Reviewed by Man From Matunga

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose! The more things change the more
they remain the same. It doesn't matter where you live, how much you earn,
what you do. The vacuousness and lack of purpose that can pervade our lives, will do so, irrespective. Neither in excess, nor in deprivation or denial,
is there happiness or peace of mind.The first half of the book deals with life in a small, slow town in India, with rigid parents and well-drafted routines while the other half deals with 'rule-less' life in suburban USA.

The more detailed, 'Indian half' deals with an orthodox family in a small
provincial town. A partly successful, proud father, who goes through life,
with set patterns and no passion. A mother who goes along with her husband, doing what is supposedly right and expected of her, curbing and killing all her innate desires. Three children. The eldest, Uma, clumsy and 'Forrest Gumpish.' The middle daughter Aruna, pretty, ambitious and smart, but eventually also a victim of her choices. The last, a son, Arun, on whom the parents put all their dreams and energies. All of them along with members of their extended family go through some form of deprivation-of will, of fun, of passion and of love.

The second half deals with Arun, who finds his way to the US, on a
scholarship, having being forced by his father to 'mug' his way through
school and college. There he finds solitude to be his best friend.
Quirkily, even this desire to be alone, does not get fulfilled to the extent
he wants. Unlike life in India, in the US he finds a world of excesses-of
food, of body and of non-interference, both parental and otherwise. Through his eyes we see the Patton family-a "barbecuing", disappointed father, a nervous, uncertain, wannabe vegetarian mother, a body-obsessed, jock son and a bulimic, neurotic daughter. All of them go through some form of corruption-of will, of fun, of passion and of love.

Uma is the main character in the first half. She is a clumsy, uncoordinated
woman who finds it difficult to succeed in almost everything she does-she
fails in school, can't cook, spills food and drink, and can't find anyone
worthwhile to get married to. Two attempts at getting her married end in
disaster-in the first, a family cons her father into giving dowry and then
breaks off the engagement, keeping the money. In the second, she actually
gets married, but to an already married man-when her father realizes this
later, he brings her back and gets her divorced. When she has an offer to
work in a local hospital (when she is already in her 40s), her parents
refuse to let her even consider the offer. Aruna, Uma's younger sister is a
pretty and ambitious woman, who eventually gets married to a 'prize catch'
and migrates to Bombay, apparently moving up in life. But she too is
unhappy, with the need to constantly keep up with appearances and the
'Joneses', at the same time neurotically obsessed with the need to keep her
husband and children under her control at all times.

In Anita Desai's world, there is only one winner. The bubbly, next door
neighbor who throughout the rule of her evil mother-in-law maintains her
sense of humor and eventually when the mom-in-law dies, takes over the house benevolently and raises her children, properly and reasonably happily. Every other character in the book is in trouble.

The problem with the book is its dry, clinical approach in chronicling the
lives of its characters. The book is obviously well written with hardly a
word or phrase out of sync. Yet the book lacks passion. I was always on the outside, a mildly interested voyeur, looking into the lives of uninteresting
people. The book offers no chance of getting involved with the characters. Unlike (Vikram Seth's) An Equal Music, it is not a page-turner. You can read the book over ten days without even remotely feeling the compulsion to finish it quickly. But, as happens with such books, it will eventually get a whole bunch of awards and will probably become prescribed reading in university literature courses. And I suppose, it is presumptuous of me to even try and review such books...

Man from Matunga lives and writes from Mumbai. In his spare time, he documents his raves and rants, among other things, on his website http://www.manfrommatunga.com