China Room

by Sunjeev Sahota

This is another of the books on the longlist for the Booker Prize this year.  It is the story to two people, a woman (Mehar) and her great-grandson.

Part of the reason I enjoyed the book was the author's beautiful descriptive language.  The other reason was the engrossing, somewhat bizarre story.

The story takes place in the Punjab.  Mehar is engaged at a very young age, in an arranged marriage.  When it takes time for the wedding we find that three brothers in the same family will all be wedding on the same day.  The men's mother is the boss of the family.  In the culture the women are to keep covered including their faces.  In a bizarre situation the women never get to really know which of the three men is their husband.  The only time the husband's come to them is to a room, totally in the dark, where the men have sex with them and leave.

The mother in law treats all three brides as dirt and bosses them around.  Mehar thinks she knows which man is hers but it turns out she is wrong.  She is actually the bride of the oldest brother.  However, a brief encounter with one of the other brothers outside the house convinces her that another of the brothers is her husband.  They start meeting on the sly and seem to fall in love and enjoy having sex together.  The question has to be asked if this man was indeed her husband why didn't he just arrange meetings in the dark room on a regular basis.  It is bizarre that they women would not be allowed to have normal daily interactions with their husbands, not being "kept in the dark".  We do learn that the mother in law was apparently not allowed to marry the man she wanted to.

Eventually Mehar discovers the truth.  She is distraught and starts to cut herself and get ill.  She shuns her husband and he respects her wishes. She continues to have liaisons with the other brother and they plan to run away to Lahore.  Mehar gets pregnant by her lover.  The mother in law knows what is going on.  

At this time the fight for Indian Independence and Independent Punjab state is gaining strength.  The mother tells her eldest son that he should offer his brother as a soldier.  The man and Mehar are caught just as they are planning to leave.  Mehar is put in a room with locked bars, we don't know anything of her life after that other than she has 5 more children from her actual husband.  Mehar often wonders what happened to her lover, if he is alive or dead.  Her husband visits him in prison but doesn't tell her he has seen him.

Mehar's husband does seem to forgive her infidelity, he gets the house painted her favourite colour, he is willing to accept her rebuffs at first.  You have to wonder if she ever came to accept/respect him.  However given the locked bars on her room I am doubtful.

The second part of the story is about the young university student, great grandson of Mehar.  His parents had moved to England.  They and the boy are scarred by the verbal and physical attacks on them because they are immigrants.  The boy is on a summer break from uni.  He is a drug addict.  He stays with an uncle for a time and is misdiagnosed with dengue fever.  His aunt doesn't really want him around because of neighbourhood gossip,  He agrees to go to the old family home on a farm.  The house where Mehar was imprisoned.  His uncle sends him food.  He reluctantly starts to clean up the place a bit and deal with his withdrawal symptoms.  He is befriended by a local woman doctor and a local teacher.  They visit him, help him get the place painted etc and become friends.  The boy know that the room he is sleeping in was where his great grandmother was imprisoned but he doesn't seem to be interested in finding out the story although he does hear local gossip.

At the end of the story the boy wants to tell the Doctor he loves her but discovers she probably is having a relationship with the teacher, at least that is what the local gossips say.  It doesn't matter because the female doctor has been assigned elsewhere and he has to return to uni, where he has had failing grades.

We learn at the end that he does go back and has a couple more drug relapses but eventually gets clean. It was an interesting story, just surprised the young man wasn't more interested in getting to know more about his great grandmother.

I think the book is about isolation and imprisonment, real or psychological and unrequited love and the consequences.