Speaker 1: Pushkin, Let's just talk easy. I'm Sam Frigo, so welcome
Speaker 1: to the show today, on this holiday weekend, I wanted
Speaker 1: to revisit a talk from earlier this year with author Jumpulaheri.
Speaker 1: She won the Pulled Surprise for Fiction back in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine for her short story collection Interpreter of Maladies.
Speaker 1: It was a stunning debut from the Hieri, then age
Speaker 1: thirty two, that led the several more books, some of
Speaker 1: which you've probably read, the namesake on Accustomed Earth the Lowland.
Speaker 1: But on the heels of this international success, Lahiri decided
Speaker 1: to leave America for Rome in twenty eleven. There she
Speaker 1: started to learn Italian, immersing herself in the language, finding
Speaker 1: refuge in this foreign city. After years of rigorous study,
Speaker 1: Lahiri published her first novel in Italian in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: The book, titled Whereabouts, has now been translated into English
Speaker 1: and is available wherever you do your reading. Told through
Speaker 1: a series of vignettes, it follows a woman in transit,
Speaker 1: moving about a city, sometimes in solitude, sometimes with friends lovers.
Speaker 1: In turn, we move with her, step by step around
Speaker 1: her house, museums, stores, bars, toggling back and forth between
Speaker 1: the past and present. After a year of lockdown, there's
Speaker 1: something at once therapeutic and devastating in reading this book.
Speaker 1: You feel less alone with the narrator, even while Lahiri
Speaker 1: creates this meditation on loneliness. Clearly this piece was born
Speaker 1: out of this move to Europe that I mentioned. But
Speaker 1: to understand the power of the book and Lihiri's work,
Speaker 1: you have to understand where she comes from. Lihiri was
Speaker 1: born in London to Bengali parents. She moved to the
Speaker 1: US at a young age, growing up in South Kingston,
Speaker 1: Rhode Island, her parents often traveling back to Calcutta, where
Speaker 1: most of her family remained. Lahiri once wrote, Bengali was
Speaker 1: my first language what I spoke and heard at home,
Speaker 1: But the books of my childhood were in English and
Speaker 1: their subjects were, for the most part, either English or
Speaker 1: American lives. I was aware of a feeling of trespassing,
Speaker 1: and so in many ways, this moved to Rome that
Speaker 1: I mentioned with the husband with children and was her
Speaker 1: way of reclaiming a sense of home and language. And
Speaker 1: it's these ideas of home, language and family that made
Speaker 1: us want to represent this episode to you. As I
Speaker 1: said back when this episode aired, in the spring, I
Speaker 1: was not fully debriefed on some recent events in the
Speaker 1: Hairy's life. You'll understand what I'm talking about within the
Speaker 1: next ten minutes. But what you hear is how this
Speaker 1: actually played out between us, one person grappling in real
Speaker 1: time with loss, the other doing their damnedest to just
Speaker 1: show up and be present for a stranger. Together, I
Speaker 1: think we made it work. And I just want to
Speaker 1: thank Jumblahery again for not only coming on this show,
Speaker 1: which I am eternally grateful for, but for sharing parts
Speaker 1: of her story and her family in a way I
Speaker 1: was only familiar with on the page. So wherever you
Speaker 1: are listening to this at home, around loved ones, on
Speaker 1: a plane, on a walk, in a car in transit
Speaker 1: after this long holiday weekend, I hope you and yours
Speaker 1: are safe and I thank you for being here now.
Speaker 1: This is Jumpa Lhiry Jumplahiry, thank you for being here. Pleasure.
Speaker 1: How are you holding up right now after this past year?
Speaker 1: I'm tired? But which is, by the way, the best
Speaker 1: way to start a podcast? Yeah, I'm tired. It's been long.
Speaker 1: It's been a lot longer than anybody expected. It's hard
Speaker 1: to really think that things are are okay when it's
Speaker 1: so deeply not okay in so many parts of the world.
Speaker 1: And the whole tradect true of this pandemic in which
Speaker 1: you know, some places are doing relatively better, some places
Speaker 1: are relatively worse. And for me, I've always been raised
Speaker 1: in a family in which reality was always spread out
Speaker 1: in various places, and and that's certainly the case now
Speaker 1: as well with the with the edition of Italy in
Speaker 1: our lives, and so it's just a lot to factor
Speaker 1: in on every day sort of where things stand with
Speaker 1: in these various parts of the world, where we have friends,
Speaker 1: we have loved ones. You know, what does that mean
Speaker 1: reality was spread out in different places? Well, just exactly
Speaker 1: that you know that that that life was not contained
Speaker 1: in our immediate surroundings, right, that there were there were
Speaker 1: people in other parts of the world, you know, when
Speaker 1: I was a child, specifically in another part of the
Speaker 1: world in India, in Calcutta, and that their lives, their circumstances,
Speaker 1: what was happening to them was of equal concern to us.
Speaker 1: And and so if it wasn't enough that things were
Speaker 1: okay where we were, and that's conditioned me from the
Speaker 1: very beginning. You know, I've never been able to think
Speaker 1: of any one reality right, or any one way of being,
Speaker 1: or any one place, or any one language, and so forth.
Speaker 1: There's always been another, another track. Maybe you're not physically
Speaker 1: in it, but it's there, and it's it's moving alongside you.
Speaker 1: I wonder how that sense of self has bled into
Speaker 1: your writing and your approach to writing, because there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of conversation around you learning a new language
Speaker 1: for this book, and I want to get into that,
Speaker 1: but I think you've kind of talked about that enough.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking now about your mother, and you have this
Speaker 1: quote that I really like, and you said, my mother
Speaker 1: wrote poems occasionally. They were in Bengali and we're published
Speaker 1: now and then literary magazines in New England and Calcutta.
Speaker 1: She seemed proud of her efforts, but she did not
Speaker 1: call herself a poet. And growing up throughout childhood, you
Speaker 1: couldn't help but shake her sense of nostalgia for the
Speaker 1: home and the friends and the people she left behind.
Speaker 1: And I wonder what that sort of created in you
Speaker 1: as a kid, a kind of sense of place and
Speaker 1: time and home. Well, it's certainly complicated things because my
Speaker 1: mother felt that home was not the home we lived in,
Speaker 1: you know, in her deepest heart, there was always another
Speaker 1: home and sort of the principal home, and the sense
Speaker 1: of being at home had nothing to do with where
Speaker 1: we lived for so long. I mean, it took my
Speaker 1: parents several decades to feel grounded and at home and
Speaker 1: for the center of gravity to shift over to the
Speaker 1: United States. It strikes me that you bring up her
Speaker 1: her palms. My mother passed away about three weeks ago.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I did in recent days
Speaker 1: was I took the very worn out Manila folder in
Speaker 1: which she kept her palms and photocopies of palms that
Speaker 1: had been published, and I put them all into a
Speaker 1: portfolio to protect them and to be able to study
Speaker 1: them carefully, read them, have them read to me. So
Speaker 1: many of them are about her other world, about her
Speaker 1: home and the and the longing and the reality of
Speaker 1: the distance. She would often read them to me, and
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to understand fully their meaning because she
Speaker 1: had such an elevated and refined Bengali you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: she studied Bengali literature. She worked in the poetic register
Speaker 1: of that language, which is that I don't know. I
Speaker 1: just know the sort of the table language, the family language,
Speaker 1: and so it really is interesting that now she's gone,
Speaker 1: and yet she's left us these poems that will could
Speaker 1: potentially take many, many years of my life to slowly understand.
Speaker 1: But I think there you have a case of translation.
Speaker 1: Translation from the very beginning sort of built into my
Speaker 1: childhood and my upbringing and my relationship to my mother,
Speaker 1: and the fact that she too was always working in
Speaker 1: another language and she was writing in another language. So
Speaker 1: it is it's it's just interesting to reflect now on
Speaker 1: what I went on to do and my own moving
Speaker 1: into another language. Of course I didn't know that prior
Speaker 1: to right now, how have you managed? Well, I've never
Speaker 1: done this before. It's very hard, but we have no
Speaker 1: choice but to how live through it and to survive it, right,
Speaker 1: That's what it means, survived by and so that's our
Speaker 1: role now to survive her. It's very day by day
Speaker 1: and after this year, the sort of cumulative effect of
Speaker 1: all that, I don't know, it just seems. I guess
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to say is I'm impressed that you're here. Well,
Speaker 1: work is good and distractions are good, you know, and
Speaker 1: so I'm here, and my mother is in all my books.
Speaker 1: You know, She's always been in all my books in
Speaker 1: some form or another, some iteration, some piece of her,
Speaker 1: and aspect, it's never fully her. It's always a little
Speaker 1: piece of her that I would pull out and then
Speaker 1: work upon, elaborate upon, embroider upon. It's never her, but
Speaker 1: it's always her. And so I feel that, you know,
Speaker 1: in talking about the book, it's a way of being
Speaker 1: with her as well. Would she know that when reading? Maybe?
Speaker 1: I mean sometimes she liked she would recognize herself and
Speaker 1: she would be pleased by the portrait, and other times
Speaker 1: she would sort of chafe and say, that's not really me,
Speaker 1: you know, But I think that's normal. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I haven't had my portrait painted ever, but that I've
Speaker 1: had my picture taken enough times to know that I have.
Speaker 1: You know, there are certain pictures of myself that I
Speaker 1: see and I think, I think that's who I am,
Speaker 1: that seems to be me. And then there are other
Speaker 1: pictures where I I don't feel that's me. And you know,
Speaker 1: other people even say the other people will look at
Speaker 1: pictures of me and say, oh, that's not you. It's interesting,
Speaker 1: you know, It's interesting how we react to other people's
Speaker 1: representations of who we are. Can I show you a photo? Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: there she is and my dad and me. So what's
Speaker 1: happening in this photo? And this is nineteen seven days,
Speaker 1: this is nineteen sixty nine, Yeah, around nineteen seventies. It's
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My father was working
Speaker 1: that year at the Dewey Library at MIT. My mother
Speaker 1: and I had come at the end of the summer
Speaker 1: in August, or actually maybe a little bit later, so
Speaker 1: I think she took me to Calcutta that year while
Speaker 1: my father moved from London. We had been all living
Speaker 1: in London, and then he got this job in the
Speaker 1: US and he came here to the United States. My
Speaker 1: mother took me to India for a few months to
Speaker 1: show me to her family, to her parents here. I'm
Speaker 1: probably closer to three. In nineteen seventy in August, we
Speaker 1: moved to Rhode Island, where my father now still lives.
Speaker 1: And so that's that picture. Probably one of their closest
Speaker 1: friends took it. In fact, a gentleman who's coming. It's
Speaker 1: very ironic that you showed me that photograph. A gentleman
Speaker 1: with whom they were friendly in Cambridge in those days.
Speaker 1: He took that picture, and he's coming by pure chance.
Speaker 1: He lives in Chicago. When he received the news of
Speaker 1: my mother's death, he was speaking to my father, and
Speaker 1: in any case, it all came to all. We realized
Speaker 1: that there was an interesting confluence of events, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: that both of them are going to be in New
Speaker 1: Jersey at the same time. So he and his wife
Speaker 1: and his daughter are coming over for tea this afternoon.
Speaker 1: I also did not know that, Well, how could you?
Speaker 1: How could you? When in other words came out a
Speaker 1: few years back, you said I wanted to get rid
Speaker 1: of identity. I wanted to feel free. All of the
Speaker 1: last four books, from Interpreter Maladies through Lowlands the frame
Speaker 1: of reference were my Parents? Does Whereabouts follow as a
Speaker 1: piece that exists outside of that frame of reference? I
Speaker 1: think so? Yeah. I think with the Italian Project, I
Speaker 1: have been able to put myself more at the center
Speaker 1: my guests. That's an important step on my journey as
Speaker 1: an artist, to be able to assume that central position,
Speaker 1: because I have to. Now my mother's gone, right and
Speaker 1: my father is nine years old, so I mean, there's
Speaker 1: just a certain reality that sits in and I have children,
Speaker 1: so one has to kind of move through time right
Speaker 1: and understand these cycles and everybody's moment along the path.
Speaker 1: So so I do think that Whereabouts is you know,
Speaker 1: it's written from a different center of emotional gravity, if
Speaker 1: you will. You know, one of your favorite films is
Speaker 1: Gene Dealman, I believe, and in talking about it, you
Speaker 1: said that it reminded you of an Edward Hopper painting
Speaker 1: in its depiction of loneliness and isolation. And you're smiling
Speaker 1: a little bit. So I think I'm am I right
Speaker 1: about this. Yes, Now, I'm just thinking back to the
Speaker 1: the film such a powerful film, and you know, I
Speaker 1: haven't seen it since the pandemic, for example. I just
Speaker 1: think it would be such an interesting thing to watch. Now. Well,
Speaker 1: I think you probably lived it in the pandemic. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I did. We all did. And I bring that up
Speaker 1: because all of our lives have been, for the most part, monotonous.
Speaker 1: And in talking about it, you said this thing that
Speaker 1: I just love, and you said what the film is
Speaker 1: really grappling with is the passage of time and how
Speaker 1: we choose to occupy it, and so much of Whereabouts
Speaker 1: in my reading as you kind of finding I don't know,
Speaker 1: these moments of occupation at the center of the story,
Speaker 1: but in isolation, well relative isolation, right, because she's not
Speaker 1: always technically alone, and in fact, in so many of
Speaker 1: these episodes she's not alone. I mean she feels at
Speaker 1: in the way that we all feel alone often sometimes
Speaker 1: also at dinner parties, in large groups, in a crowded museum,
Speaker 1: or wherever we are, we can feel alone and must
Speaker 1: feel alone, which probably makes my retelling even more somber,
Speaker 1: because you're right, You're you're often around people in the book,
Speaker 1: but it almost feels even more alone than being alone,
Speaker 1: and there's something profoundly sad about that. Well, I think
Speaker 1: the first person also creates I mean, this is the
Speaker 1: first full length project in the first person, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean I've written stories from the first person. There's
Speaker 1: stories in Unaccustomed Earth. There's a cycle of stories from
Speaker 1: the first person that alternates. I've experimented with it before.
Speaker 1: But here is a you know, a longer work, a novel,
Speaker 1: a short novel, but a novel nevertheless entirely in the
Speaker 1: first person. And so I think that also creates, you know,
Speaker 1: that cone of silence in a way, you know, just
Speaker 1: that the point of view in and of itself is
Speaker 1: a kind of layer around what is happening, because everything
Speaker 1: is filtered through her, and she's so observant, so you know,
Speaker 1: there's also a kind of a way in which she's
Speaker 1: registering what is happening around her, sometimes reacting, sometimes simply
Speaker 1: registering or not entirely. I mean, she's reactive in different ways,
Speaker 1: you know. Sometimes she has a more extreme reaction to something,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's more subtle. She does strike me as a
Speaker 1: predominantly passive participant in the proceedings. And I wondered in
Speaker 1: thinking about different pieces of your work, but what I
Speaker 1: understand of you in your life, I'm curious do you
Speaker 1: find yourself in your day to day more comfortable observing
Speaker 1: rather than participating. Absolutely, That's who I always was in
Speaker 1: the beginning, and that's very much what I remain as
Speaker 1: a writer. Was to be that quiet pebble on a table,
Speaker 1: you know, not taking up too much space, but there
Speaker 1: for good or for ill. You know, That's how I feel,
Speaker 1: and that's who I am, and I know that that's
Speaker 1: what made me a writer, but that that also comes
Speaker 1: with a certain anguish, right a certain desire for participation,
Speaker 1: for feeling that I'm living, that I'm living, and not
Speaker 1: just watching, not just taking in. Have you always been
Speaker 1: aware of that anguish? Yes, I mean I remember feeling
Speaker 1: it as a young girl, thinking other people were doing
Speaker 1: and speaking and performing and living essentially, and that I
Speaker 1: was somehow sitting in the audience. It's part and parcel
Speaker 1: of my earliest memories. You know, I don't remember doing things.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing things. I remember hearing things, I remember
Speaker 1: watching things. I remember a lot of waiting in my
Speaker 1: life for things, other people, things to happen, things to
Speaker 1: come to pass. I think because of my own linguistic makeup,
Speaker 1: I was so reluctant to speak as a child. I
Speaker 1: was so apprehensive and shy. That means just absorbing what
Speaker 1: other people are saying more often than you know, more
Speaker 1: than speaking and hearing your own voice. I wonder if
Speaker 1: that shyness is why when you wrote for the first time,
Speaker 1: you did so with a writing partner in class. As
Speaker 1: a kid. You said we would sit together, this friend
Speaker 1: and I dreaming up characters and plots, taking turns writing
Speaker 1: sections of the story, passing the pages back and forth.
Speaker 1: Our handwriting was the only thing that separated us. The
Speaker 1: only way to determine which section was Who's I imagine
Speaker 1: I wrote something like that, that's exactly what you wrote.
Speaker 1: I always preferred rainy days to bright ones so that
Speaker 1: we could stay indoors at recess, sit in the hallways,
Speaker 1: and concentrate. I'm still that person, except I have some
Speaker 1: degree of greater control in my life. I'm not a
Speaker 1: seven or eight or ten year old girl anymore. I
Speaker 1: have a little more saying how I organized my day,
Speaker 1: for example. I certainly have more resources in terms of
Speaker 1: feeling good, feeling comfortable. I mean, I think writing was
Speaker 1: represented many things when in that stage that you know
Speaker 1: I talk about in that piece, it was the way
Speaker 1: to make a friend. It's very important for me to
Speaker 1: be able to have one on one conversations. I was
Speaker 1: hopeless at groups when I was a kid. I just
Speaker 1: couldn't handle myself. I didn't know what to do, how
Speaker 1: to participate in that kind of more complex that shorthand
Speaker 1: that happens we know when they're they're several. But I
Speaker 1: could I could play tennis, you know, with one person.
Speaker 1: I couldn't play I mean literally, I couldn't play any
Speaker 1: kind of group sports. And things like that. But metaphorically
Speaker 1: I could play play a tennis game in terms of
Speaker 1: this writing, this back and forth, and so it was comforting,
Speaker 1: right because I did feel very alone as a child, deeply,
Speaker 1: deeply alone. And I was an only child until I
Speaker 1: was seven and a half years old my sister was born.
Speaker 1: So those those formative years I was I was alone,
Speaker 1: and my family was alone, and my mother felt very alone.
Speaker 1: So there were these layers of a loneness, you know,
Speaker 1: layers of solitude. I think that marked me and marked
Speaker 1: my early childhood. So the writing was a way to
Speaker 1: to step out of that. Actually, even though writing is
Speaker 1: its own form of solitude, but that's what what drew
Speaker 1: me to it was it was a way to open
Speaker 1: up to somebody else and to share thoughts in my
Speaker 1: head and to have communication and have to collaborate to
Speaker 1: make something together. Not only is writing a active solitude,
Speaker 1: but as we talked about, you were actively engaging with
Speaker 1: the idea of solitude in your work, which I have
Speaker 1: to say, reading in preparation for this after the last
Speaker 1: year we've had it was sort of crushing. No, you know,
Speaker 1: what I was thinking is that I remember a year
Speaker 1: ago when the pandemic really settled in, and we were
Speaker 1: all affected by it, and everybody was so stunned by
Speaker 1: the radical changes right that we were undergoing. And I
Speaker 1: remember in that moment thinking, this is all strangely familiar
Speaker 1: to me, because my childhood was so deeply characterized by
Speaker 1: distance and by absence, and by the inability to be
Speaker 1: in touch with people and to see people, you know,
Speaker 1: for whatever logistical economic reasons. But this idea, that of
Speaker 1: being grounded, of not being able to just hop on
Speaker 1: a plane and go when somebody fell ill, when somebody died,
Speaker 1: or for a happy occasion for that matter, when someone
Speaker 1: was getting married, or when someone was having a baby,
Speaker 1: and you know, it just wasn't it wasn't possible. It
Speaker 1: wasn't possible growing up in the nineteen seventies to a
Speaker 1: father who worked in the university library and had a
Speaker 1: very modest income. It just was not the way we lived.
Speaker 1: And even though we were very fortunate, you know, we
Speaker 1: did go back to Calcutta, they set aside the money.
Speaker 1: I mean, we know that there are so many immigrant
Speaker 1: groups who never go back, who can't ever go back
Speaker 1: for a variety of reasons. But my parents were able
Speaker 1: to go back, and they did go back, it wasn't
Speaker 1: at the level the speed that we were used to
Speaker 1: moving back and forth until March of twenty twenty, let's say.
Speaker 1: And so I do remember thinking consciously that in some sense,
Speaker 1: these emotions that have come up during the pandemic and
Speaker 1: that we've been thinking about, that we've been living through,
Speaker 1: that we've been grappling with, I have already lived a
Speaker 1: version of this. And I think anyone who grew up
Speaker 1: in similar circumstances can sort of tap into that in
Speaker 1: a way, because it's it's just under the skin already.
Speaker 1: It's something you've been processing for a while exactly. I
Speaker 1: found something curious in the book that reminded me of
Speaker 1: a story and interpreter malady is called sexy, which is
Speaker 1: that you describe these blink and you'll miss it love
Speaker 1: affairs so beautifully. And I wondered, these sort of brief
Speaker 1: exchanges that lasts sometimes a week, and your stories are
Speaker 1: a weekend or three months, you return to them again
Speaker 1: and again, and I wonder why you think you do that.
Speaker 1: The short answer is nothing lasts, even if it's meant to.
Speaker 1: We know there's always an end point. And I think
Speaker 1: that writers have been struggling with this fact, with this truth,
Speaker 1: with the pain of it from at the very beginning.
Speaker 1: One of the things I've been doing during the pandemic
Speaker 1: has been translating with a friend of mine, translating the
Speaker 1: fourth book of Odes by Horace. And those Odes are
Speaker 1: steeped in sort of this awareness of the passage of time. Right,
Speaker 1: And so we see from how long ago the writer
Speaker 1: has been isolating these moments and these relationships that don't last,
Speaker 1: because they can't last, whether they last for three days
Speaker 1: or three months or thirty three years, you know, they
Speaker 1: do end, or something about them ends inevitably, the recurring
Speaker 1: ephemerality of these exchanges between two people that start as strangers,
Speaker 1: become intimate quickly and break apart. Do you write about
Speaker 1: these exchanges because in writing you make them last. They
Speaker 1: live on the page long after you're done writing it,
Speaker 1: long after I'm done reading it. Is it a way
Speaker 1: of prolonging that feeling that is so ephemeral? Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think I write about it because because characters are
Speaker 1: always having to confront loss on some level or other,
Speaker 1: you know, And I think my life in Rome and
Speaker 1: what I love, what I treasure about Rome is that
Speaker 1: when I'm there, it does make me so acutely aware
Speaker 1: of the passage of time and the ephemeral quality of everything.
Speaker 1: And on the other hand, I look out my window
Speaker 1: and I see the Colosseum in the distance, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I see time preserved. I see history there
Speaker 1: physically still standing in some form. And that's the great
Speaker 1: contradiction of Rome. And then every time I crossed the bridge,
Speaker 1: there's the Tiber flowing beneath me, rushing forward, that time
Speaker 1: that's rushing forward, that never stands still. And living in
Speaker 1: Rome and being in Rome, it's impossible to not have
Speaker 1: an awareness of that. And it's the first place, it's
Speaker 1: the only place I've lived in which I have that
Speaker 1: awareness every single day. Just even the way you know
Speaker 1: our apartment, there's one sees a lot of sky when
Speaker 1: one is looking at the sky all the time, every day,
Speaker 1: every night, at every hour, and then you notice, you know,
Speaker 1: you notice how it changes, You notice how the color changes,
Speaker 1: You notice the passagive time literally, And for that simple reason,
Speaker 1: even if I'm just home all day on a Sunday
Speaker 1: and don't even go out, I'm still somehow connected to
Speaker 1: a time in ways that make me think, and I
Speaker 1: think gives rise to a book like this that's all
Speaker 1: about that awareness in some sense, as you say, because
Speaker 1: I think you're right. I think it is very much
Speaker 1: about it, sort of a study of the passage of time.
Speaker 1: This reminds me of something that happened to you about
Speaker 1: ten years ago. You were on a sailboat in Italy.
Speaker 1: You're with your family and I think some family friends.
Speaker 1: None of you knew how to navigate the sailboat. In turn,
Speaker 1: you hired a man that you called Skipper, and as
Speaker 1: you all were about to set sail, he came to
Speaker 1: you and everyone's sitting around and he delivered a monologue.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you remember what he said. He said,
Speaker 1: the sea isn't your friend, and he said you can't
Speaker 1: trust it as a friend. It doesn't love you. But
Speaker 1: then he said something like, if you if you give
Speaker 1: yourself to it, we don't belong on the water. We're
Speaker 1: not meant to survive there. That's what he said. And
Speaker 1: you have to know that, yeah, and you have to
Speaker 1: respect that. And it doesn't really like us, and yet
Speaker 1: we love it. Beautiful, beautiful words to hear at the
Speaker 1: beginning of a voyage. You know he was describing the water,
Speaker 1: and yet as you were talking about the passage of
Speaker 1: time living in Rome, I couldn't help but think of
Speaker 1: that man's words playing in my ear, And in some
Speaker 1: ways you kind of put that in all of your writing,
Speaker 1: which is an uncertainty about whether we're supposed to be here,
Speaker 1: how the hell we're supposed to navigate through these waters
Speaker 1: of existence, and accepting that it is over in an instant.
Speaker 1: Do you see that in what I'm talking about. I
Speaker 1: see that every day, and I think that's the unbearable
Speaker 1: fact of being, and also what gives rise to so much,
Speaker 1: certainly for me, what gives rise to my work, my art,
Speaker 1: and I imagine for so many who have this impulse,
Speaker 1: this need to create, to jot down, to note, to record,
Speaker 1: to remember, that's it. It's just it's that panic of
Speaker 1: it's all slipping away. And yet we've spent so much time,
Speaker 1: so much energy sort of trying to accumulate, and so
Speaker 1: much energy trying to insist that I'm from this place,
Speaker 1: this is my home, this is my town, this is
Speaker 1: my city, this is my life. I think one of
Speaker 1: the things I came to realize when I was again
Speaker 1: with this Italian journey and sort of the idea of
Speaker 1: borrowing Italian? Am I borrowing Italian? Can I use Italian?
Speaker 1: It is it mine to use? Can I showed? I?
Speaker 1: May I? And all of these questions that started scrolling
Speaker 1: around of you know, oh, she's not writing in her language,
Speaker 1: she's writing in this other language. And it's and so
Speaker 1: this whole question of sort of what is language and
Speaker 1: who does it belong to anyway? How does one even
Speaker 1: belong to a language? What is the determining factor? What
Speaker 1: do you have to show to the language police to
Speaker 1: say this is my language? And you know, there's my
Speaker 1: yard and not the other person's yard. So the tree
Speaker 1: that fell on it is not my responsibility, you know,
Speaker 1: it's so what is that all about? But what I
Speaker 1: came to realize was that everything is borrowed. Nothing is ours.
Speaker 1: Life is borrowed. We're here for such a short time,
Speaker 1: and we just we passed through it and we borrow
Speaker 1: it all. We borrow the sky, we borrow the trees,
Speaker 1: we borrow people things, and then we let go when
Speaker 1: we passed through, and the world remains certainly as I
Speaker 1: say this, you know, having just accompanied my mother until
Speaker 1: her final breath, I see this now for the first
Speaker 1: time I've truly lived through that final end point of
Speaker 1: a person. I had never seen a person die before.
Speaker 1: I've given birth, I've had children. I know what the
Speaker 1: front end of that experience, right the moment that life
Speaker 1: comes into being. And now I've also witnessed the endpoint.
Speaker 1: But I think I was working through these things before.
Speaker 1: Obviously I was writing these I wrote this book years ago.
Speaker 1: But again, I mean, this book comes out of Rome
Speaker 1: and my experience in that city of you know, just
Speaker 1: living and breathing there and thinking, you know, just day
Speaker 1: in day out about what it means to It's sort
Speaker 1: of me rushing doing my things and doing my errands
Speaker 1: and crossing the bridge and crossing the Tiber and seeing
Speaker 1: this immediate life unfolding day after day. It's only nestled
Speaker 1: into this other life and other lives and the past
Speaker 1: and that deep awareness of death and life. I think
Speaker 1: I've never felt as alive as I have in Rome.
Speaker 1: There's a sense of vitality that I have never felt
Speaker 1: anywhere else. And I think I feel that vitality because
Speaker 1: I'm so aware that I will not always be here,
Speaker 1: you know, and here I intellectually I also know that
Speaker 1: I'm not immortal, and that one day I'm not going
Speaker 1: to be around. But but there it's there's a different
Speaker 1: relationship to that, that truth. When you said goodbye to are,
Speaker 1: you said you saw the endpoint? What did that look like? Well,
Speaker 1: from my point of view, it seemed very very natural.
Speaker 1: And for a long time my mother was was not
Speaker 1: doing very well for a while, and then she went
Speaker 1: into sort of a deeper decline. But for a long
Speaker 1: time I would look at the leaves on the trees,
Speaker 1: and those leaves that for some reason clung on to
Speaker 1: the branch that didn't fall. They made me think of her,
Speaker 1: and I thought, she's just hanging on. But my mother,
Speaker 1: I keep thinking of her in all of these botanical ways. Now,
Speaker 1: she loved plants. She was an extraordinary gardener. She made
Speaker 1: things grow out of pots that really were quite extraordinary.
Speaker 1: And I think of her in that way. I think
Speaker 1: of her as a sort of a form of life,
Speaker 1: like a plant or flower. You know that one day
Speaker 1: stops thriving. And so that's what it felt like to
Speaker 1: me that she she had stopped thriving, and that things
Speaker 1: were slowing down and shutting down. And when she stopped breathing.
Speaker 1: I just felt that sense of this flower is no
Speaker 1: longer has the life in it, that it made it fresh.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it just felt very, very natural that
Speaker 1: it was part of her life. What you're talking about,
Speaker 1: that transformation is change. And when you were in Rome,
Speaker 1: you had a psychotherapist that spoke to you in Italian
Speaker 1: and she said, every change necessitates a betray Well, I
Speaker 1: don't feel betrayed right now, nor do I feel abandoned.
Speaker 1: And I think that's partly because my mother's passing was
Speaker 1: really quite an extraordinary event, and she was very paradoxically vital.
Speaker 1: In her final days. She was really in deep decline,
Speaker 1: and the doctors explained that she was dying, that she
Speaker 1: was going to die in a few days, and so
Speaker 1: we were quote unquote prepared. She was able to. I
Speaker 1: think when she realized that she was going to go,
Speaker 1: it was liberating in that she returned to her her
Speaker 1: most vital self, her most aware and generous self. She
Speaker 1: in miniature sort of lived her whole life in a
Speaker 1: couple of days. It was moving because she was at
Speaker 1: home and she she just loved people always, and she
Speaker 1: hated being alone and she hated the coronavirus and everything
Speaker 1: that resulted from it. But in those final days, our
Speaker 1: house was full of people coming one by one to
Speaker 1: spend a little time with her, to sit with her,
Speaker 1: to sing her a song, to read her poem. She
Speaker 1: was saluting people on face time and WhatsApp videos and
Speaker 1: in Calcutta. You know, she was giving things away. She
Speaker 1: was choosing things for us to wear. She chose what
Speaker 1: she wanted to wear. She was giving away articles of clothing,
Speaker 1: sort of kissing items that she had worn and giving
Speaker 1: them to friends. I mean, in this very moving way,
Speaker 1: very powerful, and very maternal way. I learned so much
Speaker 1: from her in those final days. I've been so afraid
Speaker 1: of my mother's death for pretty much my entire life,
Speaker 1: and especially as she aged and grew more frail. And
Speaker 1: you know this idea for sort of clinging to the
Speaker 1: branch and worrying, being afraid, being so afraid. And yet
Speaker 1: I wasn't afraid when she was dying, because she was
Speaker 1: so alive, and she kept transmitting her love and her
Speaker 1: generosity to me and to everybody around, everybody who was
Speaker 1: in the house, everybody who was calling. I felt incredibly
Speaker 1: protected by her and guided, which is an odd thing
Speaker 1: to say, because she was so reduced and you know,
Speaker 1: sort of like this ninety pound woman on her deathbed,
Speaker 1: and yet she was so vital, so incredibly vital, and
Speaker 1: so it was like she went out in this blaze.
Speaker 1: You know, it was like it was like watching a
Speaker 1: shooting star. That's exactly what it was like. I'm still
Speaker 1: processing that, right, I'm still processing the vitality that she
Speaker 1: was able to have in that final moment, which must
Speaker 1: be so terrifying, right, And I have no idea what
Speaker 1: she was really thinking or feeling. I can't possibly and
Speaker 1: I won't know until and unless I'm in a similar situation.
Speaker 1: And if my end is is like hers, right, it
Speaker 1: might not be I might not have the awareness. But
Speaker 1: that's why I don't feel I don't feel betrayed or abandoned.
Speaker 1: I thought very much about Metamorphosis as she was dying,
Speaker 1: and it was a great constellation to me. This is
Speaker 1: also partly because well, I mean, I've been thinking of
Speaker 1: about metamorphosis deeply for so long, and just this year,
Speaker 1: since January, I've embarked on a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses
Speaker 1: with a colleague of mine here in the Classics department,
Speaker 1: but we're going to add our version eventually to the mix.
Speaker 1: And that poem in which change is the subject, the hero,
Speaker 1: if you will, the driving character, the driving action. You know,
Speaker 1: when you read that poem, you see you see how
Speaker 1: ovid slows down the exact process of one form becoming
Speaker 1: another form, how that is articulated. And I think reflecting
Speaker 1: on Avid and on that poem and on the individual
Speaker 1: moments of transformation that I've read, but now that I'm translating,
Speaker 1: they're sort of in my circulatory system on an on
Speaker 1: a completely different level. And I kept thinking about that.
Speaker 1: I kept thinking about my mother undergoing a metamorphosis. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it is literally what happens when we when
Speaker 1: we die, and that metamorphosis, that physiological metamorphosis, then triggers
Speaker 1: a whole series of other metamorphoses. Now my family has
Speaker 1: metamorphosized from four people to three people. I'm changed, my
Speaker 1: father's changed, my sister's changed. We are changed, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's what happens. And so you realize
Speaker 1: this idea of metamorphosis is is so vast and also
Speaker 1: so specific and so real and so painful. Right, And
Speaker 1: when you read Avid, you see the physical pain of it,
Speaker 1: almost of the discomfort of one of a hand becoming
Speaker 1: a branch right. But I kept thinking about that in
Speaker 1: her final days, and it gave me so much strength,
Speaker 1: And I kept saying the first line of the poem
Speaker 1: over and over in my head. I still do, which
Speaker 1: is in nova fert animus mutatas dicre formas corpora, which
Speaker 1: is well to the translation is sort of my mind
Speaker 1: is inclined or bent to speak of bodies changed into
Speaker 1: altered forms, changed forms altered into new bodies. The way
Speaker 1: you're describing your mother's passing feels in some form a
Speaker 1: kind of liberation. And this reminds me. After college, you
Speaker 1: moved to Boston. You worked at a bookstore where you
Speaker 1: ran the cash register, and you formed a friendship with
Speaker 1: a woman who worked there whose father was a poet,
Speaker 1: and every now and then you would visit their home.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if you could describe that first experience
Speaker 1: of walking into his office and seeing what that looked like. Well,
Speaker 1: when I first met the Corbett's, bill's office was on
Speaker 1: the parlor floor, second floor of their house. It was
Speaker 1: in the middle of this enormous double parlor, and there
Speaker 1: was his desk and all his bookcases on either side,
Speaker 1: and an art and his work, his writing, his reading,
Speaker 1: and I remember being so struck by that activity that
Speaker 1: was occupying the space, and not just sort of tucked
Speaker 1: away in a corner behind a door, but right there,
Speaker 1: front and center. In the June their teenth, twenty eleven
Speaker 1: issue of The New Yorker, you wrote, I saw that
Speaker 1: the work taking place on this desk was obliged to
Speaker 1: no one, connected to no institution, that this desk was
Speaker 1: an island, and that Bill worked on his own. Many
Speaker 1: people would experience that office and say, oh, it's a
Speaker 1: nice office. Oh it's interesting what he's doing. But what
Speaker 1: you pinpoint is that it's obliged to no one. And
Speaker 1: I get the sense that so much of the driving
Speaker 1: force of your writing is this desire to feel untethered.
Speaker 1: That's the ideal state for the writer is to be
Speaker 1: able to write from one's own, purely one's own, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever is driving the writing, and not feel that one
Speaker 1: needs to tell other people's stories. Maybe one wants to
Speaker 1: tell other people's stories, but you know how much of
Speaker 1: it is a want and how much it is a
Speaker 1: sense of obligation. Even if the obligation is coming from
Speaker 1: within yourself, even if it's not that someone saying, will
Speaker 1: you write my story? And so I think, you know,
Speaker 1: to go back to this earlier question that came up
Speaker 1: about sort of my parents at the center of those
Speaker 1: four books as opposed to who's now going to be
Speaker 1: at the center, I think that's critical. It's critical to
Speaker 1: move to the point where I don't feel that I
Speaker 1: have to speak for other people. Part of what drove
Speaker 1: me to write those early stories was that impulse that
Speaker 1: I had as a as a child as well to
Speaker 1: be able to speak for my parents, to defend them,
Speaker 1: to protect them, to explain them in a world in
Speaker 1: which they weren't being completely understood or respected or heard.
Speaker 1: So as a child there was a lot of that
Speaker 1: in me. Because I was I had access to both
Speaker 1: of the realities, you know, so I could I would
Speaker 1: instantly going back and forth and understanding and reading the
Speaker 1: reading the ways they were being read. I was both
Speaker 1: their child and their protector always, and so that's what
Speaker 1: I tried to do. And I think when I started
Speaker 1: to write it was the first time I felt that
Speaker 1: I had an instrument, a voice, a way, a perception,
Speaker 1: a way of protecting them and explaining them through my
Speaker 1: stories about largely about them and about their experiences. But
Speaker 1: it generated a kind of expectation or an obligation you're
Speaker 1: talking about, Yeah, I mean not from them particularly, not
Speaker 1: from them personally. But I think once you begin to
Speaker 1: write about say Bengali immigrants, you know, then there's that oh,
Speaker 1: aren't you going to write more stories about that? They owe?
Speaker 1: And you know, my family is also you know that
Speaker 1: that is what happened. And I think that can become
Speaker 1: problematic because one writes to be free, one to feel free.
Speaker 1: We're actually not free, but writing is a form of freedom.
Speaker 1: It's a way to feel for me to feel free.
Speaker 1: That's really important. And I think, I mean, what's interesting
Speaker 1: is in some of the stories I'm writing in Italian,
Speaker 1: some of the stories I'm writing now, I'm still looking
Speaker 1: quite closely at an immigrant communities, people who come from outside,
Speaker 1: people who settle in Rome, people who become Roman. That
Speaker 1: idea of becoming from being one one thing and becoming
Speaker 1: another thing. I think the writer has to feel completely
Speaker 1: untethered in order to then go back into life and
Speaker 1: back into all of the relationships that have made one
Speaker 1: and nourished one and tormented one and whatever, whatever the
Speaker 1: relationship is, whatever the nature of the relationship is, we
Speaker 1: are all so deeply connected, we are all such a
Speaker 1: network and at the same time so completely alone, And
Speaker 1: I think it's it's it's both. Then you recognize this again.
Speaker 1: To think about my mother's last days, you know, her
Speaker 1: death was another way for me to understand that sense
Speaker 1: of we are community. We are people who want to
Speaker 1: be together, who need to be together, who connect, who love,
Speaker 1: who grieve, who share, who eat, who laugh, who sing together.
Speaker 1: Friendship was such an important part of her life. She
Speaker 1: taught me what that was. She taught me the value
Speaker 1: of friendship until her dying day, and still will continue
Speaker 1: to teach me from her example of what it means
Speaker 1: to make friendships. And at the same time, she was
Speaker 1: entirely alone. And I think that's the reality. That's the
Speaker 1: contradiction one of them. Anyway of this life, these lives
Speaker 1: we lead, And what I keep circling back to, I
Speaker 1: think in all the books, you wrote a beautiful description
Speaker 1: of why you write in your book in other words,
Speaker 1: and I thought, as we leave, she'd be open to
Speaker 1: reading some of that. Why do I write to investigate
Speaker 1: the mystery of existence, to tolerate myself, to get closer
Speaker 1: to everything that is outside of me. If I want
Speaker 1: to understand what moves me, what confuses me, what pains me,
Speaker 1: everything that makes me react. In short, I have to
Speaker 1: put it into words. Writing is my only way of
Speaker 1: absorbing and organizing life. Otherwise it would terrify me. It
Speaker 1: would have set me too much. What passes without being
Speaker 1: put into words, without being transformed and in a certain
Speaker 1: sense purified by the crucible of writing has no meaning
Speaker 1: for me. Only words that endure seem real. They have
Speaker 1: a power of value superior to us. Given that I
Speaker 1: try to decipher everything through writing, maybe writing in Italian
Speaker 1: is simply my way of learning the language in a
Speaker 1: more profound, more stimulating way. Ever since I was a child,
Speaker 1: I've belonged only to my words. I don't have a country,
Speaker 1: a specific culture. If I didn't write, if I didn't
Speaker 1: work with words, I wouldn't feel that I'm present on
Speaker 1: the earth. What does a word mean and a life?
Speaker 1: In the end, it seems to me the same thing.
Speaker 1: Just as a word can have many dimensions, many nuances,
Speaker 1: great complexity, so too kind of person a life. Language
Speaker 1: is the mirror the principal metaphor, because ultimately, the meaning
Speaker 1: of a word like that of a person is boundless, ineffable.
Speaker 1: What do you think while writing that? I read it differently.
Speaker 1: I read it thinking about my mom in what way
Speaker 1: I recognized finally really fully took in her boundlessness. I
Speaker 1: think when people are living, you see them, you've sort
Speaker 1: of see them in the moment. I know this from
Speaker 1: having children, Like my kids are just they're who they
Speaker 1: are right now in this today. And then sometimes I
Speaker 1: look when i'm my screensaver goes off on my computer
Speaker 1: and I see all the photographs of them from this
Speaker 1: year and that year, and they're little and they're like this,
Speaker 1: and they look like that, and they you know, and
Speaker 1: I realized they were also all of those things. They
Speaker 1: were those all of those people too. But I can't
Speaker 1: really take it in because you are in the moment.
Speaker 1: You have to live in the moment, right You have
Speaker 1: to sort of acknowledge who another person is and who
Speaker 1: you are in this moment now, But you were also
Speaker 1: who you were three days ago, and three years ago
Speaker 1: and thirteen years ago, as was I. Those people are
Speaker 1: also part of this conversation, but it's just it's overwhelming
Speaker 1: to think about that in this moment, and I'm just
Speaker 1: talking about my children, whom I have literally seen grow up.
Speaker 1: But then think about all of the relationships we have
Speaker 1: with people bull whose past we don't know. But we
Speaker 1: also have to understand that there's like a there's a
Speaker 1: chorus that every person brings to the stage, right. Every
Speaker 1: person is both kind of a solo actor and a
Speaker 1: chorus at the same time, a chorus of selves. It's
Speaker 1: really rare. They're rare moments when you can really sort
Speaker 1: of step back and see that idea of the chorus
Speaker 1: of people. And that was one of the things a
Speaker 1: very close friend of mine told me when I told
Speaker 1: her about my mom. She said, one of the things
Speaker 1: that's going to happen now is that you're not going
Speaker 1: to just see her in her body and her frailty
Speaker 1: in the immediate moment of now. You know, when she
Speaker 1: leaves her body, this array of mothers is going to
Speaker 1: accompany you. Not just the final one, not just the
Speaker 1: final incarnation, but also the one who enthusiastically pushed you
Speaker 1: in your pram all over London in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1: She's also going to be there and all of these
Speaker 1: other memories you have of her, or don't. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't remember my mother pushing me even a brim
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight, but she did, and I can
Speaker 1: imagine it. You said you started writing to feel free,
Speaker 1: and I wondered, after reading that passage at this age,
Speaker 1: at fifty three, do you feel that freedom you've been
Speaker 1: looking for and writing? I mean, I think, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a sort of working toward the idea
Speaker 1: of freedom. As I said, I don't think we're ever
Speaker 1: fully free, you know, but writing creates for me a
Speaker 1: state of mind in which I would like to think
Speaker 1: that I am free. But I don't think we're ever
Speaker 1: fully fully free. Now. Life's too complicated, and I love
Speaker 1: life too much, and I love people too much, the
Speaker 1: people in my life too much, you know, to to
Speaker 1: really be able to divorce myself, to cut myself off
Speaker 1: from it to that degree. I'm thinking about now, all
Speaker 1: those of your mother you're talking about, and all the
Speaker 1: versions of yourself that you share on this show. It's
Speaker 1: meant a whole lot to me, And thank you for
Speaker 1: all the writing over the years. We are all alone,
Speaker 1: but page by page I have felt just a little
Speaker 1: less lonely because of you. Thank you so much. It
Speaker 1: was a very powerful conversation. And I haven't really talked
Speaker 1: about about any of this with someone I just met,
Speaker 1: so I hope it was all right. I've talked about
Speaker 1: my parents plenty of times on stage and in front
Speaker 1: of audiences, and in my writing it's always been out
Speaker 1: of a place of love and admiration, and so I
Speaker 1: hope this was as well. Jim Bola, Harry, thank you
Speaker 1: very much. Thank you, and that's our show. If you
Speaker 1: enjoy today's talk and want to get a copy of Whereabouts,
Speaker 1: it's available to purchase wherever you do your reading. You
Speaker 1: can find links and learn more about Jumpa's work in
Speaker 1: our show notes at talk easypod dot com. There you'll
Speaker 1: also find our back catalog, including talks with writers like
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Speaker 1: not be possible without our incredible team. Talk Easy is
Speaker 1: produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Jannick Sobravo.
Speaker 1: Our associate producer is Caitlin Dryden. Today's talk was edited
Speaker 1: by Claris Kavara and mixed by Andre Lynn. Illustrations are
Speaker 1: by Christia Schanoy, music by Dylan Peck, Video and graphics
Speaker 1: by Ian Chang, Derek gaberzak Ian Jones and Ethan Seneca.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Patrice Lee, Kaylin Ung, Shiloh Fagan, Nikki Spina,
Speaker 1: and Callie Syringis. I'd also like to thank the team
Speaker 1: at Pushkin Industries, justin Richmond. They're Fame Meil LaBelle, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Nicole Morano, Maya Knig, Carly Migliori, Jason Gambrel, Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: and Malcolm Cladwell. I'm Sanforgoso. Thank you for listening to
Speaker 1: Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week with
Speaker 1: Michael Tubbs. Until then, stay safe, and so long