Unaccustomed Earth

Just finished reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth, half hour before I have to see my Tumbuka tutor. A great collection of stories I could not put down, quiet, intricate only in regards to the human condition it describes, and yet in many ways, more moving than many books I have read. Perhaps it is the connection to the stories, the sharing of common experience; my own family, and like the many we knew in the places we lived, struck their roots in new lands. And as a result, I too share some of the common emotions, impulses, like Kaushik’s need for perpetual movement, unable to stay put. For whatever the reason for the connection, it is strong and difficult to ignore.

It is also very difficult to ignore the setting of all of Lahiri’s tales. They travel from India to the Northeast, and many times specifically to the state and city I called home for the past decade of my life. She describes the city and surrounding areas with such nostalgic care, a tenderness that recalls my own memories in all of those places. Times that seem sweet only in hindsight, accentuated by being so far away from them. Eating ice cream at Herrell’s, strolling from Beacon Hill to Copley through the commons, Harvard Square, Pho’s, complaining about the cold while eating Ben & Jerry’s sitting under a blanket, and countless other memories. A majority of my conscious memory has been dedicated to Massachusetts, from my first conscious kiss to my first job.

The relationships I have formed in a lifetime do not amount to much. I look around sometimes with envy, seeing people that have lived in one place, raised among people they know their whole lives. Barely a handful of people outside my direct family I consider close, but never close enough. I have known no one for more than a few years and even those that have don’t really know me, nor I them. The contrary nature; the inability to forget and forgive, yet able to impulsively in a moment. The tendency for me to get in my own way. There are so many versions of myself that I can’t keep them straight, a new me for each new place.

Here is a new version that I know will change once I leave. I don’t want to go back to that previous life, I’ve reached an end there. America was a life I enjoyed, but not one that worked easily, it was a constant battle. There are so many things I don’t know about my friends in America, and so many things they don’t know about me, nor understand. A mutual lack of interest, stemming from the fact that we could never understand each other, our lives. We don’t share that common bond of coming from the same place, physically and thereby mentally, which is more powerful than I give it credit for.

Even though America is a place to start anew, the place to erase an old life, abandon its skin and begin again, it doesn’t work so easily. The past lingers in corners of the mind, only to abruptly resurface at random moments as fleeting memories. A reminder that it will forever be with you, no matter how much your consciousness dictates that those memories are long forgotten. More often here, than back home, these memories recur in dreams. I dream more here than anywhere I have lived. Vivid dreams of memories flooding back from a past I thought I had forgotten. And like many of Lahiri’s characters, I’m learning that the past can never truly be forgotten, and that the human condition, it seems, is suffering.

Even now as I ramble hastily before my class, I’m aware that I’m writing this with intent and purpose I will never disclose. As with anything I write, I will never risk the chance of someone reading my thoughts, settling instead for only allusions and derivatives of an idea. The things I say, the things I do, are guarded and always will be for reasons I can’t describe, other than perhaps that to get close is to be vulnerable. I wear different masks for different people and sometimes secretly find amusement in fooling people that think they’ve figured me out, pegged me to a definition. I’m in no way speaking highly of myself as a complex person, but it is some explanation of my occasional need for solitude, to get away.