The Lowland

On one of his walks through a forested greenway, Subhash runs into his old roommate, Richard. They are both in their 60s and start to hang out regularly. One afternoon, Subhash gets a phone call from Richard’s wife, Claire: Richard has died from a blood clot.

Richard’s death makes Subhash pensive and nostalgic.: “He was without a family, just as he’d been when he’d known Richard. But he was alone in a different way” (245). Subhash is filled with regret and struggles with insomnia. He feels haunted by the fact that Bela doesn’t know the truth about her biological father and thinks himself “weak” for not telling her, “still pretending to be her father” (251).

At the funeral, Subhash meets a woman, Elise Silva, who used to be Bela’s high school history teacher. A widow with three children, Elise now works part time for the historical society and invites Subhash to a house tour the following weekend. When Subhash shows up to the tour, he realizes that this historical home is the one that he and Richard used to live in as roommates. Subhash doesn’t speak with Elise much during that day, as he becomes wrapped up in the past walking through his old home. He concludes that Elise was only inviting him simply for the sake of a historical tour, but she calls later to invite him to her hiking club. 

Bela has been living in a communal house in Brooklyn, New York. As she hears construction workers speak in Bengali, it brings back memories of her childhood and of her mother’s absence: “She’s not nostalgic for her childhood, but this aspect of it, at once familiar and foreign, gives her pause” (256).

Bela becomes friends with a couple in the communal house, Noel and Ursula, and their daughter Violet, but Bela tries to keep some distance—a habit she has adopted to maintain her nomadic lifestyle.

When Bela learns that Subhash is dating her old teacher, she is strangely upset. After having seen her parents so unhappy with one another in her childhood, Bela does not want to marry. Bela is still angry with Subhash and Gauri for their role in their unhappy marriage; this is the reason why Bela is so distant with Subhash and never tells him where she is living. 

Subhash picks up Bela from the Boston airport for a visit back home. Subhash secretly wishes she would come home with a boyfriend; he wants her to have a companion and thinks about how he would have found her a husband if he had raised her in Tollygunge.

When they arrive back home, Bela tells him that she is four months pregnant. The father isn’t in the picture, and she wants to raise the child in Rhode Island in Subhash’s house, “the same home for her child that he had provided for her” (264). Bela goes for a drive after dinner; when she returns, Subhash tells her the truth about her biological father. She is furious and leaves in the morning.

Bela is angry, but she now understands the unhappiness between Subhash and Gauri and the reason that her mother left. After a week, Bela calls Subhash and asks him to pick her up from the bus station.

When Bela comes home, she forgives Subhash and thanks him for telling her the truth: “[I]t helped her to feel closer to the child she was having […] After she became a mother, she told Subhash it made her love him more, knowing what he’d done” (271). Bela understands Subhash’s love for her and is happy to be a mother.