Vern Rosalin (125180127)

Fiona (125180141)
Winny Wijayanti (125180143)
Natalia Ervina (125180160)

INFERENCE ASSIGNMENT
Read the following excerpt.

The parties were segregated: there was the kitchen, where the women gathered,

and there was the living room, where the men stood and talked about politics,

investments. Lakshman’s mother was thirty-two, short, stocky, curly-haired. She

would stir up trouble. Even when she said ordinary things, she sounded as if she

doubted they were true. “You are happy?” she’d say to a woman as if the woman

were overlooking something. The surprised person would then feel that she had

to defend her happiness. The other women in the kitchen were not used to this

kind of behavior. They would grow quiet and look at Lakshman’s mother as she

stood silently, appearing pleased, and sipping her Scotch. The fact that his mother

drank was itself unusual. Perhaps she did it to be different from the other women;

perhaps she wanted to be like a man and therefore more important. When she’d

got a little bit drunk, she’d go into the living room and stand among the men,

drinking from a small glass and talking about stocks and the World Bank. The men

treated her with condescension and irritation, not so much because she was a

woman as because she was a woman pretending to know things that she did not

know, and vanity and foolishness, which were tolerable in a man, were not

tolerable in a woman.

An excerpt from a short story titled “You Are Happy?” by Akhil Sharma at

www.newyorker.com

Answer the following questions. Explain your answer by referring to details in

the text.

1. Was Lakshman’s mother a friendly person?

How do you know that?

Lakshman’s mother was not a friendly person, as she as the text described would stir up trouble over
the most ordinary and mundane things.

2. Did her friends like her behavior?

How do you know that?

Her friends doesn’t like Lakshman’s mother behaviour, because as the text described that the other
women in the kitchen were not used to her kind of behaviour.

3. What bad habit did Lakshman’s mother develop over the years?

How do you know that?

Lakshman’s mother develop a bad habit of drinking and getting drunk over the years. I can infer that
from the fact that she was drinking scotch and that she got a little bit drunk.

4. From the party setting, what can you infer about gender role in Indian

community?

How do you know that?

I can infer from the party setting that the gender role in Indian community is strictly divided, where as
the women should stay in the kitchen and cook and the man would talks about politics in the living
room. When a women starts talking about stocks, it was clear to the other men that she didn’t
understand what she was saying.