Lowland

by Jhumpa Lahiri

This is another Mann Booker nominee  I wanted to read the Namesake by this author, but never got around to it.  This book makes me want to read it in the future.

This is the story of two brothers in India.  The oldes one, fifteen months older, is the more quiet, reserved one, his younger brother is the energetic, trouble-maker.  The brothers are very close, they both start school at the same time because the younger brother did not want his brother to go to school without them.  They are similar in build and as the younger brother's wife says, their voices are very similar.

The lowland is an area near to where they live, which used to flood and then drain with the weather.  But the lowland becomes plugged with garbage and litter and developers plan to plug it up to build developments in the future.

The book discusses the 20th century history of India, the British control, how India gained its independence and the politics of the mind 1900's .  As the two brothers go to university the younger one gets involved with pro-communist individuals and becomes a revolutionary/terrorist.  In making a homemade bomb he blows off the fingers of one hand, which of course will be an obvious sign to police of his activities.  The younger brothers activities worry his parents and brother but they don't realize how serious things are and how much danger he is in.  The parents are upset more when he elopes and brings a girl home as his wife.

While all this is happening the older brother has moved to the United States, to Rhode Island.  He has a brief affair with a woman who is separated from her husband.  He is very disappointed when she tells him she plans to reconcile with her husband.  The older brother probably would have gone along with an arranged marriage by his parents but this does not happen.

He learns that his brother has been killed by the police.   He had been hiding in the lowland marsh. His parents and wife witness his execution by the police from the roof of their house.  The older brother returns to India to console his parents (no hope of that.. they cannot let go of their grief).  He meets his sister-in-law who is pregnant (her husband didn't know this whe he died).  Her inlaws do not like her, they do not speak to her and treat her like a servant.  He learns that they plan to keep the child and send her back to her parents (who disowned her when she eloped).  He asks her to marry him telling her that she is in danger because of activities her husband had her engage in to support the cause.  She agrees to marry him and she joins him in the U.S.  She keeps thinking about her first husband, she loved him by she also feels betrayed by how he got her involved with the communist activities.

While she is relieved to be away from her inlaws the bride shows no affection for her new husband.  After her baby is born they have sex but it seems passionless.  Even more sad, she doesn't seem to have any affection for her child, wanting to have as little contact with her as possible.  Her second husband loves the child and the child loves him.

Eventually the woman resumes her studies in philosopy and works on her masters and doctoral degrees.  One day her husband comes home to find a note telling him she has been offered a job in California and she is leaving the child to him.  Through all the years she makes no attempt to contact her husband nor daughter.

The man is sad, but probably not surprised.  He and the girl have a decent life but the young girl is very troubled by her mother leaving.. Her father pays for therapy for her but she never tells him what is bothering her.  When the girl finishes university she leaves home and wanders around the country doing various jobs, in some cases just working for room and board.  Her father never knows where she is or when she might drop in to visit.  Then she returns one day telling him she is pregnant.  He is glad to see her and is willing to have her and the baby live with him.  He then tells her that he is not her biological father.  She is shocked and distraught at this news and leaves his house.  But she returns in a few days and asks to stay with him.  He of course agrees.

The man is getting older, he contacts his wife and asks for a divorce, he says he wants to leave his house to his daugther.  The wife decides to travel to Rhode Island, to see her husband and daughter, perhaps to reconcile with them.  When she arrives she meets her dauther and young granddaughter.  Her daughter is furious that she has shown up and kicks her out of the house.  She leaves, leaving the signed divorce papers behind.

As the book ends, it appears that the father and daughter will be in relationships, the father has married an American woman.

There was a comment in a post on Amazon that sums up the book very well...
"Bela, first appears as a child, and in her toddler's mind "yesterday" means any part of the past, even if it was years ago. In emotional terms, she's not wrong-- forty years ago might as well be yesterday, if what's being remembered matters enough. Our minds are like the lowland, quick to flood but slow to drain. We suffer, we cause suffering, we regret... and yet we go on".

I really had trouble with the behaviour of the boy's parents-- their unabated grieving, the way they treated their daughter-in-law, the disregard for their older son; and especially for the daughter-in-law.  I didn't necessarily expect her to love her new husband, although in countries with arranged marriages they claim that couples often grown to like each other.    She wallows in her sadness, is unloving, neglectful and walks away from her daughter.  I keep trying to justify her behaviour as PTSD, post partum depression, but rather it just seems like selfishness.  Lots of people witness and have terrible things done to them and they overcome these difficulties.  In this story, the younger brother wants to change the world for he better but his activiites destroy the lives of his entire family.  This is not to say one should not fight for justice and freedom, but demonstrates the collateral damage that can occur from "good causes'.  I am not sure that the "Mother" regrets the sorrow she inflicted on her daughter and second husband.  I was glad her second husband was going to get some degree of affection and a healthy relationship at the end.

I do understand the message the author is giving us, about carrying around negative baggage for years, and I have seen that happen in people and families for smaller "sins' and you hear so much about all the discord within families.  I would have liked a bit more from the mother's perspective.  We see her actions but learn very little about her feelings, why is she unable to lover her daughter, be more kind to her second husband.
Lots of food for thought!

Notes from the book...
Pp 252-3
"He recognized the house at once.  It was the rooming house he'd lived in with Richard...The effect was disquieting.  He felt his presence on earth being denied, even as he stood there.  He was forbidden access; the past refused to admit him.  It only reminded him that this arbitrary place, where he landed and made hsi life, was not his.  Like Bela, it had accepted him, while at the same time keeping a distance.  Among its people, its trees, its particular geography he had studied and grown to love, he was still a visitor.  Perhaps the worst form of visito: one how had refused to leave".

Pp.258-9
"Bella will never marry, she knows this about herself. The unhappiness between her parents: this was the most basic awareness of her life.
When she was younger she'd been angry at her father, more angry than she'd been at her mother.  She'd blamed him for driving her mother away, and for not figuring out how to bring her back.... She craves a different pace sometimes, but doesn't know what else she might do".

Pp.268-9 (Bella has learned about her real father)
"When her mother had left Rhode Island, she'd taken her unhappiness with her, no longer sharing it, leaving Bela with a lack of access to that signal instead.  What had seemed impossible had happened, the mountain was gone.
In its place was a heavy stone, like certain stones imbedded deep in the sand when she dug on the beach.  Too large to unearth, its surface partly visible, but its contours unknown.
She taughter herself to ignore it, to walk away. And yet the hole remained her hollow point of origin, the cold crosshairs of her existence.
She returned to it now.  At last the sand gave way, and she was able to pry out what was buried, to raise it from its enclosure. She felt its dimensions, its heft in her hands.  She felt the strain it sent through her body, before hurtling it once and for all into the sea".
If her father had told her the truth sooner, would she have adjusted better to her mother leaving?

P. 322
"I can't become a father Gauri.  After a moment he added.  Not after what I've done (accomplice to murder of a policeman)... Whatever happened he only regretted one thing, that he had not met her sooner, that he had not known her everday of his life".

P 323
"She recalled the thrill of meeting him, of being adored by him. The moment of losing him.  The fury of how he'd implicated her.  The ache of bringing Bela into the world after he was gone".