Knopf
Review by Brian Tanguay
During his first year in college, Jadunath Kunwar — Jadu for short — attends a ceremony in honor of Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa who along with Edmund Hillary was the first person to scale Mt. Everest, a feat that captivated public attention worldwide. At this time in his young life Jadu only owns two dress shirts, one white, the other blue; for the Norgay visit he wears the white one because it’s newer, and loans the blue one to a classmate.
To Jadu and his peers Norgay is a great man, a mirror of themselves who has brought attention and pride to India, finally independent after a century of British colonial rule. It’s a heady time to be young, and the brief spell in Norgay’s presence marks a turning point in Jadu’s life, one he will look back on nearly sixty years later, though through a lens of decades and impending mortality. What constitutes “great” will feel very different then, but on the day of Norgay’s visit, Jadu imagines a life for himself unlike the village life his illiterate parents lead, scratching a bare existence from the land, living in a hut without electricity or indoor plumbing.
My Beloved Life is Amitava Kumar’s fourth novel. Kumar also writes poetry and nonfiction works, one of which, Passport Photos, was reviewed by my colleague Walter Cummins earlier this year. In this realistic novel personal and national histories are inseparable. Hungry for education, Jadu leaves his humble village behind, literally crosses a river to attend college, and becomes a history teacher and scholar. He also marries and becomes a father.
Jadu is a sober man, frugal and honest, and rarely loses his bearings. What briefly lands him in jail is his growing political awareness and participation in election campaigns. This happens before Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declares a state of emergency, suspends all constitutional rights, and begins rounding up her political opponents. On the day the Emergency is declared, Jadu is in a hospital with his daughter Jugnu who is ill with tonsillitis.
Another improbable turn in an improbable life takes place when Jadu is accepted for a Fulbright scholarship and moves to Berkeley, a place so different from the one he has known that when he writes his wife the bulk of the letter is taken up with descriptions of the talcum powder, toothpaste, and deodorant available in the stores around campus.
The second half of the book follows Jugnu, who works as a journalist for CNN in Atlanta. Of the nearly twenty years she has been away from India and her father, she remarks: “I was away from the habits of my youth and my upbringing. I had wandered out. And now it was as if I was free to choose an identity that was more suited to me.” Jugnu is also free of a short and catastrophic marriage that ended when her husband was accused of raping their housekeeper.
One morning during the Covid pandemic her phone rings, but though she suspects it might be her father calling, Jugnu doesn’t answer; this becomes one of the singular regrets of her life. The call she allows to go to voicemail is from her father. By the time she calls back, a caregiver informs her that her father has died.
The reality of her father’s passing shakes Jugnu even harder than her mother’s death did. “To have him taken away meant that I was suddenly adrift without an aim in life.” As she sorts old photographs she recalls her father’s stories and realizes that all her life she has sought his praise, and Jadu had given it, teaching her in his quiet way as he had so many others. “Stay steadfast in your journey to your goal. Don’t lose your mental balance or your moral focus.” Only now does she fully understand how indebted to her father she is, how for the entirety of her life he had imparted “his learning, his love, and the fruits of his labor.”
Kumar seamlessly juxtaposes historical events with the everyday concerns of his characters — illness and loss, personal tragedies, failed loves, regrets — and renders it all in such masterful prose that the ordinary becomes extraordinary. “I believe strongly that we are in touch with a great astonishing mystery,” he writes, “when we put honest words down on paper to register a life and to offer witness.”
Indeed. As Jadu contemplates his long life, he recalls the day he stood in the presence of Tenzing Norgay and comes to this conclusion:
“In contrast, he has himself led an ordinary life. One is taught to think of such a life as one without heroism. But that cannot be correct – no valor maybe, but such a life has courage too. The strength of will required to get out of bed and put on your shoes.”
That strength lies at the heart of a thoughtfully lived and beloved life.
