Modern Family Life in India

• Book: Land Where I Flee
• Location: Gangtok
• Author: Prajwal Parajuly

Review Author: StephMWard

Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and highly acclaimed for his narrative and prose, Prajwal Parajuly weaves a modern family saga together with a look at day-to-day life in a little known area of South Asia. Based in Gangtok, the capital of the Indian state of Sikkim in the Himalayas, Land Where I Flee delves into the trials and tribulations of a contemporary Indian family reuniting after years apart. Chaurasi, a celebration of the 84th birthday, brings together four estranged grandchildren in the home of their grandmother and her servant where they were raised after their parents’ tragic death. Each harbors a past or present that negatively affects the family dynamic and thus keeps them all on edge throughout the celebration. Although some memories and events are happy, the dark tone over the events and each of the lives of the characters keeps surfacing as they take it out on each other.

Land Where I Flee gives a rare glimpse into the lives of children who grew up in a society that can seem to foreigners so difficult to leave. Yet each took a very different path in pursuing a life outside of India and left their homeland. I enjoyed the contemporary nature of this story, especially watching the characters come back to their hometown in India after living in the U.K. or the U.S. Any Westerner who has experienced India will appreciate the description of being targeted in a rickshaw. (And it was fun to see that even former locals couldn’t avoid hassles.) I spent a lot of time looking up terms and places to better understand the part of the world where the story is set, which is something that I look forward to when confronted with an unknown place or foreign culture in a book.

That said, I had a hard time with the cruelty of the characters, specifically in the way they treated each other. This family had dispersed, for good reasons, years ago, but it was hard to believe their grudges were still so strong that they surfaced constantly at this seemingly joyful occasion. In fact, I kept wondering throughout the book how important the Chaurasi must be in Indian culture to draw them back together if they hated each other so much. The interactions with the grandmother were especially vicious and seemed incongruous in a culture that celebrates and respects its elders. Certainly the most colorful character, the eunuch Prashanti, lifted the mood, but her fascinating story was also filled with despair and sadness, so no character seemed immune from having a troubled past.

Note: Definitely for mature audiences (strong language, adult themes).

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