THE LOWLAND: JHUMPHA LAHIRI

This, the third book by Lahiri I have read, deals with characters with roots in India, but have immigrated to the United States for a better life.  As is always the case, things do not always turn out as planned.  Her first book, INTERPRETER OF MALADIES, a series of short stories about immigrants new to the States remains my favorite, in fact, one of my favorite short story collections of all time, having taught it to numerous classes.

This novel revolves around two brothers, Subhash, who immigrates to the States and his brother, Udayan, a Marxist committed to the struggles of the poor who stays behind in Calcutta,.  Udayan marries, Gauri, a philosophy major, against the wishes of his family.  Subhash, in contrast, lives the rest of his life in the US, getting his PhD, settling down in Rhode Island.  But it's much different from what the previous sentences suggests, an easy life.  In the second year of Udayan's marriage, Udayan, he becomes an active member of a terrorist, involves his wife Gauri to an extent in his activities but is soon arrested by the police, in front of his parents and wife, taken out in to a field, shot, and then his body is taken away, never to be seen again.

When Subhash finds out about his brother's death, he flies home to give succor to his family only to find them inconsolable and snubbing Udayan's young wife, Gauri, ignoring her, treating her like a pariah.  Subhash takes pity on her, falls in love, and proposes that they marry and go off together to the States.  Things are also complicated because she is carrying Udayan's child.  Nevertheless, she agrees, mostly to just get away, and they marry and immigrate to the States, hoping love will develop. It does not and a good part of the novel involves Gauri's guilt, a result of her actions in Calcultta,  inability to love her new husband, Subhash, also her own child, Bella.  She simply cannot forgive herself for her past and eventually leaves Subhash with her daughter, with out a word, only a note.  She goes to California and ends get PHD in philosophy and ends up teaching at a university.  Subhash raises Bella on his own and she, like her father and mother, is independent, refusing to follow the typical path and ends up getting a degree but working on various organic farms, helping people to live their life in a more sustainable way.

And it's not until Bella is in her thirties that Subhash finally confesses to her that he is not her real father but an uncle, that his brother, the long dead Udayan, is her father.  After hearing this, Bella leaves in anger but eventually forgives her father, comes back and lives with him, mostly because she is pregnant with a child, with no father to speak of.  The novel ends with some happiness, as Subhash marries again at seventy, a widowed Portuguese woman from his neighborhood.  Bella and her daughter, Meghna, live with them. The only dark note is Gauri's attempts to see the daughter, Bella, whom she abandoned.  It does not go well, obviously, and she then impetuously boards a plane, returns to Calcutta for the first time since leaving and seems finally reconciled to her past after  returning to her house, reliving the terrible death of his husband.  Lives have there ups and downs, good and bad patches, and much of the bad could be avoided if anger was replaced with generosity, fear with forgiveness, easier said then done.