Where It All Goes Down
There are nine stories in Interpreter of Maladies, but Lahiri makes it pretty easy for us when it comes to the setting because she's really only interested in two places: India and America (more specifically, New England).
Post-Partition India; A lower- to middle-class compound in Calcutta
First, a Little History
Want to know about what life is like in post-Partition India? First, you might want to brush up on what Partition was all about. This might be a pretty good place to start.
All that Community Spirit
As for the India in Lahiri's stories, life is all about the community. That's why, with the exception of the title story, all the action centers on a typical, everyday compound—one that doesn't necessarily have all the conveniences of your average American household or neighborhood.
The lack of conveniences—like sinks in "A Real Durwan"—ends up tearing apart the community to the point where the community runs the old gatekeeper out of the compound.
And then there's the flip side of the community—the good side; the side that sides with the down-and-out, like in "The Treatment of Bibi Haldar." This community bands around Bibi when her only remaining family abandons her and she ends up having a baby as a result of rape.
Could either of these two stories occur in some American town? That's the question. We're guessing no because the communities Lahiri chooses to describe are just more populated and interdependent than the spread-out spaces in America.
Mrs. Sen wonders to Eliot if she cried out, would any of the neighbors come as they would in her Indian community? Eliot thinks they'd come over just to tell her to pipe down.
Indian Politics in the House
These communities also have to deal with political realities that are slightly different from the ones in America, like the fact of Partition, which resulted not only the splitting of India and Pakistan, but the movement of refugees into compounds like the one Boori Ma ends up in and gets kicked out of. There was a huge displacement of people as the Muslim population of India moved to newly-created Pakistan, and the Hindu population in now-Pakistan moved to India. This sense of displacement runs through many of the stories in this book, which is why Partition is a good backdrop for them.
Present-day New England (most likely the Boston metropolitan area); Some main character's home
An Immigrant's Life
…is kind of like living two lives: one in whatever country you happen to be in (in this case, America) and another in your homeland (generally India for most of Lahiri's characters).
In fact, Partition ends up affecting more than just Bengalis and Indians in India. It preoccupies the title character in "When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine," for instance—so much so that Mr. Pirzada can't tear himself away from Pakistani news. He might as well be in Dacca where his family is (and where he ends up).
Or Mrs. Sen, who's so homesick that she'll play over and over again a cassette tape with the voices of her family members in India.
Homebound
That's why in Lahiri's U.S. settings, the immigrant characters' stories are centered in their houses or apartments. Things are unfamiliar and disorienting. They don't leave home much and when they do, generally bad things happen either outside or in the home, like a car accident or husbands getting into affairs or—even—the birth of a stillborn baby.
Boston Schools
For second-generation kids, things are slightly different. All of a sudden it's all about showing real signs of success—and, by that, Lahiri means a serious brand-name degree, like Harvard and MIT. (Twinkle has a Stanford degree, but even she seems impressed by Sanjeev and his MIT pedigree. By the way, we don't take sides here: they're all good by our standards!)
So what's with this fixation on Boston schools? Call it global brand-name recognition. These are schools whose significance crosses major distances, that can bring respect and admiration to an immigrant's family in India and America, as is the case with our final narrator.
These schools open doors (or at least that's the belief of the final narrator) for immigrants who are in the business of making a place—a real home—for themselves in a new land.
We also know that Lahiri's focus on Boston and Cambridge has a little something to do with her own biography. She, after all, spent her graduate years at Boston University