“Those hypnotic eyes are devastating," wrote Touré, a TV journalist, columnist and author about Jhumpa Lahiri, the gorgeous author of three seriously literary books including, this year, a collection of short stories called Unaccustomed Earth.
The eight stories in this splendid volume expand upon Lahiri’s epigraph, a metaphysical passage from “The Custom-House,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, which suggests that transplanting people into new soil makes them hardier and more flourishing. Human fortunes may be improved, Hawthorne argues, if men and women “strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.” It’s a perfect metaphor for the transformations Lahiri oversees in these pages, in which two generations of Bengali immigrants to America — the newcomers and their children — struggle to build normal, secure lives. Lahiri examines Hawthorne’s notions from all angles. Is it true that transplanting strengthens the plant? Or can such experiments produce mixed outcomes?
The title of Jhumpa Lahiri’s latest book—“Unaccustomed Earth”—refers to the first story in this collection and also to a motif dominating all of the stories: tales about a world unaccustomed to the tectonic shifts and changes taking place beneath its surface, a world uncomfortable with the destruction and loss brought on by hurricanes and tsunamis, facing modern diseases and traumas, and unsure about the class and cultural conflicts that dominate relationships in the lives of characters. Death and mourning permeate most stories in this collection, including the three linked ones in the final section. People may be struck at any time by chance, in any corner of the world. Uncontrollable events may assail them anytime, anywhere.
There are five stories in the first section of this book. In the title story, a middle aged man’s wife’s death opens up new vistas of thinking to be explored. His Americanized daughter Ruma struggles with the traditional Indian duty to invite her father to live with her family He visits her in Seattle and is pained to see she has given up her job as she awaits the birth of her second child. “Growing up, her mother’s example — moving to a foreign place for the sake of marriage, caring exclusively for children and a household — had served as a warning, a path to avoid. Yet this was Ruma’s life now.” He asks her a question: “Will this make you happy?” He reminds her that “self-reliance is important” and that she should not stop working and sit at home. Thinking back on his wife’s unhappiness in the early years of their marriage, he realizes that “he had always assumed Ruma’s life would be different.” His thoughts are very touching and reminiscent of every father’s thinking pattern in the world as he thinks about his children for whom “he and his wife were …the whole world. But eventually the need dissipated, dwindled to something amorphous, tenuous, something that threatened at times to snap. That loss was in store for Ruma too; her children would become strangers, avoiding her. And because she was his child he wanted to protect her from that…”
In “Hell-Heaven,” the narrator, Usha, recollects her insensitivity towards her mother’s sacrifices as she ‘reconstructs the tormenting, unrequited passion her young mother had for a graduate student during the narrator’s childhood.’ In “Only Goodness,” an older sister, Sudha, aids and defends her alcoholic younger brother Rahul and learns the bitter lesson only when her relationship with her husband and son’s life are at stake. “A Choice of Accommodations” talks about a husband and a wife during a weekend at the wedding of the husband’s crush during his school days and the revitalization of the lost spark in their married life. “Nobody’s Business” is about an American student attracted to his Bengali-American roommate Sang (short for Sangeeta) who entertains no romantic feelings for him, rejects the advances of “prospective grooms” from the global Bengali singles circuit (Lahiri’s subtle hit at the community) and is devoted and almost engaged to a selfish, foul-tempered Egyptian historian who may be two timing her.
Lahiri's piece, "Only Goodness" towers not only because of her skilful, succinct prose, but also because the author liberates her writing from cultural influence and allows her characters to breathe as individuals free of any limiting baggage.
The final three stories, grouped together as “Hema and Kaushik,” explore the histories of the title characters, a girl and boy from two Bengali immigrant families, as their lives cross over the years. The first story, “Once in a Lifetime” begins in 1974, the year Kaushik and his parents return to India and return seven years late to Massachusetts. The next story, “Year’s End,” shows Kaushik as a grown up, wrestling with the news of his father’s remarriage and meeting his father’s new wife and stepdaughters. The final story, “Going Ashore,” begins with Hema, engaged to a Hindu Punjabi man by parental approval, spending a few months in Rome before entering into this marriage. She is in Rome where she meets Kaushik by chance. And the fate that follows.
The interlinked yet independent stories in part two are brilliant for their narration. Jhumpa Lahiri is at her best here as she handles her characters objectively and carefully giving them space to breathe and develop through her narration. The second story of this part is specially recommended for an artistic touch of underlying pathos.
Lahiri creates a gripping tale, which, like most of her stories, is driven by a simple question: can her characters escape loneliness and be happy? The answer, more often than not, is no. But life goes on ‘forever’ like Tennyson’s brook, irrespective of the men and women who come and go.
Jhumpa Lahiri has a subtle ear for dialogue and a knack for imaginative, picturesque descriptions. Her ‘hypnotic’ eyes miss no detail and mince no words in expounding on them. Readers are leisurely allowed to escape into lap of nature’s beauty time and again. She casts her spell page by page with the magic wand of her powerful and compelling writing as she explores the innermost depths and takes them to heights. Though the luxurious writing makes this book a genuine pleasure to read, these stories have become more profound and deeper compared to her debut collection, “Interpreter of Maladies.”
