Secrets and Lies

The early wave of South Asian immigrant writing focused on the immigrants themselves: their unfamiliarity with the new country, discrimination, yearning for a home that changed after their departure, and excitement about the opportunities now available to them. The next wave focused on their children: growing up as visible minorities, parental pressure to be high achievers, and the ambivalence of being part South Asian and part American or British.

Somewhere in there, the stories of adult immigrants in their later years, decades past their immigration and childrearing days, were mostly ignored. In the last few years Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss was an amusing look at a curmudgeon coming to terms with life, and now there is Deepa Varadarajan’s Late Bloomers.

The middle-aged couple at the center of Varadarajan’s story, Suresh and Lata, were married for thirty-six years before their recent divorce. Lata has moved out to a condo by her choice, while Suresh has kept the house. Suresh, unused to solitude, has started online dating: he drives up to an hour to meet (Indian) women.

All these internet women lie, I tell you. All of them. Sometimes the lies are about the fundamentals: previous marriages, whether they have kids, what line of work they’re in. Oh, and age. Age is a big one. The last date I went on was with a woman whose profile said forty-one. Impossible! There wasn’t a chance that Ms Mittal (formerly Mrs. Mittal) was a day under fifty.

[…] I didn’t go around exaggerating for sport. I was more reasonable about it all. On my profile, I described myself as ‘Suresh Raman, a healthy and active, five-foot-ten, fifty-five-year-old divorced man of Indian origin’.

All right, so fifty-five was four years ago, the height was a rough estimate, and ‘active’ was only an accurate description if it included toenail-clipping while watching CNN in my carpeted den.

Meanwhile, Lata, who has never worked in America, has confidence to spare, and gets a job as a librarian in the university. All goes well until a professor makes her a jazz CD, reducing her to a panicked mess.

And what of their children? The angry, condescending and unlikeable Priya teaches history at a different Texas university, smokes, and is dating a married (Indian) man. Nikesh lives in New York with his blonde American boss and their child, and has implied to his parents that they are married. The younger generation have their secrets, it is clear, but then so do the parents.

The Indian-American community is represented in the form of neighbours Mala and her husband, Dr Chandrasekhar, whose daughter Meera has not just one, but two children: grandchildren, it seems, is the ultimate mark of Indian-American success. Mala is gossipy and nosey, her husband is a pompous admirer of Ronald Reagan, but they are not caricatures: they share an affectionate relationship that Lata envies.

The novel is structured with chapters from the perspective of each of the four main characters. This, I thought, was more successful with Suresh and Lata than with the children — perhaps two perspectives would have been sufficient.

As the novel moves on, the reasons for the divorce become clearer. Suresh has severe anger issues.

Suresh’s behaviour with the Chandrasekhars was no isolated incident either. Other friendships had crumbled over the years because of some angry outburst. […] I couldn’t remember a time when his coming into a room made me breathe easier, when his presence lightened me.

[…] For all those years I had stayed because I didn’t quite believe I was entitled to leave. Women of my mother’s generation had survived far worse in their marriages — abusers, alcoholics, men who stood silent while their wives were berated by cruel mothers-in-law. Suresh wasn’t that. He had never raised a finger towards me. He didn’t drink. He wasn’t the cheating type. He didn’t gamble. You couldn’t really call him a bad man. So what right did I have to leave?

Suresh is largely oblivious to his effect on others. Later in the novel, he remembers how Lata used to always be moving around the house, leaving every room soon after he entered, but he sees no connection with his own behaviour.

The author has an amusingly tongue-in-cheek commentary on male illness:

I’d stay in bed, feverish and miserable for days. But somehow, Lata would go on like always, picking up prescriptions at the pharmacy, fetching us cups of orange juice and Sprite, making soup for the kids and pepper rasam for me.

Lata is clearly the more sympathetic of the two, but for gender balance, their son Nikesh is the kinder of the two children.

The book can be charmingly pleasing.

After more than a half century of daily usage, I can honestly say that English is a perfectly adequate medium of expression in so many respects. I can be angry in English. Joyous in English. Frustrated in English. But funny? Not so much. Funny requires one’s mother tongue.

The denouement comes when Nikesh brings his family to Texas for their son’s first birthday: a long-planned trip that everyone else has lost interest in because of the changes in their lives. Each character has grown and changed, but just how much? Enough to have more tolerance for each other?

A quick, entertaining read.