Lahiri, Jhumpa. Unaccustomed Earth. Penguin Random House, 2017.
Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth is a commentary on the Indian diaspora. The characters in these stories are Indian immigrants who belong to the upper middle-class. They are very much American in every way but are burdened by their cultural past.
The title story “Unaccustomed Earth” explores the complex relationship between a daughter and her father. “Only Goodness” tells the story of Rahul, a flawed son of successful parents, and his descent into alcoholism. “Hell-Heaven” is a story of troubled relationship between mother and daughter; it is also a story about a married woman (the narrator’s mother) who is troubled by cultural differences and the inability to acclimatize to a new lifestyle in a new country. “Nobody’s Business” is a complex love story of Paul and Sang.
All these stories explore the identity crisis of Indian immigrants and their struggles to navigate through different cultures while trying to hold onto the cultural values of their country. The primary narrators in these stories are mostly children born to immigrant parents and the difficulties they face amongst displacement. The idea of fitting in, especially when one travels to a different country, is at once can be enticing and also scary. Enticing because it’s a new lifestyle, a new culture; scary because you are away from home and there is a possibility of abandoning your roots.
The characters in these stories, especially women, are caught up in the midst of the privileged life that multicultural context of America provides and the cultural heritage of their past. Although the characters are successful professionals living in America, freedom appears to be the one goal they fail to attain most of the times.
Take Hema’s mother in “Hema and Kaushik," for example. She is worried that her daughter is still not married at thirty-six. “She even asked, on Hema’s thirty-fifth birthday, if she preferred women” (297). Most Indian parents consider unmarried daughters a burden.
Hema is a highly successful woman with a doctorate degree and is very much American in every way. When her relationship of ten years with Julian ends, she simply agrees to marry Navin. She knows that marriage is “dead” before it has even begun, but she still agrees to it. She is not in love with Navin and has a three-week long affair with Kaushik in Rome before she gets back to India for the wedding.
Apart from compelling themes present in all the stories in this collection, what I truly admired is Lahiri’s approach towards the novella, “Hema and Kaushik” is the way she uses foreshadowing. I’ve never been a fan of deux ex machina (Stephen King’s Stand, for example—God, how I hated the ending!) and co-incidences in stories whose sole purpose is to solve plot holes. Write yourself into a corner and if you can’t move, simply introduce a co-incidence and solve your problem—it’s just lazy writing. Although the third part of the novella appears like a co-incidence, Lahiri handles it brilliantly.
“Hema and Kaushik” is divided into three parts: “Once in a Lifetime," “Year’s End,” and “Going Ashore.” Hema and Kaushik have three encounters during the course of the story. Hema is six and Kaushik is nine when they meet for the first time. The story begins in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hema’s family throws a party for Kaushik’s before they leave for India. Kaushik’s family returns after six years and lives in Hema’s house for a couple of weeks until they find a place. Hema develops a crush towards Kaushik, who pays little attention to her. Their families lose touch with each other after this brief sojourn. Years later, they meet again by chance in Rome. Hema is now thirty-six and Kaushik thirty-nine.
This meeting “by chance” is what I meant by introducing co-incidences in stories to change or advance the plot in some way. It reminds me of Aristotle’s Poetics: “Probable impossibilities are always preferred to improbable possibilities.” Co-incidences in stories belong to “improbable possibilities” (an alien showing up in your backyard can be a “probable impossibility”). Their third encounter in Rome after a gap of twenty-four years did strike me as a co-incidence, but I didn’t have a problem with it. Here's why:
Lahiri prepares us for this final encounter right from the start. When Kaushik’s family visits Hema’s the second time and stay with them, they talk about Rome and how beautiful the city is. “Your parents spoke of Rome, where you’d had a two-day layover to tour the city. Your mother described the fountains, and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel you had stood three hours in line to see. ‘So many lovely churches,’ she said. ‘Each is like a museum. It made me want to be a Catholic, only to be able to pray in them’” (233). Incidentally, Hema has also been “learning about ancient Rome in my Latin class, writing a long report about its arts and architecture” (233). Furthermore, Kaushik’s father helps Hema with her school assignment on Rome.
Kaushik, on the other hand, has developed a passion for photography. His father has bought him a Yashica point-and-shoot camera and we see him taking pictures. Later, in the second part of the story (“Year’s End”), we see Kaushik’s passion for photography turning into a profession. He becomes a photojournalist and travels the world.
Hema’s fascination towards Italy drives her to get a doctorate and becomes a professor of classics and studies the Etruscans.
In the final part of the story (“Going Ashore”), they both end up in Rome around the same time. Hema decides to travel for a few weeks before the wedding and takes advantage of a colleague’s empty apartment in Rome. Giovanna, her colleague, has given her a few names to call. One of them is Edo.
Edo’s wife, Paola, is a photo editor at L’Espresso and has known Kaushik for many years. And Kaushik has been living in Rome for a while now. Edo invites Hema for dinner and Paola invites Kaushik.
This still is a co-incidence (not impossible, of course; happens all the time in real life, but I just don’t like them in fiction), but Lahiri carefully orchestrates this. Points of view play a role in this as well. The first part of the novella (“Once in a Lifetime”) is in first person, from the PoV of Hema. “I had seen you before, too many times to count, but a farewell that my family threw for yours, at our house in Inman Square, is when I begin to recall your presence in my life” (223). The second (“Year’s End”) is from the PoV of Kaushik, and the last part (“Going Ashore”) is in the third-person where we learn more about Hema and Kaushik’s professions and what they have been up to all these years. These shifting points of view help us navigate through their stories and prepare us for their final encounter. When they finally meet again, it seems believable.
It's not a "chance" encounter, although it may seem like one. This is simply foreshadowing done right.
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