the house, they found Mrs. Croft with her body laid back on the sofa. She
had broken her hip after falling from the bench. He talked with Mrs. Croft when the landlady
noticed Mala. She asked him, and he told her that Mala was his wife. Mrs. Croft observed Mala,
and then she proclaimed that Mala was a perfect lady. He laughed, and it was the first time that
they looked at each other and smiled.

That moment at Mrs. Crofts parlor was the moment when the distance between him and Mala
began to lessen. Although they were not yet fully in love, theyve spent together the following
months as a sort of their honeymoon.

It was Mala who consoled him when, reading the Globe one evening, he came across Mrs.
Croft's obituary. He had not thought of her in several monthsby then those six weeks of the
summer were already a remote interlude in his pastbut when he learned of her death he was
stricken, so much so that when Mala looked up from her knitting she found him staring at the
wall, unable to speak. Mrs. Croft's was the first death he mourned in America, for hers was the
first life he had admired; she had left this world at last, ancient and alone, never to return.

After a few years later, they lived together happily, and had a son. And every time they passed
along Mrs. Crofts street, he always pointed her house, and tell his son that it was his first home
 that he had lived in America. And Mala would smile, remembering that once upon a time they
were both strangers with one another.

SUBMITTED BY: FRENZIE MAE V. RIVERA 1-ALPHA NAUTICAL