“But he was no longer in Tollygunge. He had stepped out of it as he had stepped so many mornings out of dreams, its reality and its particular logic rendered meaningless in the light of day. The difference was so extreme that he could not accommodate the two places together in his mind. In this enormous new country, there seemed to be nowhere for the old to reside. There was nothing to link them; he was the sole link. Here life ceased to obstruct or assault him. Here was a place where humanity was not always pushing, rushing, running as if with a fire at its back.”
* * *
The Lowland is a powerful yet simple book, and by far, Lahiri’s best work. It was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award as well. Awards aside, it is her most important work, and I highly recommend it. In a lot of ways, I’m still making peace with the book, weeks after putting it down. Deep down, it made me extremely homesick. I consider India my motherland, Los Angeles my permanent home, and New York my transient home for now. I’m not sure which one it made me homesick for — probably a combination of all three that exists only in my mind.
It was fitting that in the midst of wondering about these things, I read Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland. Lahiri has previously written The Interpreter of Maladies (for which she won the Pulitzer Prize), Unaccustomed Earth, and the more well-known The Namesake. She often writes about the Indian immigrant experience in America, tackling themes of isolation, acculturation, generation gaps, and more. The authenticity with which Lahiri reflects her own identity and isolation is what has always drawn me to Lahiri’s work. The Lowland, however, takes this large idea to a hauntingly new dimension, starting with India, not America, at its origin and heart.
* * *
“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’d landed and made his 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 visitor: one who had refused to leave.”
* * *
Subash and Udayan are brothers in Calcutta, who are inseparable as they grow up just across the marshy lowland that they call home. Despite being just over a year older, Subash feels, at times, overshadowed by the spirited outspokenness of his brother. Their lives- so closely weaved together since birth that when one is called, they both answer- take them on harrowing, divergent journeys. Subash dreams of fulfilling the role of dutiful son, and chooses to pursue a Ph.D. in America with the intention of returning to India to marry a woman of his parents’ choosing. Udayan, on the other hand, begins to get drawn in by the political Maoist/Naxalite movement in West Bengal, and marries the woman he loves in a civil court without telling his family first. This is the start of a great a divide between the previously inseparable brothers. The Lowland is the story of these brothers, their choices and the impact those choices had on the lives of everyone they loved.
* * *
“He’d wanted so much to leave Calcutta, not only for the sake of his education but also— he could admit this to himself now— to take a step Udayan never would. In the end this was what had motivated him. And yet the motivation had done nothing to prepare him. Each day, in spite of its growing routine, felt uncertain, improvisational. Here, in this place surrounded by sea, he was drifting far from his point of origin. Here, detached from Udayan, he was ignorant of so many things.”
* * *
The pace of the novel is slow at first, as Lahiri’s descriptive prose takes you thousands of miles away to Subash and Udayan’s home. She does a great job of tying in intricate details, such as the lowland where the story begins, as not only an overarching theme, but also a location that becomes pivotal to the story eventually. Lahiri paints with words, better than almost any other writer I know. “He drew breath through his nostrils, hoping this essential function, as faithful as the beating of his heart, might release him for a few hours. His eyes were closed, but his mind was unblinking.“ So often, a large portion of each chapter is devoted to describing the sights, sounds, and aura of the place and the characters, versus the actual words they say. An example of this is that Lahiri puts no quotations around dialogue, and it is a nice touch to avoid interrupting this largely narrative flow. The pace picks up a lot in the middle, almost whiningly so, and slows down just enough at the end to make sure the reader has a chance to breathe before offering a glimpse of hope for resolution and redemption.
* * *
“Isolation offered its own form of companionship: the reliable silence of her rooms, the steadfast tranquility of the evenings. The promise that she would find things where she put them, that there would be no interruption, no surprise. It greeted her at the end of each day and lay still with her at night. She had no wish to overcome it. Rather, it was something upon which she’d come to depend, with which she’d entered by now into a relationship, more satisfying and enduring than the relationships she’d experienced in either of her marriages.”
* * *
The bravest part of The Lowland is that it incorporates the Naxalite movement. Lahiri talked about doing research on this incredibly important movement in 1960s West Bengal, and her work shows. The details started to get heavy, and I didn’t care to follow most of the ideological details. Lahiri does an accurate, well-intentioned job of giving the reader just enough context to understand why the movement sweeps Udayan off his feet, and how, in contrast, Subash can’t understand his brother’s obsession. The political backdrop is pivotal for the characters, and fades easily into the background after the first quarter of the book to allow the characters’ lives to take their own course. It did pique enough interest for me, however, to visit some of Lahiri’s sources listed at the end to read more about Naxalbari and the Maoist ideologies that still influence pockets of India and South Asia today.
* * *
“He didn’t belong, but perhaps it didn’t matter. He wanted to tell her that he had been waiting all his life to find Rhode Island. That it was here, in this minute but majestic corner of the world, that he could breathe.”
* * *
Overall, The Lowland is like a painful homecoming. It’s bolder, and more complex, than Lahiri’s previous works. There are strong undertones of love, hope and family, but also of the pain of family ties gone awry, unfulfilled dreams, regret, and redemption (or the lack thereof). It cuts deep, and the journey towards healing takes longer, making this both literally and figuratively, her longest work. Taking us on such a journey is her greatest gift, perhaps. The Lowland was the product of over a decade of work, trial and error, and even other published works, on the road to the final work Lahiri published. The maturity and devotion to her words, her characters, and her home (in all of its places and forms) appears on every page.
Priya Arora is a graduate student at New York University, studying Human Development and Social Intervention with a research focus on mental health in LGBTQ youths. Born and raised in California, Priya has found a home in New York, and hopes to go on to become a mental health counselor. Follow her on Twitter at @thepriyaarora.
