Jhumpa Lahiri never loses sight of who she is. An Indian, yet an outsider. It isn't an unusual thing to be, and many old NRIs yearn for their home soil and whatnot, but Lahiri's writing walks that thin line between something is dripping with nothing but nostalgia and one that is eager to forget its roots.
With The Interpreter of Maladies, a new identity emerged which has now taken definite shape with Unaccustomed Earth. There is a new Indian - who is not unfamiliar with India, but knows it in tiny details of that are more or less taken for granted. Be it the sabzi-sandwich she takes to school for lunch, or in the Indian, more specifically, Bengali terms of address she uses most mechanically. Unlike the confused hybrid that inhabit NRI writing, these characters are comfortable with their identities, mostly because their creator has come to terms with hers. She puts this part of herself in each of her characters, but then lets them develop as individuals with their own stories and their own struggles. There isn't a preoccupation with nostalgia, a static Indian-ness that dominates writing of this kind, but an acknowledgment of a world that is somewhere a part of each of the characters, which reveals itself in unusual ways.
There are few writers today who write with as much ease as Jhumpa Lahiri. Every word, every story engulfs you in a hauntingly quiet way. As always, her approach is gentle yet effective, and the stories won't leave you easily. With The Namesake, it seemed Lahiri had lost the absolute control and precision she has over her words. It was a moving story, but a tad rambling, and it seems to me now that it is the comparatively shorter life of a short story that she works better in. The novel seemed to guide her, while she is the master of the short story.
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