The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

This engaging and sweeping novel by Jhumpa Lahiri spans decades and oceans as the story moves from India to Rhode Island and back to India again. On one level, the novel explores how the political turmoil of India in the 1960's changed the life of a 22-year-old man and the lives of those he loved. Yet the larger story illustrates the ways family obligations can shape our lives with or without our consent.

Subhash and Udayan Mishra are brothers born a year apart in Calcutta. Inseparable in their youth, they take different paths in their late teens. Subhash studies chemistry and is accepted into a Ph.D. program at the University of Rhode Island, while Udayan is swept into the Naxalite movement, a rebellion by young students to eradicate inequity and poverty. When the police murder Udayan for his revolutionary activities, his young wife, Gauri, is left living with her bereft and angry in-laws.  To complicate matters, Gauri is pregnant

The novel explores the painful implications of these events in the life of each character and how after Udayan’s death his family members are left to pick up the pieces of his life. Family members blame each other for Udayan’s choices and they all experience loneliness, disconnection and confusion.  Each surviving family member is left to suffer in his or her angst and seems incapable of moving on.   Instead, they live on separate islands of guilt and shame.  Subash, Gauri and Udayan’s mother and father shrivel to lesser versions of themselves and when the baby is born she absorbs the family’s sorrows.

Lahiri creates beautiful portraits of each character’s isolation and inner turmoil. As a reader, I wanted to tell each one of them to forgive themselves and talk with one other so that they might get on with their lives. But since each family member holds a shameful truth that derives from their relationship with Udayan, they hold their secrets close.  Lahiri’s writing is lyrical.  I just wish she had offered more dialogue between the characters so that I could have reached my own conclusions about their choices.

The Lowland gives insight into the power dynamics and traditions of an Indian family.  The story also serves as a powerful reminder of how a series of small decisions can alter the course of a person’s life and the lives of his family. By the end of the novel, we feel empathy for all of the characters, as it seems they have little power to change how they feel or leave the tragedy they are living.