Small Days and Nights by Tishani Doshi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars




“It is in the little towns that one discovers a country, in the kind of knowledge that comes from small days and nights.”

------James Salter, A Sport and a Pastime.

I have always been intrigued by the human desire to find a meaning in life. To me, this desire is reflective of the human wish to push comfortable boundaries in search of the values that may present a basis upon which the rest of life may be lived. This yearning to engage thus may turn the exploration into something life altering. Which begs the question - how far can one go in the search of a meaning? What sacrifice is one willing to make to achieve that? And will the actions, thus taken along the road, justify the very nature of quest? What if this exploration leads to a discovery of the self veiled from the seeker herself? Can one reconcile with the self then?

These are a few questions, which this beautiful work by Tishani Doshi brings to mind. The above-mentioned quote by James Salter appears before the prologue in the work. One can notice that the title of this work is inspired by the quote, which hinges the discovery of a country to the kind of days spent in small towns. In this novel, it takes the form of an exploration of self in surroundings remote from the chaos of big cities, in living in the kind of austerity that characterises a rustic life.

Grace or Grazia, whose marriage with Blake is crumpling, returns from US after the death of her mother to find a secret that would change her life forever. She comes to know of her sister Lucia living in a centre for people suffering from Down syndrome. She decides to take Lucia home with her instead of visiting her as her mother did on a weekly basis. Her mother has left them a huge seaside property in a village near Madras where both of them take residence. The story navigates through the routine life that Grazia and Lucia come to assume in Paramankeni, the tussle that Grazia seems to go through in the inevitability of a life removed from her very structured life in the US. A life, where she is challenged by the task of taking care of her sister while trying to find moments of respite for herself.

“Return is never the experience you hope for.”

The first sentence of first chapter presents before us a hint of the theme recurring throughout the length of the novel. It is not only her return to India after the death of her mother but also her subsequent returns to different places, that Grazia realises that it is not only the places that change their face, or the people you know who move on with their lives, it is also that you no longer remain the same person either.

Grazia returns for her mother’s funeral, but in light of the secret unveiled before her, the return also turns symbolically into a return to her past where she tries to connect the missing dots to complete a family portrait in her mind. While growing up, she had witnessed her mother’s weekly outings, which she had thought of as getaways from family life. It is when she comes to know the truth, she becomes aware that it was the weekly visits to meet Lucia that her mother had undertook.
As Grazia revisits her past and understands the discord that had sometimes permeated her parents’ married life, she also recognises her own discontent with her life in the US.

Her marriage with Blake is troubled because she does not want children while Blake does. Still she chooses to take Lucia home and take care of her because, in her own words:

“I had wanted to give up my life, though. I was desperate for it.”

However, her decision to take Lucia home with her does not sound very convincing to the reader. Why would a person who does not want children take care of her elder sister suffering from Down syndrome? What is it that she really wants to explore with this decision? Is it only because she had wanted to give up her routine life or is it out of guilt, because she misunderstood her mother’s weekly disappearances while growing up, that she decides so?

And then she tells us:

“The irreversibility of having a child. This is what I think about as I watch Lucia, trying to learn her ways.”

Both the sisters start settling down in their house with their house helper and a continuously growing family of their dogs, spending their days lazily. Through Grazia’s interactions with a bunch of people in sleepy village around, the author very deftly portrays the social structure and rituals as followed by the people of the village. The author also makes a social commentary on the young of urban India through Grazia’s regular monthly visits to some friends in City and her relation with young Vik. This experience perhaps is also not, what she had hoped for.

Grazia escapes to the city once a month since she has nobody to talk to at home. She seeks it as a relief from the everyday life at Paramankeni. The conflict in situation arises when once she stays a day longer than she does usually in the city. She returns to find no one in the house. Desperately, she looks everywhere and later finds out that her aid Mallika had vanished, leaving Lucia in a terrible state by herself. Her teacher, Mrs. Gayatri, had then taken Lucia back to the Sneha centre.
Grazia goes looking for her at the centre but is not allowed to go inside. After spending some time then with her father in Venice, she comes back to India. In her letter to Lucia, which is necessarily a letter to herself, she writes:

“I want to take you to Venice to meet Papi and Marcella. Now that I’ve had the idea, everything is clear. It’s not about living away from the world but living in it....”

It is only when she sees the failure of her notions and understands the responsibility of her actions that she returns finally with a clear view for her and Lucia’s future.

What adds beauty to this exploration is Grazia’s reconciliation with herself, her coming to terms with her life in her acceptance of the futility of escape, the vicissitude of life turning into a joyous reunion, paving the way to a more tranquil, even if an uncertain, future.












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