The Lowlands

What can one say of the bard of Bengalis across America that hasn’t been said? Sorry, I mean the bard of Rhode Island Bengali academics. She who represents them with dignity and poise and examines with a clinical eye the unhappiness and aspects of their daily lives with fine-tuned precision? Much of what I have to say has probably already been said.

I read The Lowlands by Jhumpa Lahiri with much of its plot already laid bare thanks to the extracts in the New Yorker. Two young brothers, often mistaken for one another, sharing their lives and as it would turn out their love, but distinct from one another.

Udayan the fiery, impetuous younger ones whose reckless path has repercussions for his entire family and Subhash the other side of that coin – cautious, pragmatic, the dutiful and responsible older brother. One swept up by the waves of the Naxalite movement in Calcutta of the 60s pursing an ideology and the other who lands on the shores of Rhode Island focusing on academics.

A tragic but not unexpected turn of events leads to Udayan’s death in the marshy lowlands of Tollygunge, and leaves his shattered family – Gauri, his pregnant wife, heartbroken parents and absent brother to pick up the pieces. Much of the story reflects on the personal and each of these characters dealing with that void, sense of loss, memory and isolation – often self-inflicted.

For a story that encompasses the personal and political, crosses decades in the telling, and flits between the past and the present this is Lahiri’s most ambitious work. Her elliptical and well-structured storyline clearly show her formidable power as a writer. However her strengths as short story writer with the ability to detail people’s humdrum lives and hints at other realities, don’t help much in writing a longer novel.

Her characters are boxed into fit the tropes predetermined in the narrative arc and all seem to be cut from the same dreary cloth with the tone never varying for any of the principal characters ever. Forget drama (maybe that’s the preserve of Punjabis) there is never a laugh, a chuckle or even a rare smile fill her pages.  I would balk at encountering any one of them in real life. But then again, pontificating Phds I actually do avoid in real life.

Gauri, the selfish angry woman, cold hearted mother and brilliant philosophy professor (obviously) could have been a complex character. Witness to her husband’s death, a possible accomplice, rescued by her brother-in-law, and burdened by her child, she could have been complex, contradictory and human.

She ends up only as a chilly unhappy wife without the benefit of insight into her rage,  depression or her psychology. All of the key incidents and choices are narrated in the third person, in the same dull tone. Subhash too, heavy with a sense of sacrifice and the cross that he must bear, barely reflects on what is undoubtedly a good life that he has been able to carve out for himself and the love that he feels for his daughter Bela.

Bela, the abandoned daughter’s entire life plays out in fast forward. You would think that Lahiri would have been her strongest writing about the second generation’s experience instead what you get is a rather soft serve of a character drifting, hurt by her mothers rejection, a shell of a person destined to repeat history but without the substance for us to understand let alone sympathize with her experience. You get no real look into any of their minds, angers, fears and resentments. I wonder why she would choose to ignore the formative years of Bela’s life even though she hints at Gauri’s post-partum depression.

For a political story Lahiri remains apolitical possibly because this is an American novel and not so much an Indian one. The only other story I can recall from my (limited) knowledge of the Naxalbari movement is Hazaar Chaurasi ki Ma by Mahashweta Devi which was a more visceral experience perhaps because I saw the film rather than read the story since my Bangla is as good as my Japanese,which is to say non-existent.

I saw the film many moons ago so my memory is fuzzy at best though I do remember the pain and poignancy of Jaya’s(as the mother of a young son killed by the police in similar circunstances) road to self and societal awareness, the vast disconnect between the classes and Govind Nihalani’s sharp satire.

The Lowlands is an easy read, with Lahiri’s minimalist style which shines through. The events of the novel however are too dramatic for her concise prose and her characters too stereotypical.

She remains uncontested as a master of the madding mudane-ness of life and of describing things that she has seen. You can visualize her as the girl visiting Calcutta having to bathe in the open courtyard, as an observer of her grandparents  relationships, a visual conjurer of places and circumstances but Calcutta, and much of the novel reads to me as an outsider, looking in.