Family life
Author :Akhil Sharma
Publisher :Penguin, Rs499
Family lifeis both a funny and traumatic saga of a family and familial relationships and creates meaning out of the meaninglessness of everyday situations, says GUNTASHA TUlSI
“My father has a glum nature...His wish was born out of self loathing...My mother had no interest in emigrating for herself...”
Akhil Sharma’s Family life begins in the voice of a first person narrator but from the very beginning of the book, the overriding element is how an individual voice sounds when it is intensely gravitated amidst constantly transforming familial relations. What then also gets tied to this dimension is a familiar social convention in India of the 1960s and 70s.
This was the time when immigration to the West, especially America, had just begun to see its first wave and hence the ways in which it came to be perceived by migrating individuals, seemed to be definitely over the top; if not comically crazy.
A well defined sense of narration and clarity of where Sharma wants his own plot to take him, leads to a very fine beginning. Family life is about extremely simple and relatable incidents, on an everyday basis, such as moments of a son trying to make sense of his father’s life on one hand and getting uncomfortable under the shadow of his mother on the other; briefly descriptive details about the relationship between two brothers; and an attempt made by each family member on his/her part to settle with both a geographical and cultural dislocation happening in the name of immigration to the United States.
The plot of the novel revolves around the aspirations of the Mishras and their experiences of immigration from New Delhi to New York; there are phases of consistent ups and downs through a very deliberate attempt at social adjustment, until the narrator’s (Ajay) elder brother, Birju, meets with an accident that in essence paralyses the whole family, and irreversibly ruptures its immigration dream.
The writer attempts a serious configuration of family history by sincere representations of individuality. However, in an attempt of the same, the writer/narrator seems to be slightly judgemental towards the characters but he does ultimately manages to ravel them as human stories of both suffering and triumph.
There is also a dismissal towards the father’s increasing resort to alcoholism and the mother’s painful silence, but simultaneously, a conscious realisation is also made that, there is little left in the face of a family getting debilitated by a permanently disabled and brain-dead elder son. (“My father looked indifferent...I felt that his indifference was my fault...My parents fought so much that the walls vibrated with rage...). The emphasis is then on studying everything as an outcome of human stories of emancipation or suffering.
In the middle of seething family burden compounded by financial crises and a growing realisation of the immigration experience turning sour, there does also come the sense of charting an individual’s evolution through early adolescence and youth. If there is one character, who comes closest to Sharma’s own life and his early years in the US — through describing the experimentation with both writing and art — it is the character of the narrator (Ajay) himself. There is a sense of both discovery and guilt in his narration through the escapades on the loud American streets.
The narration of the book is extremely controlled, it is also being an extremely tight and gripping read. The events progress just at the desired pace with no boring or superficial elements being inserted. The inclination of understanding an individual’s story amidst familial relations leads to that kind of detailing which is minute, detailed and extremely sensitive. The ordinary moments of everyday importance are given extreme significance and are also shown to be the determining factors behind defining situations in the book. Be it those little changes which sweep in the Mishra household after Birju’s accident, a compulsive withdrawal on Ajay’s part in the face of circumstances of the house, or an extremely terrifying situation of both his parents, there is a sense of both possibility and impossibility, hope and hopelessness in almost all the described situations.
The first person narration style also works for this particular book, as Sharma laces these perceptions in a rather intriguing manner. They are a combination of dynamism of youth; guilt of a son and comical humour of an artist. Conveyed through Ajay’s perception, every event and character in the novel seems to become more interesting and relatable.
Sharma has been both an author of an earlier novel, An Obedient Father, while also having been awarded with the PEN/Hemingway Award. An Indian-American writer of extremely fine calibre having also published stories across anthologies and journals, his writing is reminiscent of an acutely nauseating post-modernist situation, leading, to a sense of no-exit from life’s situations.
Family lifeis sensitive, funny, painful, intriguing, and desirably brief. Just when one wonders, that, can there be meaning in so much meaninglessness of everyday situations, the book provides with more than a thought. Spare time for it. It is a beautifully narrated story of an individual who seems to speak through both; a memorable collective conscience to the readers.
The reviewer is a PhD Research Scholar in JNU, Delhi