which’s apparently Indian, yet, foreign. Mr Das even seems to take pride in his status as a stranger, telling Mr Kapasi about his American roots with an “air of sudden confidence. “The members of the Das family embody a different cultural identity in the way they dress, speak and in the way they behave. Mr Das takes pictures of things with his camera that are normal in the Indian context. Mr Das is positioned as a tourist despite his ethnic background. The episode of extra-marital relation and keeping it secret has psychologically affected Mrs Das, who prefers Mr Kapasi to her husband to talk about her past, sometimes resulted in her mental alienation and imbalance as she expresses her burden as the text depicts; ‘Don’t you see? For eight years I haven’t been able to express this to anybody, not to friends, certainly not to Raj. He doesn’t even suspect it. I feel terrible looking at my children and at Raj always terrible. I have terrible urges, Mr Kapasi, to throw things away. One day, I had the urge to throw everything. Don’t you think it is unhealthy?’(Page 65, IoM). The ‘malady’ which is making Mrs Das suffer is a clear instance of cultural and psychological conflict. The story of infidelity, multi-cultures, sense of guilt continues onto the next story, “Sexy” too. This story revolves around Devajit ‘Dev’ Mitra, a married Indian residing in Michigan and Miranda, with whom Dev is having an affair. Miranda is a lady who seeks sexual pleasure to be relieved from boredom and loneliness. Miranda gets to know about her colleague, Laxmi’s cousin’s husband, cheating on his wife with a woman whom he met on his flight to London. The story presents two stories in her story “Sexy” and both are quite similar and linked with each other. In both cases, Indian males are involved and they don’t realise or even have the sense of guilt for their wives, the things are just opposite. Though, Dev’s wife is unaware of his relationship with Miranda., it would be a sin. Laxmi, living an American life, says that she would have killed him if she had been her cousin. But for her cousin, it is impossible. Ultimately it is Rohin, Laxmi’s cousin’s boy, who makes Miranda realise what she’s doing is futile and it is of no importance. The story is a result of boredom, psychological conflict felt by Miranda, who’s not an Indian, yet, feels isolated in her own land. The next story, “The Third and final continent,” supplements the thoughts of alienation through a person who’s adopted to three different cultures. The narrator’s mother was completely devastated by the death of her husband. Physically, she did not commit Sati, as an orthodox patriarchal/feudal ideology would have expected her, back in the nineteenth century when Mrs Croft was born but symbolically, she died with him. She had to be protected and cared for by her sons: she ‘refused to adjust to life without her husband; instead, she sank deeper int
