I just finished the namesake by jhumpa Lahiri and I am in awe of her writing prowess. We read her book of short stories (interpreter of maladies) for book club and I was so impressed I vowed to read everything that she writes. Lahiri tackles the subject of acculturation, primarily from India to the US. She tackles much more than that, of course, but it is a solid thread in her writing and she helps readers to truly understand the dilemma of losing one's home country and setting down roots in a place without family or anything familiar.
I'll stop there with the explication and let you discover Lahiri's work on your own, but I do want to share this one line that struck home with me; the jolt of recognition and truth was so strong that I sat bolt upright from my slouch. In this paragraph, the main character (Gogol) reflects on his life after the failure of a relationship:
"They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend.Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end."
Yes, yes, and yes. Our missteps shape us. Events that make no sense are the things that endure, and somehow we need to be at peace with the fact that our journeys through life are not smooth, do not 'make sense' in the traditional linear way, and contain events that we can not prepare to survive.
PS - I told my daughter about the decline in smiles from youth to old age and she replied, with a straight face, "Well, old men still smile more than guinea pigs." (!) Made me smile . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment