5-6: Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri and Londonstani by Gautam Malkani

[puritybrown.livejournal.com]

5: Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
6: Londonstani by Gautam Malkani

So, okay, I like Jhumpa Lahiri. I really do. And I do plan to read her novel The Namesake (I loved the film version). But at some point while I was reading the stories in Unaccustomed Earth, I started to get impatient. I mean to say, there are only so many beautifully-crafted short stories about upper-middle-class high-caste Hindu Bengali heterosexual academics having wistful epiphanies about life as a second-generation Indian living in a city on the East Coast of the USA that I can read before I start wondering whether she can do anything else. I'd like to say I'm exaggerating, but, seriously, that's all she ever writes about! She does it beautifully, but halfway through Unaccustomed Earth I found myself longing for a story about a gay upper-middle-class high-caste Hindu Bengali academic having a wistful epiphany about life as a second-generation Indian living in a city on the East Coast of the USA. Or a lower-middle-class high-caste Hindu Bengali heterosexual having a wistful epiphany und so weiter. I mean, I kind of get the feeling that I could recreate a fairly accurate account of Lahiri's childhood and her parents' experiences moving to the US just on the basis of her stories, and while it never gets self-indulgent the way a lot of disguised autobiography does, it does get repetitive. I still like her writing, but if she doesn't start trying something different, she's in danger of growing stale.

So, anyway, after Unaccustomed Earth I felt the need for something that showed a different side of the Indian-diaspora experience, so I picked up Londonstani by Gautam Malkani. This was a good choice for two reasons:
a) it could not be more different than Jhumpa Lahiri's stories; and
b) it's really really really good.

Londonstani is a roller-coaster of a ride through saaarf London rudeboy gangsta territory: our main man is Jas, who used to be, in his own words, "a gimpy fuck", but now he hangs out with Hardjit (used to be Harjit but now it's got a D in 'cos he's well hard, innit?) and Ravi and Amit, ridin around in Ravi's mum's Beemer an checkin out all da fit ladies.

Erm, sorry. As you can tell, it's written (mostly) in phonetic dialect, which is incredibly hard to pull off, and Malkani does it beautifully, so much so that 20 pages in I was saying "innit?" at the end of every other sentence (at least in my head). It's funny and real and vivid and rattles along at a breathtaking pace; I laughed a lot reading this book, and towards the end I cried. The final twist is one of those did-not-see-it-coming things that makes all the little gaps in the narrative make sense. This book is brilliant.

Comments

[littlebutfierce]

Thank you for the Londonstani review--I'd heard of it before but didn't make a note of it, so it slipped through my sieve-like brain. Now I really want to read it!

[evilprodigy.livejournal.com]

Your first paragraph made me laugh out loud because it's so true.

[dharmavati.livejournal.com]

I haven't read Unaccustomed Earth but I have read (and watched) The Namesake so I think I can understand your point. Lahiri's really good at communicating that one narrative of the 2nd-gen East Coast upper-middle-class high-caste Hindu Bengali heterosexual academic, but that is hardly the only one present in the history of the South Asian diaspora.

I agree with your thoughts on Londonstani. I was cracking up all the way through the book and, after reading that final twist, I really had to go back and read the entire book a few times to understand how it all still works. :D

[sibilance7.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for this review of Londonstani. I hadn't actually heard of it, but it's on my "to read" list now. Also, I think you've hit the nail on the head with Lahiri.

[quinara]

Londonstani is a fab book! Have you seen Malkani’s website? There're some great bits and bobs on there as well.

[puritybrown.livejournal.com]

Ooh, thanks for the link! That's easily the best author website I've ever seen.

[quinara]

I love that he's happy to ramble on about what he was trying to do (and not in an authorial-intent-laden/wanky way).

[rydra_wong]

Oh, awesome!

[quinara]

More authors should write such interesting stuff about themselves...

[deepad]

there are only so many beautifully-crafted short stories about upper-middle-class high-caste Hindu Bengali heterosexual academics having wistful epiphanies about life as a second-generation Indian living in a city on the East Coast of the USA

I cracked up because its so true!

Thanks for the Londonstani review, that goes on the to be read list.

[puritybrown.livejournal.com]

Ha! I laughed when I saw that line about her in your poem "The Indian Woman". Because, no, not all Indian women writers write like Jhumpa Lahiri, and a good thing too. Wouldn't Indian literature be tedious if they did?

[deepad]

OMG so tedious! Give me Arundhati Roy any day.