The Far Field
by Madhuri Vijay
Nominations: Carnegie Longlist 2020, PEN/Hemingway Longlist 2020
Date Read: May 19, 2023
The Far Field is a timely dive into what happens when the good-intentioned privileged set out to reconnect with the past and leave only devastation in their wake. Shalini, the narrator of this novel, is privileged by every standard. College educated, a housekeeper since birth, a car and cell phone gifted to her. She has never known hunger or violence or war. The one tragedy she has to overcome is her mother’s suicide.
Shalini’s mother runs very hot and cold. She can be garrulous and fun, breaking social rules in a manner that leaves everyone laughing. But she can also display unsavory emotions publicly, causing everyone around her discomfort and alienation. Shalini both reveres and abhors her mother. When she goes to college and finds herself out of her depth, she looks down on everyone just like her mother would. “I suppose it was, like so many other things, a trick I’d learned from my mother. To keep approval in reserve, to lead with mockery and distrust, for to reveal affection was to reveal weakness.”
Her mother was the one who invited Bashir Ahmed into their home, a clothing merchant from Kashmir. He exhaustively goes door-to-door selling women’s clothing and from an instant, Shalini’s mother takes a shine to him, inviting him in and discovering he can hold his own when bantering with her mother. When he shows up one day, stranded in India, it was her mother who advocated for him to live with them.
Shortly after Ahmed moves in, Shalini discovers the heat between her mother and Ahmed and becomes contemptuous of him and she knows that her mother is going to attempt to run off with him. Ahmed, however, avoids the impending fiasco by absconding in the middle of the night. He vanishes, never to be heard from again. Shalini’s mother never mentions his name and never portends to miss him. But Shalini knows somewhere in her heart, her mother is devastated. Only a few years later, her mother commits suicide.
In grief, Shalini is at sea. She is sent home from her job for a lack of interest and passion. She works at a non-profit attempting to help the poor of India. She has circumspect relationships with men and few friends. For some untold reason, she decides to seek out Bashir Ahmed, leaving with only the town of a tale he once told.
Through the kindness of strangers, Shalini is able to locate the remote, mountainous village where Ahmed lives. She made dear friends of her hosts in town, a Muslim couple devastated by the military kidnapping of their son. When, through this couple’s connections, Ahmed’s family learns she is looking for them, Ahmed’s son Riyaz is sent to inform her that Ahmed has died. Her hosts suggest she visit his mountainous town and shortly after, they depart.
It is in his town that Shalini sees the relationship between the military and the Kashmiri people. They have all-consuming authority over where they go, who they interrogate and the future of everyone they encounter. She witnesses Riyaz being beaten. She knows the military is to blame for Ahmed’s untimely death, although he is actually in hiding. And by narcing on the military, she actually brings violence to Ahmed’s family, causing Riyaz to be kidnapped by the military. Her good intentions of gratitude and apology go up in smoke.
Vijay is a wonderful storyteller, immersing readers in the sights, smells and tastes of India and Kashmir. You can feel Shalini’s exhaustion and the mother-in-law’s contempt. Readers can envision the accomplishment of an urban girl learning to milk a cow. You can just about grasp the sexual tension between the Brigadier and Shalini.
I had a few problems with this book. I didn’t feel the reason for Ahmed’s need to stay with the family very well explained. And once Shalini is in Ahmed’s village, there is no mention of textiles or clothing as a vocation, never explaining how Ahmed came to sell Kashmir clothing, who made them or how he was profiting from them. Nevertheless, I will remember this novel for years to come.
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