American tales

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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni abandons the spices and Indian exotica to enter into Jhumpa Lahiri territory and write wholeheartedly about immigrant experiences, people who are more at home in America than where their roots are. Not surprisingly, One Amazing Thing has a warm recommendation from Lahiri: "(It) collapses the walls dividing characters and cultures; what endures is a chorus of voices in one single room." The chorus is of nine people trapped in the visa office at an Indian consulate in an American city after a devastating earthquake. They wait for help, telling each other stories—"an important story from our lives... I don't believe anyone can go through life without encountering at least one amazing thing", Uma, the Indian-American in the group, urges on the trapped group.Earlier, Uma waits for her visa with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in hand, so the reader is quite prepared for the tale-within-a-tale that follows. They are a colourful group—Jiang, a Chinese-Indian with her granddaughter Lily, a Chinese-American; Cameron, an ex-soldier still trying to forget war crimes, and trying to organise the group in the aftermath of the quake searching for escape routes; Tariq, a young Muslim distraught with the new America post-9/11, an elderly white couple, fighting a domestic battle in public, and two visa office workers on the verge of an adulterous affair.Jiang agrees to go first with her story—and it's quite an amazing story, taking us back to the Calcutta of the '50s and '60s when fine Chinese footwear was the rage. Out of Tangra, where the Chinese community lives in the city, is born a Chinese-Bengali love story, spoilt by war and other societal pulls. As her story unfolds, her granddaughter realises that Jiang has been living a secret in America, pretending to know no English when she was already an accomplished businesswoman in Calcutta. "We think terrible events have turned us into stone. But love slips in like a chisel— and suddenly it is an axe, breaking us into pieces from the inside." When Jiang concludes her tale, no one speaks for a while. But then one half of the American couple—Mr Pritchett—goes next, and leads on the group with a harrowing tale of violence and abuse and a lost childhood.There is a delightful account of Miss Lola's Lovely Ladies Saloon in Coimbatore as the visa office's Malathi unwinds to narrate her story about the journey to America. "After Malathi finished her story, Uma didn't want to return to the present. It was so pleasant in Lola's pink salon, moist and cool, with its herbal shampoos, sandalwood paste and the calm, ministering hands of Lola's girls." By the time it's Tariq's—the American Muslim who is about to cross to the other side—turn to tell his story, you can almost hear him saying: "From having put up my story against the others, I can see this much: everyone suffers in different ways. Now I don't feel so alone."And yet, Divakaruni doesn't quite say whether there will be any happily-ever-afters— as Uma begins the end of the story, the clankings ominously grow louder. It will be unfair, perhaps, to compare her to Lahiri, for Divakaruni's hand is uneven as she enters a new territory, but like Lahiri's stories, expect another cinematic translation of One Amazing Thing. Divakaruni, of course, is used to her tales being retold in celluloid, however insipid the Mistress of Spices was.

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