In Other Words - Jhumpa Lahiri

At first, the words just seemed friendly. Soon I started travelling with them to every nook and corner of the writer’s thoughts and before I knew, I tumbled down with them unto this unexpected journey for freedom.

A renowned writer decides to learn a new language. She has won the Pulitzer Prize for her work written in English and now she has decided to abandon English for Italian. She is learning Italian from the scratch. She is crazy. She has left her home in the USA and shifted to Italy so that she could be amidst the language she is trying to learn. She has stopped reading English books. She reads only Italian and she writes only in Italian. This is non-fiction. This is “In Other Words” where Jhumpa Lahiri tells us about her extra ordinary journey into a new language. In her quest for Italian, the writer is searching for a new dimension of herself. She is seeking to be free from the grammars and memories of her earlier language. She has left behind her earlier language. She has left behind her earlier baggage. In this journey, she is born a new writer, with new merits and new demerits. She is free from her past!

Rabindranath Tagore’s heroines were always very free spirited. Jhumpa Lahiri seemed like a creation of Tagore; but a Tagore of modern times, of an evolved era where freedom is not at all about a dowry or a purdah system but only about the freedom of mind. Where do I stand here? Like Tagore’s heroines, I belong to both the worlds. I am trapped between both the worlds. Society knows I have the choice but they will keep hoping that I go by their choice and not mine. I will keep being polite and they will keep nudging at me till my patience is so broken that I can no longer be polite. Then they will shrug their shoulders but “let” me have my way, blaming the “time” for my follies. They will keep on loving and blessing me as usual. It will take them a long time to notice that I have stopped respecting them. My freedom is a rose, and roses have their thorns.

Jhumpa Lahiri tells us a short story she had written (in Italian) about a sweater. Suddenly a girl could no longer recognize her own sweater. She had been wearing it for a long time but today, it did not feel like her own. Something must have changed.

How much do we notice the changes that happen to us? I am not talking about the new freckle on your face. I have this very cool uncle whom I have known as a kid. I did not meet him for a long time and then, when I met him again, he did not seem that cool. But my parents found him the same, he had not changed. I had changed! Everyone changes. Some evolve.

Jhumpa Lahiri could feel the change in her; the change that whatever may be the reason, English as a language no longer did much to her. She wanted more, she wanted Italian. Like all free spirited women, she followed her pursuit and arrived in Italy. She did not shoo away her wanting as a light hearted impossible whim. She knew that she had the choice and the freedom to follow her whim for the Italian language into a reality.

How many such whims have I shooed away? Innumerable, if not more. I still believe I did the right thing most of the times. But now I also know that with each such shooing away, I have also shooed away one more opportunity to explore myself further, to probe myself deeper. Sometimes it is comfortable to get lazy but sometimes, it is important to go out of one’s comfort zone and test different waters. That’s how we grow, that’s how we become free. And this is a never ending journey.

As Jhumpa Lahiri says it IN OTHER WORDS: “In the face of everything that seems to me unattainable, I marvel. If everything were possible, what would be the meaning, the point of life?”

Read in March, 2016