After her mother's death, Ruma's father retired from the pharmaceutical company where he had worked for many decades and began travelling in Europe, a continent he's never seen,' so starts the title story in Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri's third work of fiction that comprises eight irresistible and heart-aching stories. 'In the past year he had visited France, Holland and most recently Italy. They were package tours, travelling in the company of strangers, riding by bus through the countryside, each meal and museum and hotel prearranged.'
When he visits Ruma in Seattle and begins to tend her garden, it looks like he has started on a new journey. He has also begun bonding with his little grandson, Akash.
The surprises come in measured doses.
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While showing a video of one of his European travels to Ruma, Dadu as his grandson calls him, is shocked that a traveller in his tour group had accidentally shot the image of a woman who remains on the frame for a few seconds. Ruma wants to know who the woman is. Who did Ruma mean, her father asks. 'She's gone now. A woman who looked Indian,' Ruma says.
He struggles in his mind, but he cannot bring himself to tell her about the new woman in his life. 'That is one thing I have observed on my travel… Indians are everywhere these days,' he says.
Lahiri lets the readers on to the widower's secret early on in the story but the reader will indeed become anxious to find out how Ruma will discover the love affair -- and what her reaction would be. And when she indeed does so, it is through a plot that would make masters of novellas like George Simenon proud.
In Lahiri's deft hands, the story becomes anything but melodramatic. It also looks quickly at Ruma's marriage to an American on the one hand, and on the other, deals with the emotional chasm between a father and daughter, and the fear Dadu has in revealing his heart to Ruma. The story then is not just about secrets of the heart but also a meditation on the father-daughter relationship
Photograph: Elena Seibert
Also read: A home-coming for Jhumpa Lahiri
