Tales and Globalization: Unusual Land, by Jhumpa Lahiri

In recent years, finding books on the diaspora, be it African, Dominican or Indian, allows us to know first-hand the impressions and experiences of those who left their homeland to merge with the dreams that the West promised. One of them, and after which he had been behind for a long time, is called Unusual Land, by Jhumpa Lahiri, American author of Bengali parents who narrates, through eight stories, the stories of these characters trapped between tradition and modernity, between India and the United States.

Curry and ketchup

Human nature will not bear fruit, like the potato, if it is planted over and over again, for too many generations, in the same depleted land. My children have had other places of birth, and as far as I can control their fortune, they will take root in unusual land.

With this quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Jhumpa Lahiri begins his vision (and that of the world) of all those characters and stories traced between his home and a land full of opportunities:

Ruma is a young Hindu married to an American who receives a visit from her widowed father. Boudi a married woman in love with a young Hindu immigrant. Amit and Megan is a married couple who go to a wedding while Sudha and Rahul are two brothers who consume alcohol behind the back of their traditional Hindu parents, while Hema and Kaushik's trilogy of stories follows in the footsteps of two lovers who have known each other from children to his idyll in adulthood, as the overwhelming climax of a book full of everyday life but with charm, a lot of charm.

Unusual Land is a book to savor, like curry, like stop consumed by almost all those characters who come to an east coast of the United States where they must deal with the new changes imposed by the West and try to maintain their Bengali traditions in a world in which children forget the language, conventions and taboos. All this wrapped in stories cooked over a slow fire, like the good dishes of India, until reaching an outcome that represents a turning point. Frankly well-crafted stories and stories that move and surprise, especially the story that closes the book, whose impact reminded me of another of my favorite stories: The trace of your blood in the snow, by Gabriel García Márquez.

According to statistics, more than 3 million Americans (1% of the population) come from India, of which 150 come from Bengal, southeastern state of the country. A reality that throws more than one reflection on migratory movements and a diaspora that finds its particular promised land in Europe and, especially, in the United States.

Photograph: NPR

This was the case of the author's parents Jhumpa Lahiri, born in London in 1967 and moved with her parents to Rhode Island (United States) at the age of two. After studying Creative Writing at Boston University, Lahiri made the Bengali diaspora the main concept of his works, being Interpreter of emotions (2000) his first published book. A set of stories in which, like Unusual Land, the author tries to explore the stories of all these immigrants through the feelings of the couples who star in each story.

The book won the Pulitzer Prize, something unusual for a storybook, which confirmed the potential of a writer who shortly after would publish the novels El buen nombre (2003) and La hondonada (2013). Unusual Land was published in 2008, being considered Best Book of the Year by The New York Times. A good title to begin delving into the global universe of this author whose work remains timeless, even rabidly current you could say.