The role of the father in Jhumpa Lahiri`s Unaccustomed Earth

 The role of the father in Jhumpa Lahiri`s Unaccustomed Earth

In Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth, the father plays a complex, multifaceted role that embodies the tensions of diaspora, generational divides, and personal reinvention. His character serves as:

1. The Grieving Widow Reinventing Himself

• After his wife’s death, he rejects stagnation, traveling through Europe and later forming a discreet relationship with Mrs. Bagchi. His journeys symbolize a rebirth, an escape from the role of "Bengali patriarch" into a self-defined identity.
• Unlike Ruma, who clings to memory, he avoids nostalgia—his postcards to her are impersonal, almost erasing emotion, as if to prove he can move on.

2. The Absent Patriarch (Who Was Always Absent)

• Even before his wife’s death, he was emotionally distant—Ruma recalls him reading the newspaper while her mother cared for the children. Now, his physical absence (through travel) mirrors his lifelong emotional unavailability.
• Yet, with Akash, he shows unexpected tenderness, bathing him, reading to him, planting a garden for him—a side Ruma never knew. This suggests his detachment was cultural, not innate.

3. The Silent Rebel Against Tradition

• His secret relationship with Mrs. Bagchi defies expectations: she’s a widow who refuses remarriage, and he’s a man who, at 70, prioritizes companionship over duty. Their bond is quiet, equal, and free from the obligations of his first marriage.
• When Ruma asks him to live with her (fulfilling the Bengali tradition of caring for aging parents), he gently refuses. His rejection underscores a diasporic truth: children inherit their parents’ cultural guilt, but parents may no longer want its burdens.

4. The Gardener: A Metaphor for Impermanent Roots

• The garden he plants is a gift that won’t last—he knows Ruma won’t maintain it, just as he knows his presence in her life is temporary. The hydrangea, his wife’s favorite flower, is both a memorial and a resigned acknowledgment that even grief changes.
• Like the garden, his role in Ruma’s life is beautiful but fleeting. He gives her what he can (advice, a week of help) but won’t sacrifice his hard-won autonomy.

5. The Mirror of Ruma’s Fears

• His independence forces Ruma to confront her own isolation and dissatisfaction. If he can rebuild his life, why can’t she? His quiet happiness underscores her loneliness.
• The postcard to Mrs. Bagchi, which Ruma mails instead of destroying, symbolizes her painful acceptance that her father—like her mother, like her childhood—belongs to a past she can’t preserve.

Conclusion: A Quiet Subversion of Roles

The father’s role isn’t to comfort or guide Ruma but to model a paradox: love without obligation, roots without permanence. In rejecting the traditional Bengali father’s role, he becomes something more human—a man who, in old age, finally chooses himself.

Key Quote:

“He was suddenly conscious that he would probably not live to see Akash into adulthood… It was inevitable. And yet he knew that he, too, had turned his back on his parents, by settling in America.”

His story is one of circular exile—from India, from family, even from grief—and in that, he embodies the diaspora’s unresolved heart.