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Propelled by
the conventional wisdom that what is unknown in our lives hurts
and corrodes more than what we know, Divakaruni’s latest book
of short stories subtly takes the possibility of good in our
lives and gives it a little twist.
Her human but
flawed characters constantly err.
In these nine
short stories, Divakaruni focuses on the lives of women almost
exclusively, no doubt traversing territory both familiar and
close to her heart. Men when they do appear end up staying close
to the frayed edges.
The title story
is based on an interesting conceit.
A young man and
woman are introduced formally in the old custom of an arranged
marriage. Both are nervous about the meeting, which, in the San
Francisco area, takes on the characteristic of a blind date in a
coffee shop. The young woman says, "But the alternative —
it doesn’t seem to work that well does it?’... and, thinking
back on all the boys she had dated in college."
Ruchira, who
has grown up in California, is packing up her apartment to move
her "newlywed condo". She discovers an old notebook in
which she had kept track during her midteens of all her errors,
so that so she would not repeat them, once she was aware of
them. Now that she is older, she realises that more important
than the known errors are the unknown. She almost did not agree
to meet a young man recommended to her parents by her Aunt
Kamala. "It would have been the worst error of her life,
and she wouldn’t even have known it. It saddened her to think
of all the errors people make,.the unknown errors of their
lives, the ones they can never put down in a book and are
therefore doomed to repeat."
Framing the
collection are contrasting yet similar stories. "Mrs Dutta
Writes a Letter", portrays an aging Indian mother who has
left India to live with her son and his family. In America,
where she is supposed to derive comfort in being with her
family, she finds herself treading the rocky terrain of American
culture. She can not sleep on her Perma Rest American mattress
bought with all honest intent. Her inscrutable daughter adds to
her son’s aloofness and she is made to feel like a stranger in
her own home. But her letters to her friends back home are warm
and sunny. They reveal nothing of her painful and isolated
existence.
This story
wonderfully explores a whole new gamut of human relations and
the inevitable divides between the East and the West.
It is the
things that we take for granted: "the burglar alarm, the
answering machine, the knobs on the dishwasher-loomed like huge,
barbed obstacles on her daily horizon" — that scare her.
While Mrs Dutta
brims with true mother’s love, tasty meals, and true
involvement in the lives of the only family she has left, her
efforts are spurned at every turn.
Divakaruni is
exceptional at building a story line and quietly tearing it down
in the end — an element present in nearly every story in this
collection — thouh to varying degrees.
"The Lives
of Strangers" sees a young woman who has survived her own
suicide attempt finding great empathy for a mysteriously quiet
yet strong Indian woman on a trip to Kashmir.
"What the
Body Knows" sees a new mother’s difficult journey between
life and death and what pulls her safely to the other side.
These stories
are about building bridges between the old and the new. Whatever
you learn from these near-miss situations is summed up
succinctly by Divakaruni.
Time passes by
quickly. The hearts and minds of these characters will matter to
you as if they are members of your own family — and the honest
and utter pain and spirit with which the mostly female
protagonists face their predicaments will haunt you well into
your own life, every day of it.
Interestingly,
two stories in the collection focus on brother and sister
relationships and both of them place their female narrators in
the familiar roles of conciliator and interpreter of emotions.
In "The
Intelligence of Wild Things" you see a sister attempting to
heal an ever-growing rift between her brother and their mother
before death intervenes. Because she cannot do this directly,
the sister decides to implore her brother with a story, a fable
of sorts, conceding that whether or not he "listens"
and whether or not he "hears" is now a roll of the
dice.
She thinks to
herself: "We stand side by side, shoulders touching. The
wind blows though us, a wild intelligent wind. The white bird
flies directly into the sun."
This is a
placid and surrendering image in sharp and violent contrast to
the young brother and sister in "The Forgotten
Children" who are alternately brutalised and loved, yet
still fiercely loving parents who fail to protect them in any
fundamental way. Again, the sister attempts to forge a perverse
sort of normality and shelter her younger brother, causing her
to feel that "perhaps to disappear is the next best thing
to being forgotten".
One story
recounts the dreadful depression a new mother falls into after
she needs surgery following the birth of her first child.
Another details a painful, but not uncommon story of a drunken
father beating his wife and children. Yet another shows the
anguish and anger of a daughter whose father had left her and
her mother for America, and who now wants to reconcile and to
meet his grandson.
This short
story collection presents the struggles people must face as they
try to secure their relationships with parents, children, lovers
and spouses.
"We were
happy until you got here," one character says to another in
"The Blooming Season of Cacti"’ and this false
sentiment underscores an irony in all of the stories: Pure
happiness exists only in memory or in fantasies of the future.
Yet we never stop striving to experience it now.
In the end most
of her characters make surprising choices, all of which make
this collection special.
You have a
widow learning to ignore what "people will think", a
woman accepts a man with all his human flaws, a mother, on her
deathbed in a hospital, regaining the will to live by
fantasising about her doctor.
Somehow, in their own special
ways what each of these women is seeking to do is simply be
themselves and feel at home.
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