Jhumpa Lahiri remained one of my most favourite short story writer from second generation American-Indians. When I started reading her last collection of short stories "Unaccustomed Earth" I felt like she has lost touch but when I reached her story "Year's End" I found same old Jhumpa Lahiri who touches the depth of human emotions and psychology. What attached me to her writings are her characters of Desi Origin. I see my kids growing up in this country. I see myself in her stories.
"Year's End" is a story of a young semi-ABCD Bengali boy named Kaushik. His mother died of breast cancer and he internalized that sorrow. Now his father gets married to another woman, brought from back home and he suddenly end up in a house with 2 step-sisters. His hidden anger towards his father and her new mother but simultaneously his affection towards 2 girls is well described. Suddenly he blew out one evening and left home - that night change him forever and how he remained lost till his death (which is actually in another story).
With his father: "We were stating facts and at the same time arguing, an argument whose depths only he and I could fully comprehend"
With Girls: "I sensed that they needed me to guard them, as I needed them, from the growing, incontrovertible fact that Chitra and my father now formed a couple. My presence was proof that my mother had once existed, just as they represented the physical legacy of their dead father.......They never spoke of their own father, but one night I woke up to the sound of Piu
screaming, locked inside a nightmare, asking for her Baba again and again".
At the end when he had last meaningful conversation with his father (like losing his father too): "And without our having to say it, I knew we were both thankful to Chitra for chafing under whatever lingered of my mother's spirit in the place she has last called home and for forcing us to shut its doors".
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