The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy ****
Bitter Sweets by Roopa Farooki ***1/2
The Unknown Errors of Our Lives by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni ****
I devoted May to a mini-reading project--exploring women's voices from southwest Asia, two from India ("The God of Small Things" and "Unknown Errors of our Lives") and one each from Bangladesh/Pakistan ("Bitter Sweets") and Sri Lanka ("Love Marriage").
Western news coverage might lead readers to believe that the subcontinent is rife with political and religious upheaveal. And politics and religion do make appearances in these novels, as well as issues of race and gender. But the stories themselves revolve around family dynamics that are more universal than regional--infidelity, generational tensions, cultural snobbery and, most often, secrets.
In "Love Marriage," a Sri Lankan-American family moves temporarily to Canada where dying Uncle Kumaran, a Tamil Tiger, has been smuggled to a safe house. While the family does not condone Kumaran's terrorist activities, they hope to find some reconciliation in his final illness.
The story is mostly told by Yalini, Kumaran's niece, a pretty typical American college student, who sometimes finds herself adrift and confused in Toronto's Tamil community. Yelini's counterpart in the novel is Jenani, Kumaran's daughter, who has lived in Sri Lanka all her life and whose marriage is being arranged from Kumaran's death bed.
The sudden immersion into Tamil culture allows Yalini to learn more about her Tamil roots. She knows and loves her mother's strength and forebearance, her father's kindness. But it is only in talking with Uncle Kumaran that her family history opens up. The rites of Jenani's wedding and Kumaran's funeral become a kind of Confirmation ceremony for Yalini, linking her more closely to her own heritage.
Arundhati Roy's tragic "The God of Small Things" also deals with an uncle, Chacko, who once lived in England, married an English woman with whom he had a daughter, then divorced her and moved back to India to the family home. His aunt, Baby Kochama, browbeats everybody, especially Chacko's sister and her boy-girl twins, Estha and Rahel. The family is nominally Christian, though they follow and are affected by Hindu customs and caste prejudices.
Whether you like the story itself (I did), the novel is worth reading for its style and structure, which marries Joseph Conrad's exploration of the dark effects of colonialism and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's magical realism that springs out of dank, moldy and jungly places. The novel explores the preternatural communication between the twins; the haunted History House, where an Englishman had lived, "gone native," and finally shot himself in the head; and in the family's mixed-up feelings about its Christianity and English connections.
Roy's narrative starts on the edges of the story and pulls the whole thing together, strand by strand, like a net, where, at the center, the reader learns about the story's central tragedy. In less talented hands, the novel would be a mess, but the book is both challenging and rewarding.
Roopa Farooki's "Bitter Sweets" is a more straightforward story revolving around three generations of a Muslim Pakistani/Bangladeshi family living in Dhaka and London. Family relations are complicated in the way of Western soap operas that moves from the melodramatic to the absurd.
In a nutshell **SPOILERS FOLLOW**, the indolent Bangladeshi Henna is betrothed to the handsome Rashid Kareem. They have one daughter, Shona, who elopes to England with the Pakistani Parvez, a boy Shona's parents disapprove of. Shona and Parvez try for some years to have children, and eventually have twin boys, known by their middle names Omar and Sharif (an intentional joke on their parents' part). Meantime, Henna has transferred her affections to Rashid's brother, Aziz. Rashid, knowing but never acknowledging his wife's unfaithfulness, meets an English woman, Verity, on a business trip and they enter a bigamist marriage. They have a daughter Candida. Shona teaches French at an English school where she falls for the headmaster Dermot. Sharif falls for his aunt Candida, not knowing they are related.
"Bitter Sweets" explores the nature of lies and their corrosive effects on human relations, an effort somewhat marred an ending that's so sunny it stretches credulity, but by that time you've become so attached to the characters you don't care.
"The Unknown Errors of Our Lives" offers nine short stories that focus largely on second-generation Indian immigrants, who often must straddle two cultures making them unable to fully navigate in either.
In the title story the artist Ruchira, living in America, has agreed to meet a man recommended by her aunt:
Not only is the boy just two years older than our Ruchira and handsome looking, 173 centimeters tall, and holds a fast-rising job in the renowned Charles Schwab financial company, he is also a nephew of the Boses of Tullygunge--you recall them, a fine, upright family--and to top it all he has intelligently decided to follow our time-tested traditions in his search for a bride.Aunt Kamala's enthusiasm and pride in her recommendation of the 173 centimeter Biren reads like an advertisement--too good to be true. And, of course, he is.
In "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter," an elderly Indian widow comes to live with her Americanized yuppie children and grandchildren. Her letters to friend Roma back in India paint a happy picture of the family, but as Mrs. Dutta feels increasingly isolated from and puzzled over the behavior of her American family, the letters become more honest and yearning.
Divakaruni's style is straightforward and her images suggest the jumble that her immigrant characters must deal with: Quaker Oats and alu-dum and samosas; Desh magazine and American television news; the the legend of Queen Padmini and Shakespeare's "As You Like It"; saris and business suits.
This is a road all our American ancestors have traveled, and for all its exotica, it feels remarkably familiar.
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