The Ever After of Ashwin Rao
by Padma Viswanathan
I forgot that I already read and wrote about a book set in Canada, back when I broke from reading alphabetically for a short time. Good to a Fault, by Marina Endicott, was a great story, but it did not have anything to do with my favorite themes of immigration, travel, and being outside of one's own culture. The Ever After of Ashwin Rao, by Padma Viswanathan, did, with a very interesting spin on these concepts.
A long, long time ago ... (seems like a hundred years or more) ... I got my master's degree in English literature with visions of going on for a Ph.D. so that I could teach, write, and research. My plan was to specialize in American literature, focusing on the question of how long must a writer actually "be" American in order to have his or her writing be viewed as American. Where exactly is that fuzzy line between being American and other-than-American; what makes a work of literature American or not; how does our concept of American literature take into account that Americans come from all corners of the world and that, of course, their writing encompasses concepts, values, ideas, and experiences that originate and germinate in other places and cultures? I still love that concept and am sometimes wistful about that road not taken. My friend and JMU professor has focused her career on border literature, mainly the U.S.-Mexico border and, I believe, similar examination of how the themes that show up in literature represent the disparate yet overlapping cultural concepts that define who we are when we say we are "American," "Mexican," or in the case of this novel, "Canadian" or "Indian." So fascinating.
The Ever After of Ashwin Rao tells the story of a Canadian airplane that explodes over the ocean while carrying a plane full of people to India. All of the passengers are of Indian descent, but most are long-time residents or citizens of Canada. Many, especially the young ones, identify only with Canada, with India as just a hazy sense of heritage and family but not tangibly of their own lives. The explosion is eventually traced back to an extremist group in India, an act of terrorism that had to do political problems in India, and not with Canada or its politics.
Twenty years later, the event remains unresolved, and the loved ones left behind are doubly victimized: first by terrorists in their native land, and second by the Canadian government's inaction, a collective washing of their hands of a matter they perceived had had nothing to do with them as a nation or as a people. Ashwin Rao is a psychologist who, after losing his sister and her children on the plane, sets out to research the experiences of the survivors. Although named in the title and featured prominently in the plot, Ashwin is not truly the main character. The story belongs instead to Seth, a professor in Vancouver who has become the de facto caretaker of a friend who lost his wife and son. Having to step into this role, taking responsibility for someone who has been destroyed by loss and trauma, has impacted every facet of his own life, including his career, his marriage, and his two daughters. Through Seth's life, just peripherally connected to the terrorist act, Ashwin ... and we along with him ... comes to understand the tragedy's aftermath and what it says about belonging, loyalty, and patriotism.
A long, long time ago ... (seems like a hundred years or more) ... I got my master's degree in English literature with visions of going on for a Ph.D. so that I could teach, write, and research. My plan was to specialize in American literature, focusing on the question of how long must a writer actually "be" American in order to have his or her writing be viewed as American. Where exactly is that fuzzy line between being American and other-than-American; what makes a work of literature American or not; how does our concept of American literature take into account that Americans come from all corners of the world and that, of course, their writing encompasses concepts, values, ideas, and experiences that originate and germinate in other places and cultures? I still love that concept and am sometimes wistful about that road not taken. My friend and JMU professor has focused her career on border literature, mainly the U.S.-Mexico border and, I believe, similar examination of how the themes that show up in literature represent the disparate yet overlapping cultural concepts that define who we are when we say we are "American," "Mexican," or in the case of this novel, "Canadian" or "Indian." So fascinating.
The Ever After of Ashwin Rao tells the story of a Canadian airplane that explodes over the ocean while carrying a plane full of people to India. All of the passengers are of Indian descent, but most are long-time residents or citizens of Canada. Many, especially the young ones, identify only with Canada, with India as just a hazy sense of heritage and family but not tangibly of their own lives. The explosion is eventually traced back to an extremist group in India, an act of terrorism that had to do political problems in India, and not with Canada or its politics.
Twenty years later, the event remains unresolved, and the loved ones left behind are doubly victimized: first by terrorists in their native land, and second by the Canadian government's inaction, a collective washing of their hands of a matter they perceived had had nothing to do with them as a nation or as a people. Ashwin Rao is a psychologist who, after losing his sister and her children on the plane, sets out to research the experiences of the survivors. Although named in the title and featured prominently in the plot, Ashwin is not truly the main character. The story belongs instead to Seth, a professor in Vancouver who has become the de facto caretaker of a friend who lost his wife and son. Having to step into this role, taking responsibility for someone who has been destroyed by loss and trauma, has impacted every facet of his own life, including his career, his marriage, and his two daughters. Through Seth's life, just peripherally connected to the terrorist act, Ashwin ... and we along with him ... comes to understand the tragedy's aftermath and what it says about belonging, loyalty, and patriotism.
