, a collection of short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri. Maybe you have read Interpreter of Maladies
(her Pulitzer Prize collection of short stories) or her novel The Namesake
? (I have read both, but I would especially recommend Interpreter of Maladies.) Lahiri tends to play with variations on the same theme in many of her stories, but there is something about the way she writes that makes me feel like I'm eating the words and don't want to leave a single morsel behind. And her use of metaphor is something to behold. Over the past several weeks, I have been thinking in particular about a metaphor Lahiri uses in the title story of Unaccustomed Earth. The title comes from a quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Custom House": "My children will have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth." Lahiri's stories examine the lives, relationships and emotions of displaced Bengalis raising families in the United States. These are the children of immigrants striking their roots into new, strange ground.
In the title story, 38-year-old Ruma is striking her roots into unaccustomed earth in many ways. She has just lost her mother to an unexpected death. She has just been transplanted from Brooklyn to Seattle, relocating for her American husband's job. She has no connections or friendships, and her husband is always traveling for work. She has just left her own job as a lawyer to take on a stay-at-home role, with one child to care for and another on the way. (As the narrator describes it: "Growing up, her mother's example -- moving to a foreign place for the sake of marriage, caring exclusively for children and a household -- had served as a warning, a path to avoid. Yet this was Ruma's life now.")
When her widowed father (who since his wife's death spends his time traveling abroad on packaged tours) comes to visit Ruma and her young son in Seattle, Ruma deliberates with some self-torture to decide whether to ask him to come live with her (as she feels is culturally expected of her), only to find that he prefers to strike his roots into foreign soil and has no interest in planting himself in her home. During his visit, he devotes himself (unbidded) to planting an extensive flower garden in Ruma's backyard. He involves her little son Akash in the process, who plants his own garden patch of toys and all manner of odds and ends. When Ruma's father leaves, eager to be on his way, there is no way to know whether the life he has planted in her yard will thrive and grow, or wither untended. (Certainly Akash's garden is doomed.) Nor is there any way to know whether Ruma herself will blossom and grow in this unaccustomed earth that is her life. But isn't that the reality for each of us?
I am no foreigner, at least in a literal sense, but this is a theme that resonates with me (and one I have written about at least a bit on this blog). As far back as I can remember, I have always felt planted into unaccustomed earth. I have never really entered ANY room and felt a true sense of sameness or acceptance. (For one thing, the longer I have traveled along this path in the legal profession, the fewer fellow travelers I find who bear any meaningful resemblance to me. But it's much more than that.) In truth, it is unlikely that anyone would guess this about me. And this is the aspect of the metaphor that captivates me. How many of us are trying to grow in foreign soil of some sort unbeknownst to the other flowers, fruits and vegetables in the garden?
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