Unaccustomed Earth entails in itself poignant sagas of those who have left their homeland, much like Lahiri herself, who was born in London and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. The stories emphasize on the pain of those who struggle to make an alien country their homeland--still trying, in different ways, to find some obscure connection with their country , something to cling on to. Each story brings out a different aspect of human love, which leaves the reader deeply touched. All are based on Bengalis settled abroad, a shadow of Lahiri’s own life. Each story touches upon an unseen aspect of a person’s life in a subtle way, neither hiding not revealing too much, as if to respect their privacy while telling the story, making the reader feel as if they’re privy to confidential information which they are not otherwise meant to know. All the stories revolve around the human need for finding love and conserving it by understanding flaws in loved ones.
The book is divided into two parts, the first containing five short stories and the second comprising of three stories making up a novella.
Unaccustomed Earth brings out how a middle aged man tries to fill a void created by his wife’s death by seeing another woman and how his daughter, who has had a childhood full of apprehensions about her father, quietly accepts this fact. She finally understands what her father has stood for all his life and a lifelong of questions are answered.
In Hell-Heaven, a Bengali housewife falls in and out of love with a much younger family friend. She enjoys dressing up for him and derives pleasure in cooking for him, knowing that it is wrong but somehow, unable to control it. The depth of her love is revealed years later, when she confides in her daughter the fact that she had almost attempted suicide for him.
A Choice of Accommodations tries to explore the loss and rediscovery of love between a married couple in the most unlikely situation--at the wedding of a girl with whom the husband was in love. They arrive full of anxieties, the marriage falls apart and they leave with their bond renewed, both realizing that the most important decision in their life was, in fact, the best decision that they’d ever taken.
Another form of love that, between a brother and a sister is elucidated in Only Goodness. Full of guilt for introducing her brother to alcohol, thus making him an alcoholic, she wants to help him. She tries to come to terms with her mistake when she sees her brother become a recluse as everyone rejects him. She tries her best to help him but ends up alienating him again.
Nobody’s Business talks about a love never expressed, never understood and never respected.
The second story spans over years, when two strangers having the same roots fall in love in a way that seems pre-destined. The man is revulsed by his father’s second marriage to a woman, who he feels, doesn’t quite deserve his mother’s place. Never able to come to terms with the marriage, he goes on looking for love which he finds in a childhood acquaintance--partly due to the fact that she had known his mother. However, fate seems to have something else in store for them and they part ways.
Thus ends one of the finest works of Lahiri. It has the same earthy and honest feeling as her other books, only themes are darker and more pronounced.
Zarmina Parvez
Coordinator
Prose Group
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