So first things first, this is not a book review, therefore I am not going to follow the standard template of a book review. I am not going to mention the name of the publisher, number of pages, number of stories, style of writing etc. This is just me, sharing a human moment with you, on what emotions I went through while reading this book. When it comes to spoilers, I might give away some, here and there, but this book, ahh, this book is such an experience, it has so many layers to it, that I might peel and give you one layer, and you might find another layer lying right underneath. So my spoilers aren't really spoilers, and as you read the book, you will know what I am talking about. This is just my interpretation of this stunning compilation of eight extremely touching and moving stories.
Firstly, I want to take a moment here and talk about the author, Jhumpa Lahiri. An Indian by origin, she was born in London and raised in Rhode Island, USA, and this is where her books, and especially this one, speaks to me. Most of the stories in this book are based out of the New England region. She has used her geographical knowledge of the this area so vividly and frequently in almost all of her stories, that you feel bad for people who are not from this place or are unfamiliar with the names of the road, rivers and highways.
I felt fortunate that I could really imagine Paul and Sang, sitting in the car, silently, and driving through the Storrow Drive, the Citgo sign glowing in the background, and the Charles river flowing on one side of the road, both of them, are somewhat aware and yet unaware as to what is going to unfold in the next few minutes; I know exactly how far and how long Pranab must have walked, following Aparna and her daughter through the Mass Ave street, in and out of the Harvard Coop hardware store, before he finally gathered some courage to talk to them in Harvard Yard; And I can purely envision the stunning house that the Choudhuri's bought on rocky coastline of North Shore, the huge rooms of which, were soon to be filled with sickness and grief. Living in Boston, I felt so much closer to all these characters, to an extent that I could completely visualize them and their lives in a creaky old New England home, the same as mine.
However, I don't mean to say that stories which do not originate from the place I've lived in are difficult to comprehend. There are stories in this book itself which are based in places I have never lived in like Seattle, New York, London and Italy, and they too, were able to strike a cord with me only because all of the characters in the story, are somewhere deep below, struggling with a cultural shift as I am. Jhumpa is the first in her family who was born and raised in a foreign land and so it is very natural that growing up, she must have gone through a lot of cultural clashes between her and her parents. Almost all of her main characters in almost all of her stories are children of first generation immigrants too, and they all go through this dilemma of whether to accept the foreign culture of a country where they're born, or like their parents latch on to the old customs and beliefs of a country which they visit probably once in 5 years or never.
I, per se, might not be able to feel what the characters felt exactly, since I was not born in a foreign land, however I am living in a foreign land, where I have to accept the new surroundings, climate, language, ethics, beliefs, food and driving rules after already spending 1/4th of my life in my homeland! and yet at the same time, I am expected to remember all of the Indian festivals and perform all the rituals associated with each of those festival.
Having said all of that, she never drifts from the belief that this nomadic life, this movement, this displacement is necessary for humans to grow. The cultural differences do exist, but it is important for humans to be exposed to that in order to lead a life that's different than a potato.
In the beginning of the book she quotes this from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Custom House".
"Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long in a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth."
Another striking feature about her writing is that, she never strives to give a moral lesson at the end of the story. In fact, not just that, she never really binds the story at the end, which I personally love. Just like life, where there are some unanswered questions, some what ifs, a sudden death, some lose ends of your life which never tie themselves to anything, her stories also leave you with a feeling the the something is unfinished. It is at this point, when you rewind the entire story in your mind, revisit all the places she took you to, meet all the characters again, re-ignite the emotions they went through and then decide for yourself, what would have happened next after the story ended.
The next thing that I always did, after reading each of the short story, was to go on the internet and find if people have talked or written about it, and if so what was their take away from the story or what was their interpretation of it. I could rarely find articles that discussed about how the story has affected the reader, or if there is a part of the story or a character that has stuck with them. So here I am sharing my analysis of three of my most favorite stories, in as few words and as few spoilers as possible. However I would suggest that you read the part below only if you have read the book, and want to know my insights about it. Let me know in comments below about what you think.
Unaccustomed Earth
This story is about the tender and warm relationship shared between a father and his daughter, which in my opinion is the most precious relationship in this world. How a firm father can only bow down to his little daughter's demands, and how a only soft-hearted woman can understand what emotions her old father is going through. This is a sentiment that lumps up my throat every single time. This story clearly depicts that, through Ruma and her baba (father). Though the road of their relationship has always been full of bumps, which becomes clear in the very beginning.
Ruma lives in Seattle, with her husband and her little son Akash, and she is expecting a baby again. Her father who is now a widower, is on a holiday trip in Europe. He returns from his trip and comes straight to his daughter's home to stay with his daughter and grandson for a few days. What transpires after this, is just such a beautiful tale of unsaid gestures, feelings and endearment that exists between a father and a daughter.
Ruma is not yet over her mother's very sudden demise, and is even more saddened by the fact that her mother's absence is not acknowledged by her baba very well. This reason aches her heart, and makes her dislike her father, which makes her stressed about his stay. Her father has always lived his life by the book, and has always thought about his family before himself. Now, after years, on this lonely road of old age, he meets a companion in Mrs Bagchi (a widow herself), a fellow traveler on his trips to Europe, a woman about whom Ruma doesn't know yet. He wants to live his life free from the general norms of the society. He wants to be able to forget the gap that has been created by his wife's death.
The story slowly shows how Ruma and her baba, bond over the course of his stay, and how eventually Ruma starts to find herself more fond of her baba, thinking that all the gestures that he makes are actually ways of him telling her, that he loves her and cares for her, and that Ruma and the memories of her mother is and will always be his first priority.
At the same time, her father is going through the emotion of guilt, the guilt of meeting and being fond of a woman who is not his wife. This guilt drives him to do things which Ruma had never seen her father do before, like planting a garden in Ruma's newly bought home, or making tea for himself in the morning and washing his own dishes, or spending time with his grandson, teaching him some garden tricks. Here and there you also see a genuinely concerned father, asking his daughter not to give up her career for kids and family.
All this makes Ruma to consider asking her baba to live with them, a proposition which she was fearing to offer earlier, fearing that he might say yes, and she would have to deal with the ruthless judgements and comments from her father just as she had dealt growing up. However her father, on the other hand is far away from this thought. He does not want to be the ruthless judge anymore, as he is done trying to mend his children's lives. He is not ready to go back to the same place he came from. He wants to be able to live for himself now, and knows if he lives in his daughter's home with her son and the soon to be born baby, he will yet again become something that he doesn't want to anymore, a caretaker.
You would think that Ruma forgave her father since she offered him to live with her, but I think, she has only forgiven an image of the older version of her father, who does not exist anymore. His father is a changed man. He lives for himself now, and he has a precious new bond with Mrs Bagchi. Spending time with her on vacations, is the only source of excitement in his life. The birth of his new grandkid also cannot top it.
Ruma, unable to understand as to why her father would not live with her, bids him farewell, as he leaves for his next trip, and soon finds out the reason for him wanting to live by himself. She posts that letter to Mrs Bagchi, which his father had written while staying at Ruma's home, and then had forgotten where he put it. When she finds out about Mrs Bagchi, and the letter, and is able to connect the dots, and then still posts that letter, it is at that moment that she actually knows who her father is and forgives him for forgetting about her mother.
Hell - Heaven
This one, is probably my favorite of them all. It talks about how a family(Shyamal, Aparna and their daughter) originally from Calcutta, India, living in Cambridge Mass, near Central Square, meet a guy(Pranab) who has recently moved from India to study at MIT. I wouldn't say meet, as it was more like a cry for a friend on Pranab's part, which makes him to approach Aparna in a park to become friends. Being in a foreign country myself I sometimes just crave to candidly approach an Indian person and strike a conversation with them and become their friends. People from same country when meet in a foreign land, can find the smallest of similarity to become friends, and find a family and home, away from their actual homeland.
Shyamal and Aparna had a marriage which was arranged by their parents in India, and Aparna as a dutiful wife, kept moving with her husband from place to place, country to country. Naturally, since the marriage was arranged by different people, Aparna and Shyamal had very little in common and they were very far apart in age.
Pranab, who meets Aparna and her small daughter in Harvard Yard, is a complete stranger to them, but his utmost desire to find a person from his homeland and be able to experience the warmth of family, he follows Aparna for a very long time all through the streets of Cambridge, and ultimately gathers the grit to talk to her. This behavior of his, to first take the decision to go to a foreign land and then yearn for the same family warmth which he just left for that foreign land, shows up again later, but may be in a more subtle way.
Pranab visits Shyamal and Aparna's home often, almost everyday and Aparna whose age is closer to Pranab's naturally starts getting attracted towards him. It breaks my heart to read how Aparna suffered from this dilemma silently. Aparna's daughter, who is also the narrator of this story sees how far apart her parents are emotionally and her mother's attraction to another man, and only realizes later in the story, the pain of her mother's unrequited love. Pranab eventually meets an American woman and marries her. Aparna is instantly jealous of this, and proudly predicts in front of her other friends that the marriage won't last long.
Here I somewhat saw the manipulative behavior of Pranab. He was lonely when he met Aparna. He wanted a friend, a companion. He could have found that in his college, but he deliberately chose an Indian family, as he craved for the familiarity of his home in India. He longed for it, so bad, that he followed Aparna for a long time in the city. He spent so much time with them, ate countless meals, and charmed Aparna with his ways. Aparna was naïve, she was too young to be married or be a mother, and lived only for her husband and daughter. She helplessly falls in love with Pranab. However she never confesses it to Pranab, or even to herself. Nevertheless, I believe Pranab somewhere deep in his heart knew about Aparna's feeling and chose to ignore it. When someone in your company is in love with you, you can immediately tell. They take care of each of your demands, they listen to you closely, they never say no to spending more time with you. They don't have any agenda on their head, apart from you. In the same way, Aparna took care of Pranab's demands, cooked food that he liked and never said no to the long drives he took her and her daughter to. Pranab enjoyed the perks he got ignoring the underlying feeling.
Years later, Pranab and his wife get a divorce, just as Aparna had predicted. Pranab cheats on his wife with a Bengali woman. Aparna's daughter is grown up now, and she sees how her mother's prophecy came true. She had initially ridiculed her mother in her heart, for being so low and jealous, for predicting someone's divorce at the time of their marriage. She now knows the it was indeed her love for Pranab that made her predict the failure of his marriage. Her love for him, had forced her to know him too well. She knew that he won't be able to frame himself into a culture, from which he was running away, when he had first met Aparna.
Aparna then finally confesses her love for Pranab, which has now ended, to her daughter. More than her love, she confesses her agony, her pain and her helplessness. She then tells her, which is also the last line of this story, that how long ago, a few days after Pranab's marriage she had thought of killing herself, by setting herself on fire in the backyard of their home. She was saved by a neighbor's friendly greeting, who was also in her backyard and was completely oblivious to Aparna's maniac plan, which got interrupted by her neighbor's "Nice weather huh?"
The Choice of Accommodations
Amit with his wife Megan has gone to attend his first love, Pam's wedding. Yes it's a bit complicated, this story, and so is Amit. This is one story, for which I am grappling for correct words to explain it. Amit is, well, a little selfish. Selfish in the sense that he is extremely protective of what he has. He loves his wife Megan, at the same time he is a little insecure or uncomfortable being at Pam's wedding, which indicates that he might have lingering feelings for Pam.
His train of thoughts take him to different places, one after another. He revisits, in his mind, the years he spent with Pam, in college, loving her silently, while she was on a dating spree with different guys, and soon after this, he thinks about his daughters and how once because of a little distraction, he almost lost his daughters. Don't get me wrong, I like this guy. It's just that, he seems like a person, whom you cannot rely on. Seeing how distracted he is, it seems like, even though he has everything, he doesn't seem to have it all together. He lacks that basic self confidence. I guess that's what one-sided love does to you.
The wedding takes place in Langford Academy, since Pam is the daughter of the headmaster of the boarding school. Amit, is an alumni of this boarding school, and used to spend his holidays with the headmaster and his family, as his own parents were not in the US, and so he didn't have a house to go to during the holidays. This is when Amit started loving Pam. Amit then starts his college in Columbia and Pam gets an admission there too, and we see how a very beautiful, mesmerizing damsel charms a guy with such little efforts. Amit fell for her on stuff like she never wore proper winter clothes, or that she never put her books in a bag, but hugged them against her chest, or that the first two letters in his name, were the last two letters in hers, "silly thing he never mentioned to her but caused him to believe that they were bound together". When you love like that, it is hard to forget it or let go, and probably Amit was going through the same discomforting situation.
The story then moves forward depicting how frenzied Amit is at the wedding. He initially thinks that Megan might be uncomfortable in Pam's presence, on the contrary Megan was having a good time at the wedding. This confuses Amit, and makes him to drink more and more. He starts to disregard his present life for something which even today he can only dream about. Just like all those years of watching Pam date other men, he is now watching her getting married to someone else. He was helpless then, but now, he is not helpless, he has everything, he has nothing to complain about, only that he has not realized that.
Amit, in his state of delusion, says something exceptionally horrible to a complete stranger he met at the wedding, that his marriage somewhat got lost or disappeared after the birth of his second child, and that sooner or later it does for everyone. "What an awful thing to say. At a wedding of all places", rightfully said the stranger.
Towards the end of the story, Amit does realize that he his behavior at the wedding was shameful, and that no matter what his life belongs with Megan and the daughter. Pam belongs to someone else now, and he admits that at no cost he wants to jeopardize what he has.
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