The Space Between Us -- Take 2

Did it take me forever to read this book? Yes. Is that because it was bad? Not at all. But it is a bit depressing - not so much the story itself, but the backdrop.

As I said in the first post, this book tells the story of two women in India: the wealthy Sera and her servant Bhima. They are both widowed, and both are relieved about that, but feel guilty about it also. Left in the rubble of their broken marriages are Sera's son-in-law and pregnant daughter, and Bhima's pregnant granddaughter.

Flashbacks fill us in on how the women came to be where they are; they are friends for the same reason most people are - they have been through so much together. But what is unsettling about their relationship is that they aren't really friends. The strict class rules in India prevent them from ever being equals - the women occasionally take tea together, but while Sera drinks her tea at the table, Bhima squats on her haunches on the floor.

In addition to that are the gender barriers; no matter the class, Indian women have a drastically different relationship with their men than we are used to seeing. Regardless, there was still something painfully familiar between their relationships and every other relationship you've ever heard about.

The writing is simple, with just enough Indian phrases to keep it charming and authentic. But there is a weighing sadness about this immovable boundary between the women which doesn't end with the end of the story.

Quotes:

"From the time she was in her teens, Sera had been fascinated by this paradox -- how a body that we occupy, that we have worn like a coat from the moment of our birth -- from before birth, even -- is still a stranger to us. After all, almost everything we do in our lives if for the well-being of the body: we bathe daily, polish our teeth, groom our hair and fingernails; we work miserable jobs in order to feed and clothe it; we go to great lengths to protect it from pain and violence and harm. And yet the body remains a mystery, a book that we never read. Sera plays with this irony, toys with it as if it were a puzzle: How, despite our lifelong preoccupation with our bodies, we have never met face-to-face with our kidneys, how we wouldn't recognize our own liver in a row of livers, how we have never seen our own heart or brain. We know more about the depths of the ocean, are more acquainted with the far corners of outer space than with our own organs and muscles and bones. So perhaps there are no phantom pains after all; perhaps all pain is real; perhaps each long-ago blow lives on into eternity in some different permutation and shape; perhaps the body is this hypersensitive, revengeful entity, a ledger book, a warehouse of remembered slights and cruelties."

"Bhima wants to correct Maya, wants to point out that it's not clear to her whether she indeed felt sorry for [the balloon seller]. She wants to say: But beti, it's more than that. He wasn't the kind of man you felt sorry for, exactly. Rather, looking into his fine, sad eyes, you felt a deep sorrow, the kind of melancholy you feel when you're in a beautiful place and the sun is going down. And mostly, now, when I think of him, I feel sorry for myself. Because that old Pathan had something that I need now. I don't know what it was, don't even have a name for it. All I know is that he could've taught me something, if only I had not been young and shy and afraid to ask."

"It was over. Her marriage was over. Just like this, in the blink of an eye, Feroz was gone. Feroz -- husband and oppressor; lover and tormentor; victim and victimizer. No man had ever made her happier or more miserable. No man had lover her as passionately; no man had done more to strangle the love she felt for him. Feroz had held the keys to her happiness, but those keys had unlocked the gates of hell. He had been a mercurial man -- aggressive, brilliant, violent, jealous, but also loving, generous, and capable of largesse. Perhaps it had been her fault that she had never learned how to handle this man, how to steer through the choppy waters he left in his wake."

"Bhima sits still, listening to the music. And soon the shenai stops its shrill, tragic wail, and after a few minutes the sitar ceases its heart-numbing drone, and then all that's left is a tabla beat -- incessant, surging, powerful. Soon, the loneliness stops its wailing, and then the fear ceases its numbing drone, and all that is left is freedom -- incessant, surging, and powerful."