Am I the only one who sees a similarity between the Norway child foster care and the stories of Jhumpa Lahiri?
In story after sensitively-penned story, Lahiri has written about the difficulties faced by Indian immigrants when they leave their country and attempt to make lives and careers abroad. From her very first collection, Interpreter of Maladies, which won her the Pulitzer, Lahiri has made the peculiar condition of the NRI her main focus. Her portrayal of the cultural and emotional challenges faced by first and second generation immigrants has won her much acclaim and many readers.
Watching the tragic tale of the Bhattacharya couple unfold in the media, it appears as if real life and fiction have got horribly entangled. Of course, none of Lahiri’s stories so far has dealt with the theme of children being forcibly taken away from Indian parents and placed in foster homes — even for a writer of fiction that eventuality would seem a more extreme turn of plot. But to understand the nuances and complexities of the situation, commentators (over-zealous TV anchors, the chatterati and the man on the street) would do well to read Lahiri’s Namesake, or watch Mira Nair’s evocative film based on the book.
Because, far from being a breaking news event, a cultural clash, a diplomatic row or an attempt by politicians to whip up patriotic fervour, the story of the Bengali family’s tryst in a foreign country — a country that is as alien to their upbringing as any they could ever dream of living in — the crisis in the Bhattacharya family appears to be a human predicament, one that a reader of Lahiri’s stories would empathise with.
A young couple overwhelmed and bewildered by the alien culture they find themselves in; a husband who has to spend extra hours at his workplace keeping pace with his colleagues; a lonely and neglected wife trying very hard to fit in and make the best of her situation, and the insurmountable distance between who they were and who they’re expected to become.
Seen in this context, the Bhattacharyas’ situation appears to have more to do with the issue of young Indian women and the challenges they face when they travel overseas to support their husband’s careers.
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Synchronicity is a fascinating thing and has much more relevance in our lives than we give it credit for. And so, even as I mulled Lahiri’s Namesake and the Norwegian situation, when I received a call from an old friend — a young girl who’d got married a decade ago and relocated to a small American town — I was not entirely surprised to be informed that she was being treated for clinical depression and that her husband was very concerned about her.
He sounded worried sick over a crackling line. “She’s hardly eating; she doesn’t go out; she sits by the window of our home all day looking out. I tell her to use the gym in our building; try and get her to meet other Indian women in our town; encourage to take up a hobby or a part-time job, but there’s no interest. I really don’t know what to do, other than give up my job here and return to India!”
Speaking to my friend I tried to understand what the matter was. After all, this was someone who’d married the man she loved and who, in many ways, was living a middle-class Indian girl’s dream: marriage to a loving man in a well-paid job, a home in one of the cleanest and most prosperous cities in the world, and the opportunity to travel, study, and explore herself and the world around her.
But listening to her halting words on the phone, I only heard the yawning loneliness of the husband who came home late, the biting cold and lack of sunshine, the clinical antiseptic tenor of the neighbourhood and neighbours.
“Get her on a plane to India,” I heard myself telling her husband, “just for a fortnight even. She needs to be in a place she’s familiar with and accustomed to. Surrounded by people of her colour and a climate that she’s grown up in. She’ll recover in no time at all.”
Even as India’s male workforce conquers new lands and achieves further triumphs, it would do well to pay some attention to the plight of the women who support them in this endeavour, often at great cost to their happiness and emotional stability.
My friend’s husband promised to consider packing her off for a short India holiday to restore her spirits.
And as for those who comment on Sagarika Bhattacharya and her capabilities as a mother and wife, I would recommend reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s stories. Because what the wives of NRIs have had to face and the price they’ve paid for their husbands’ successes are also India’s unsung story of heroism and courage.
