THIS ABOVE ALL
Different stories, common theme
Khushwant Singh

WITH only two collections of short stories and one novel, Jhumpa Lahiri has created a niche for herself in the literary world. She ranks with the likes of Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth and Salman Rushdie. She has won the Pulitzer Prize, O’Henry and Hemingway Awards as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship. Like celebrated authors I have named, although she wrote about Indians, she lives in the US, is married to a white American and is the mother of two children.

My guess is that she is in her early thirties. With this promising start, she is likely to go far. The surprising part about Jhumpa Lahiri’s fiction is that unlike other writers who touch on a variety of subjects, she has stuck to one theme — the losing battle Bengali bhadralog emigres fight to retain their Bengali identity. There is something yet undefined which makes Bengalis living abroad seek out each other. Although other emigre Indians like Sindhis, Sikhs, Gujaratis and Malayalees also set up organisations of their own, they meet in temples, mosques or gurdwaras to keep in touch with others of their faith and language.

Bengalis abroad don’t bother about religion. For them Bengaliness is more important. Common language is their strongest bonding factor. But they do not extend it to Bangladeshis, who are largely Muslims. Love for their own cuisine comes next. Whenever they entertain each other, they lay out lavish feasts of rice, fish and crustacea soaked in Bengali style.

Their backgrounds are different from those of other Indian emigres. They come from middle or upper-middle class homes where higher education and books are valued. In the US they aspire to have their offsprings make it to the Ivy League, universities—Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and Swarthmore. Their values are those of the bhadralog and not chhotolog. They go abroad not to make money but to excel in their professions as doctors, engineers or teachers.

No matter how Europeanised or Americanised they become and sleep around with white girls or boys, when it comes to marrying, their first preference is someone with similar background. Jhumpa Lahiri expanded on the theme of Bengaliness in her novel The Namesake (made into a film by Mira Nair). It was the same in her first collection of short stories—The Interpreter of Maladies. For the third time in her short story collection—Unaccountable Earth (Random House) — all her stories revolve around the same theme.

The title story is a masterpiece of elegant prose and subtle nuances in changing relationships between a widowed father, his married daughter, her husband and two grand-children. The widowed father, who is in his seventies, has a liaison with a Bengali widow in her mid sixties he met during a conducted tour of Europe. His devious attempts to keep it a secret failed when his daughter finds a postcard written by her father to his mistress but had forgotten to post while staying with her. That one story sums up just about everything Jhumpa Lahiri has written so far. It is as good a story as I have ever read.

You can’t take it with you

Virendra Trehan’s Foundation for Amity and National Solidarity gave me an award for being a good chap. They did it in style in the Parliament Annexe where they invited a galaxy of celebrities for the occasion. Somnath Chatterjee, Speaker of the Lok Sabha, presided.

Soli Sorabji read the citation. Shinde, Vasant Sathe and some others made laudatory speeches. I can’t pretend that I was not flattered. I was. It inflated my deflated ego. However, I was also in a dilemma because the award included a substantial sum in cash and I did not know how to spend it.

My main indulgences are tasty food and good booze. I have had to cut down both as overeating creates digestion problems.

I have also had to reduce my drinking to one slug of single malt every evening before dinner. Even if I continue with the spartan regimen, there will be a lot of money unspent. I am 94 and know that I have little time left to enjoy life. I also know I can’t take it with me. So what are the options?

I can think of three — two conventionally religious, the third personal. First is offered by religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They assure me that if I have been a good boy, I will be allowed to enter paradise. I have not been too bad a boy and have a good choice of gaining admission. I am assured in paradise booze flows freely in streams and virgins are available for the asking. So there will be no need to have money on my person.

The second is the Aryan option — Jain, Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh. They assure me that I will be
reborn again.

I may not look the same as I do now but the spirit in me will be the same. But will I be able to transfer my past bank account to the new that I open in my second life? I doubt it. When I go to the bank and ask my cheque to be cashed, they are sure to question my identity.

I may quote the Gita in my support and assure them that I am the same person I was but in a re-incarnated garb.

They will either treat me as nut case or an imposter and hand me over to the police. Since I do not subscribe either to the Semitic or Hindu religions, I have to fall back on mental resources. Here the picture is bleaker than that painted by men of religion. In fact, it is because I have no idea what happens to a person when he dies.

So I will spend whatever I have looking after myself while alive. The rest I will give to my children. They may decide what to do with the remaining amount — keep it for themselves, give it to my servants or to some charity.

And I thank Trehan for making me think about the dilemma of old age — knowing you can’t take anything with you.