Harsimran Kaur ON Dec 12, 2023, IN BOOK REVIEW, Roman Stories By Jhumpa Lahiri
Rating: 5/5
The street walks alone; the burden of the dark sheet above spread infinitely is difficult to carry. The insipid structures around tell a tale and I listen to it intently. What they say is all a charade; an obstreperous hinge to dislocate their real self. I, the street know these human emotions well by now, talking hastily in the silence of the night; their stories born through the piercing realities of the day light entertaining the demons in the phantasmagoria of the eluded sleep.
I am a part of this loneliness. I also awaken to the buzzing feet webbing the denials of the invalidated bonhomie. They finally become stories! The Roman Streets collect stories putting an ear to the caterwaul that shrills like a cascading waterfall or the chimera often cack-handed to release itself from insatiable.
In the ‘Boundary’, a family of four comes to vacation in the Roman countryside away from the chaotic life of the city. What are these boundaries? A perceptible fondness to life eludes it. They don’t always impede solipsistic pride, yet assist to create a sense of belonging. Boundary stretches in abundance to give you comfort or you find one just like the little girl who takes care of families vacationing at the countryside. ‘Boundaries’ eventually elicits a release of a striking contrast to the life’s pejoratives.
Two best friends reunite after years in the ‘The Reentry’. They discuss the perils that sit discomfortably on their shoulders. It’s hard to realize that ‘prejudice’ is a lethal danger that has submerged humanity in a palaver of distrust; your own fondness to affiliate is restricted. But, often we find a corner somehow evoked with memories to re-connect, reunite with the surroundings, familiar yet obtrusive.
In the story ‘P’s Parties’, we find the high falutin finding recluse in the prosody of other’s impassioned tales. A couple brews their insecurities on each other, are regular to ‘P’s Parties’—‘P’ being the best friend of the wife. A miscalculation sets the husband to analyze if experiences can be created or as a matter of fact remains the implacable enemy. How life transits—an instant connection, dismissals? What eludes us in life, don’t we often ask? Passions change, new dreams ensue, conflicts appear and disappear, and seldom do the invigorating smiles brighten. And then the hoop! Our inner impulses in recluse awaken at a time when the faltered reality breaks to find the ‘true you’ moisturized.
These stories and many more in the book ‘Roman Stories’ by the renowned author Jhumpa Lahiri touch the human angle of being a tourist, migrant or an indigenous breather in the city of ‘Rome’. The Sun does not cease to rise neither the darkness dances to an incendiary witchcraft; the stars too continue to sparkle and the clouds still clamor to cry their heart out—Rome in its buoyant stills and nestled fragments derives a pleasure in the succinct whispers, forbidding impressions and unaccustomed thoughts; all this so plausibly crafted by the author in the stories.
Another story ‘Steps’ talks about neighborhood and belonging! ‘Steps’—the release of emotions, a tempest that usually arises and then abates while descending the stairs; the incongruous markings on the steps and the sly chitter-chatter of what consumes us—every folly and frisson vents a clap and a disaster. Thoughts that rummage while climbing the steps and then going down serves as a friction to believe in the ‘present’ and then imperturbably get silent to believe in ‘ambiguity’.
One of my favourite in the book is ‘Notes’; a story about a widow who has her distractions in place albeit memories find a way nevertheless. Sometimes it’s important to let them go in order to survive; the bitter truth, the false hopes, the acrimony wiped on you and the torment that pile like a haystack.
‘Dante Alighieri’—a story of realizing that ‘Truth’ cannot always be ‘true’. It’s a tale about a girl to then become a woman, who soon realizes the moment of truth by an invisible poet that changes her life.
TAKE AWAY
The many moods and emotions in the stories make you feel vulnerable to the finely tuned ‘actors’ we all are. Our thoughts manifest from the bitter realities, an anathema, we try to run away from. The trajectory of life then becomes our unattended passions that speak the language of repentance. We gradually find solace in the newly equipped governance of our emotions to comprehend life as it sees us.
Engrossing and impassionable!