What grief makes of us

What does South Haven remind me of? A short story by Akhil Sharma recently appeared in The New Yorker that shows the unravelling childhood of a young immigrant boy in the US whose mother is an alcoholic. Other novels and short stories about Indian immigrants came to mind as well as I read South Haven , but with the exception of Sharma’s, the others didn’t linger over the emotional lives of boys and men. South Haven offers a rare, intimate portrait of a fractured trajectory of a boy who navigates adolescence in the absence of his mother. The story follows dual trajectories: a journey of porn, violence, high school cliques, and peer pressure, and also of loyalty, familial protectiveness and kindness. The sentences in South Haven are crisp and short, creating a sense of immediacy, drawing you straight into the Arora house as their grief and healing unfold.

Siddharth and Arjun lose their mother to a road accident when they are 10 and 15 respectively. While the accident deepens the friction between Arjun and his father, it has the opposite effect on Siddharth, who spends the following years trying to hold his remaining family together. The fear of losing his father and his brother permeates his actions. He takes over his mother’s roles within the family. The novel allows one to watch Siddharth cry, linger over embraces, offer kindness and encouragement to his flailing father — vulnerabilities so unusual for a young, South Asian male character to display that one can’t help but savour them. One of the most satisfying parts of the book is the way Siddharth positions himself as a bridge between his father and his brother. He moves like a pendulum between one and the other, checking on the two elder men. He grounds his father in the way he imagines his mother would have.

If the ways in which the mother’s death has chipped away at her family reveals a lot about these characters, then the ways in which the characters have chosen to fill themselves go even further. The father, Mohan Lal, works on a bitter historical book which reveals a bigotry that his wife had tried her best to repress. Arjun focuses on sections of South Asian history that are in direct opposition to his father’s political leanings. Siddharth continues to draw — an activity his mother nurtured on Saturday mornings. He holds his mother’s lessons tightly to his chest. He uses them in new and inventive ways so he doesn’t have to stop as seen in these lines, “His mother had once taught him how to make an object seem more spherical, by smudging pencil marks with his finger, and he found that this technique could make a woman’s chest leap off the page.”

As time passes, Mohan Lal begins to date Siddharth’s counsellor — who’s also the mother of his friend. At first, Siddharth resists the idea but slowly comes around to trusting the new inclusions in their life. The conservative political views of the woman are in line with Mohan Lal’s and in contrast to Siddharth’s mother. But Siddharth comes to see her as a family member in her own right, instead of perpetually comparing her to his late mother.

Set in an American town called South Haven, the story also explores the way in which an immigrant family is both drawn to and repulsed by the idea of the homeland. India becomes “the goddamned country that nobody would shut up about”. Mohan Lal is determined to be modern and leave behind the backwardness he assigns to his homeland, but as an idea that he engages in daily it is precious to him. Though this is a familiar theme, it doesn’t feel hackneyed but an intrinsic part of what makes these characters tick.

The characters come apart and come together time and again as they create new possibilities for themselves in a world without the dynamic woman they had thought they would always have. The novel explores how the last time you see someone can haunt and shape your life in ways you can’t explain. At its core, South Haven is a story about how loss influences who we become, who we cannot stand any longer, and who we choose to welcome into our new lives.

Urvashi Bahugunais a poet living in Delhi