Sunil -- Week Five

In the waiting room, Sunil listens to BBC reports of flooding in his home region in India. He feels like a stranger in his own home, but rebuffs Paul's suggestion that Sunil move out of his son's house and get a job. He'd like to go back to India, and while Julia would be happy to let him go, Arun won't hear of it. While Arun is away on business, Julia has been seeing the author Ethan Barr. Sunil makes ambiguously threatening comments about Julia, saying he'd like to have "smothered her laughter" when he thought he overheard her mocking him. The increasingly hostile language is troubling to Paul, but Sunil does not respond to direct questions about whether he'd harm Julia. Sunil describes a vivid dream in which he defends his family from a menacing woman using Arun's severed arm. The mention of a flower in the woman's hair makes Paul think she could represent Malini, whom Sunil had described in a similar fashion. Sunil grows increasingly agitated and begins shouting in Bengali. He says, unprompted, that he never harmed Malini. Sunil reports that when he woke from his dream, he went down to Julia's room, which he found to be locked. Concerned, Paul recommends they schedule more sessions together, but Sunil refuses.