The quote in the beginning of the book by Nathaniel Hawthorne “.. so far as my children’s fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots in unaccustomed earth” gives a peek into the theme of the stories. All the stories talk about (Indian) immigrants who are trying to assimilate into the land that they have struck their roots in. Jhumpa’s writing ilucid and fluid, which makes her books easy to read. Her nuancical analysis of various characters is laudable. Her writing style makes you get into the stories. However, with every new book, her stories are getting more melancholic leaving you in a cloud of sadness after reading them.
The first short story, after which the book itself has been named, is the least morose of all. It is about a recently widowed, retired, Indian father living in the US and his interactions with his daughter and her American family. It is about the daughter’s discovery of how her father decides to lead his life in his old age, in the country of his choice. I felt it had a “O.Henry-esque” feel to this story. It certainly makes you want to read the rest of the book. Lahiri made the right choice in making this the first story.
The
second story “hell heaven” captures accurately the loneliness of Indian women,
who were whisked off in the seventies, to a foreign land that they could not
relate to. It portrays their forlorn lives at home, tending to their children
and chores. It depicts their yearning for attention and how they get devastated
when that attention ceases to exist. This story also highlights prejudices
against American wives and exposes how baseless they can be. It is a well
narrated poignant story.
The
third story “A choice of accommodations” is the least memorable of them all. It
is about this couple, an Indian man Amit and his American wife of several
years, going to attend the marriage of a girl he knew and respected from his
boarding school days. He is constantly watched by his wife for any embers of
love that may still remain for she (unreasonably) suspects that they must have
had a roaring affair. It is about how in his drunken state, he strands his
anxious wife at the wedding, without even proper means of returning to the
hotel and how in the end they make up. This was just a reasonably well told
story. But, it does not leave a lasting impression.
The
fourth story “only goodness” left me wondering about the title. It is a story of
this young Indian girl Sudha, which spans the period from her college days
until she becomes a young mother. It starts with Sudha’s complicity in getting
her younger brother to taste and enjoy alcohol, before he was of drinking age
and how she was shocked to see him turn into an alcoholic and wasting his life.
He becomes disrespectful of his parents and leaves home in a huff. Many years
later, as a reformed man, he comes to visit Sudha in England, where she has
been living with her loving husband. All is well and Sudha is pleased to have
her brother back in her life and then something happens that brings forth her
brother’s history with alcohol, which she had hidden from her husband. The
husband is distraught to find the truth and even distressed that Sudha hid the
truth from him. This causes a rift in their relationship. Sudha stands caught
between the guilt mixed love for her brother and her loving husband. Lahiri has
brought out the emotions in all the characters so well that they come to life
in front of you. I found this story deeply moving.
The
fifth story “Nobody’s business” is about a young attractive Indian girl named
Sang, who shares an apartment with two Americans, Paul and Heather. Paul is
taken with the girl, but does not show it, especially after finding out that
she has an Egyptian boyfriend Farouk. The story is about how Paul finds out from
a phone call that Farouk is a philanderer and tries hard to hide this from Sang.
At her probing about the phone call, he hints lightly that the caller sounded
emotional. Sang misinterprets Paul’s hint as a ruse to separate her from Farouk
and Paul is left to prove that he was not making up stories. Sang is heart
broken when she discovers for herself the man Farouk really is and leaves the
country crushed emotionally. This was an intricate story
of upheavals in ordinary people’s lives.
In part
II of the book, Lahiri has artistically woven together three stories; the first
where Hema and Kaushik are teenagers, the second with Kaushik as the
protagonist and the third with Hema as the protagonist. The first one “once in
a lifetime” talks about how Kaushik’s parents went back to India after
immigrating to the US and then returned after several years. The story focusses
on the many days that they lived with Hema’s parents while finding a house to
settle down. Hema’s parents are unaware of the real reason that Kaushik’s
family returned and are somewhat dismayed by Kaushik’s father’s “undue”
devotion to his wife. It is only later that they find out why he allowed her several
extravagances. A well-knit story of immigrant experience.
In the
second one called “year’s end”, Kaushik is told by his father that he has taken
a second wife, who came with two daughters. On a visit home during Christmas,
he is repulsed by the presence of his “step” family in the home that his
sophisticated mother had decorated with elan. He sees his father’s marriage as merely
one of convenience, so he would have people to take care of his worldly needs.
Kaushik cannot tolerate his “step” family even imagining themselves as
“equals”. This sentiment bursts out when he catches his two young step sisters
admiring some of his mother’s photographs that were kept hidden. He yells at
the unsuspecting young girls, tells them what position he thinks they have in that
household and storms away with his mother’s photographs, leaving the young
girls alone at home. He just keeps driving up north, without a plan, wherever
his car took him, across north eastern states. He finally digs a hole on a
cliff near the Canadian border and buries them in the ground, not to be sullied
by any human hand. He realizes later that his father has truly formed a new
family, forever shutting the doors on his mother’s spirit.
The last
story in this section “going ashore” was the most heart rending one. In this,
Lahiri makes Hema meet the nomadic Kaushik in Rome, by a sheer stroke of fate.
They fall madly in love with each other, even though Hema is betrothed to
another man, one she hardly knew. It is when the reader hopes desperately for a
happy union between these two lovers whom destiny brought together, that Lahiri
drops the guillotine on any such hope. It is only after she ends the story that
the reader realizes that Lahiri had given a lot of hints to let the readers
guess what was coming. That illustrated how entranced the reader got with the
story, not paying attention to “extraneous” details. But, in my opinion, the
end of this story was unnecessarily tragic.
Though
Lahiri is highly skilled at story telling, I find that her stories are just
that – stories of ordinary people, usually Bengali immigrants to the US, much
like her parents. I do not find scope for learning much from her books.
Perhaps, non-Indians might learn about India and Indian lives in the US. But, I
find stories that allow you secondary learning i.e. tell you on the side about
life of moghuls in India Indu Sundaresan), or about the opium war and life on
the sea (Amitava Ghosh), more appealing and certainly educational.
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