Drowning Fish

by Swati Chanda

‘And what of those whose roots are planted deep in the soil of their land? What does it take for them to thrive, transplanted?’
East Pakistan, 1950. Nayantara flees riot-ridden Narayanbari with her two daughters, leaving behind her life as she knew it. The only link to her past is the legacy she is determined to leave her granddaughter, Neelanjana – the precious pieces of teakwood furniture that oppress the rooms of her tiny flat in Calcutta, where she arrives to take refuge.
Decades later, Neelanjana leaves for the US, in a bid to forge an independent life. But, she discovers, as she is gradually bruised by alienation and heartbreak in a country far from her own, that the burden of her family's history is one she cannot slough off easily, that rejection and violence can stretch across geographies and generations, and that ‘home’ is simply the place where one finally learns to accept oneself.
Compelling and deeply affecting, Drowning Fish is about lives trapped in the tumult of motivations and desires, and forged inescapably by events beyond their control.'

326 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

Swati Chanda was born in Kolkata and graduated from Jadavpur University. In 1988, she went to the United States where she graduated from Iowa State and Purdue Universities. She has taught English Literature for a number of years in the USA and India, and worked for a non-profit organization in the education domain. After working in the USA for over 12 years, she relocated to Bangalore where she currently teaches at a college. Her first published book was a collection of short stories for children.

Reviews

[Jairam Mohan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A moving story about three generations of women from the same family who struggle to find roots in their new surroundings. While Nayantara has to leave all of her life so far behind in East Bengal when the riots break out and she flees to India, her daughter Sucharita struggles to make sense of a marriage she is forced into. And with Neelanjana, grand daughter of Nayantara and niece of Sucharita, the alienation continues when she goes abroad for higher studies and with an intention of settling down there.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book in India and am unaware of whether it's available internationally. I can imagine any international edition might need a bit of tweaking to help us, ignorant foreigners, to follow some of the complexities of the family relationships which bogged me down in the first half.

It's a story that should be right up my street. I read a lot of books about immigrant experience and this is just dripping in that. Not just Keelanjana's move to the USA and problems settling in both pre- and post- 9/11 but also her family back in Kolkata who are themselves refugees from conflict in Bangladesh / East Bengal. Everybody in the book is dislocated, relocated, uncomfortable in their location and perhaps also in their family relationships.

The younger generation is represented by Neelanjana who leaves Kolkata to study in the USA. She gets her PhD, gets a teaching post, tries to be a 'modern' woman and gets into quite some troubles as a result. Back home, her family continues to battle over status, furniture, accommodation and money. The family relationships are very hard to follow due to what I assume are the Bengali terms for aunties, uncles, cousins, etc. The conflicts within the family relate to stolen property, the marrying off of an orphaned woman to a refugee man whose family are well 'beneath' her family and disputes continue over many decades.

At heart is the concept of 'desh' - country, homeland, the place where you belong. Can people learn to accept that their 'desh' can change, that they can live somewhere that's not perfect but still feels like home.

There are some really interesting plot twists. The second half if generally more interesting than the first, and when I finally got to the end, I realised I did care quite a lot about some of the characters. But the first few chapters hadn't grabbed me and the book was set aside a few times before I finally finished it.

[Indriyajit Sethi · Rating 4 out of 5]

From around page 200 till the end I could not leave this story and it's characters so I finished the book just a while back around 1 am. I am vaguely quoting another coming of age book - I wish I could call the author and argue about a few of the people in the story.
The story has so many layers - history of violence in and migration from Bangladesh ( contrasted with Indian migrants in the US) , the complex knots in relationships affected by circumstances...but what I loved is the journey of one fish as it swims upstream towards home...

[Yajnaseni Roy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it. The female characters are well-written. The transition from the fiction to the facts and back again was not very seamless, and seemed to halt the natural flow of the words, but only in parts. A tad too dramatic, but I guess that was the whole point.

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[Neha Sharma · Rating 1 out of 5]

boring(yawn)

[Sindhu · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book started out really well. in fact, I really enjoyed the first half of this book.
the quality of the book fell in the second half though.