Libre Magazine

Jhumpa Lahiri’s credentials as a writer are definitely one to be praised of. Her very first venture, “Interpreter of Maladies” was a saga of Indian Americans and their identity crisis in the face of two different cultures that they had to adapt themselves to over times. The book published in 2000 won the very prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and also the Hemingway Foundation Award. This was followed by ‘The Namesake’ which has in recent times been adapted in celluloid and critically acclaimed.

Lahiri’s latest offering is “Unaccustomed Earth”, a collection of stories basically having the same underlying theme- the non resident Indian, and their cultural strife in the foreign soil and the trials and tribulations, both personal and cultural faced by them. These are coupled with subjects like alcoholism, unrequited love and failed relationships et al and it is interesting to note that each story is extremely real and diluted without being exaggerated in terms of treatment.

The book is divided into two different sections: the first part titled ‘Unaccustomed Earth’ consisting of five collections of stories and the second named ‘Hema and Kaushik’ threading together a single story woven through three separate parts. In the first part, the title story recounts the changing dynamics in the strained relationship shared by a father and daughter and towards the end while the story is all set to move towards a positive reconciliation, a revelation once again tears the daughter apart. Very thought provoking and very real. ‘Hell Heaven’ is a poignant tale narrated through the eyes of a daughter relating her mother’s unreciprocated longing for a younger man.

The theme is very sensitively handled by Lahiri and her writing prowess is deftly expressed in every part of the story. The growing passion of an American student for his Bengali roommate who is already embroiled in a passionate affair with another man in ‘Nobody’s Business’, a sister’s revelation that her younger brother has become an unashamed alcoholic out of her own indulgence to pushing him into it during their growing years in ‘Only Goodness’ are some of the other concepts dealt with by Jhumpa Lahiri in this collection. The last part, named ‘Hema and Kaushik’ includes two first person narratives, accounted from the perspectives of Hema and Kaushik, detailing their growing up years and all this culminates in the third section where they meet after a gap of several years since they were destined to be in love and then are finally separated by death.

Lahiri’s writings have always been very simplistic. It is very rare that one will come across the use of ornamental and superfluous language. The descriptions are real and pictographic at times. The streets, lanes and by lanes of the American countryside are described in vivid details and are very lively. The characters too are well-crafted, complete and not at all ambiguous. But somewhere down the writing tends to become quite monotonous. For those who are well-acquainted with Lahiri’s previous works, “Unaccustomed Earth” seems to suffer from a hangover of the previous published collections, especially those of “The Namesake”. Some instances, descriptions and characters seem like being extended versions of the ones that we have already read in her previous writings. This note of ennui that sets in is probably one of the primary reasons that will contribute to making this book only a good leisure time read.