#565 The Third and Final Continent- Jhumpa Lahiri

#565 The Third and Final Continent- Jhumpa Lahiri

Once again, Lahiri delivers a stunningly beautiful story. Reading these stories is like sitting by a lake, quietly watching the small ripples on the water. A man, single in his thirties travels back to Calcutta to be married before moving to America. 

“My wife’s name was Mala. The marriage had been arranged by my older brother and his wife. I regarded the proposition with neither objection nor enthusiasm. It was a duty expected of me, as it was expected of every man.”

After only a few days of knowing his new wife, he settles in Massachusetts for six weeks by himself, before his wife joins him. He gets a small room in an large house owned by a very elderly woman, Mrs. Croft; she is alone and bit addled, but finds him to be a perfect gentleman. He moves out when his wife finally comes. They are a bit uncomfortable with the strangeness of each other at first, but seeing themselves through the eyes of Mrs. Croft settles them down.

Soon, while they get comfortable with married life, they see a notice in the paper that, Mrs. Croft has died. He is moved to tears for the loss of this woman he barely knew.

“Mrs. Croft’s was the first death I mourned in America, for hers was the first life I had admired; she had left this world at last, ancient and alone, never to return.”

The beginning of this story happened while American astronauts had first landed on the moon. The world was suddenly new and full of possibility.

Notable Passage: “Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.”

Rating: 10-9-10-9 Total= 38

#129 The Teacher’s Story- Gita Mehta

#129 The Teacher’s Story- Gita Mehta

Master Mohan was a humble music teacher. He was once a promising young singer, but on the day he was to record his first record, his pure, young voice broke and he never recovered from that heartbreak. He is liked and respected by just about everyone except his own family. His wife is an angry judgmental woman who resents his failure.

“Everyday his wife reminded him how his voice had not mellowed in the years that followed.”

“Her taunts re-opened a wound which might have healed if only Master Mohan’s wife had left him alone.”

“Although he tried Master Mohan could not stop coughing. It was a nervous reaction to his family’s ability to silence the music he heard in his own head.”

Music was his only solace, his only love, his only reason for living. One day Quawwali singers from Nizamuddin were coming to perform for a weeks worth of concerts. Nizamuddin was where Quawwali music was invented 700 years ago. He went to each night, enjoying not only the music but the break from being judged and insulted by his family:

“The more the singers were carried away by their music the more Master Mohan felt the weight that burdened him lighten, as if the ecstasy of the song being relayed from one throat to another was lifting him into a long forgotten ecstasy himself.”

After one concert he stayed to hear a young boy sing. Imrat was being accompanied by his sister who could no longer take are of him. Imrat had a talent not seen in 500 years:

“Such a voice is not human. What will happen to music if this is the standard by which God Judges us.”

Master Mohan agreed to take the child to his home and become his music mentor. Because his family’s hatred of him, they mistreated the young phenom. So, the Master took his lessons to the park, where people began to gather in large numbers and pay tribute. All of the tribute went to the boy and his sister, and even when he signed a music contract Master Mohan wanted nothing for himself.

This story is a love letter to music, and to all those that love and teach music with passion. Music is religion and love and life. Everything else can be tuned out.

Notable Passage: “He only saw the power of the morning raga and dreaming visions of light he pushed his voice towards them, believing sight was only a half-tone away.”

Rating: 8-9-10-9 Total= 36

#126 Sredni Vashtar- Saki (H.H. Munro)

#126 Sredni Vashtar- Saki (H.H. Munro)

“Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion that the boy would not live another five years.”

“One of these days Conradin supposed he would succumb to the mastering pressure of wearisome necessary things—such as illness and coddling restrictions and drawn-out dullness. Without his imagination, which was rampant under the spur of loneliness, he would have succumbed long ago.”

A doomed, lonely child with a wonderful imagination. He has a guardian that is strict and nobody but himself to keep busy. He keeps a ferret that he has dubbed a God, Sredni Vashtar. The guardian is skeptical of the child’s secret and takes the key that will unlock his secret. He prays that his God will escape these evil forces:

Sredni Vashtar went forth,

His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.

His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.

Sredni Vashtar the beautiful

They accidentally allow his pet to escape and worry that they have ruined the one thing he cares about, but he is excited that his God has been set free.

Notable Passage: “The few fruit trees that it contained were set jealously apart from his plucking.”

Rating: 8-7-9-10 Total= 35

#106 Gare du Nord- Suketu Mehta

#106 Gare du Nord- Suketu Mehta

This is a year-in-the-life type of piece. The year is 1982, the place is Paris, in the immigrant heavy part of town. Everyone visiting, fleeing, transient or making the best of somewhere that wasn’t home. It was a romantic, unanchored ship floating with the current.

“It was not a pretty area, and the noise of trains and cars consumes the neighborhood from an early hour. But maybe what keeps the immigrants in the area is the knowledge that the very first door to home is just there, in that station, two blocks away. The energy of travelers is comforting, for it makes us feel that the whole world, like us, is transient."

There is a small indian café that serves masala dosas run by a Vietnamese man.  “Nobody in this Café was there by design; we were all in transit.” It was filled each day with the same people

“There were people who come to Paris and never visit the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower. We were like that.”

This is a nice representative story, with a gentle flowing style, sometimes strikes a very touching chord:

“He said something to her, very softly, so that only she could hear, and she put her arm up and touched his shoulder. Many worlds met in that gesture, vast distances were shattered. That light touch was more intimate than the most passionate embrace, and all of us, the spectators, felt our hearts breaking.”

Notable Passage: “The afternoon sun came slanting and sneaking into the apartment, coloring our thoughts insidiously.”

Rating: 9-7-7-8 Total= 31

#25 Nothing Visible- Siddhartha Deb

#25 Nothing Visible- Siddhartha Deb

Intrigue, corruption, and disaster at a coal mining operation.  In other words business as usual.  Everyone is untrusting or paranoid about others at the mine. Workers worried about the managers, managers about the head office, everyone about the new accountant, outsiders, locals, ancient spirits, whatever is unknown, etc.

The plot gets interesting so I won’t discuss details.  Most of the story is about gaps between social classes.  The office workers drink tea while the miners work so long, one of the older men doesn’t even know his name or age anymore. When a new accountant shows up he believes at first he has a working class job until he visits the mines, and sees what working class really means.  Worrying about safety, his co-worker tell him “your head office status will protect you.”

His housing is also far different from the men: “The building had clearly been constructed to make some people richer rather than because there was a pressing need for officer’s housing”

His safe status doesn’t last long. When there is an apparent accident trapping 64 workers, he is given an armed guard to fend off a potential communist uprising within the workers. There is a theme obvious from the title about visibility, about people’s feelings, motives, real selves. The moment the accountant first showed at the camp his view of the pits literally vanished in a cloud of soot.

Overall this is a nice representative story about the Indian Caste system. The writing is clean and formal. A nice read.

Notable Passage: “An engineer knows that there is a gap between numbers and reality. Between theory and practice. A gap in which the unexpected can occur.”

Rating: 8-8-8-7 Total=31