Unaccustomed Earth

This story remains with Hema and Kaushik, although it documents a later time in their life, and is narrated in the third person. Hema is 37 years old and in Rome, Italy. It is November. She is staying in her friend Giovanna’s apartment, “in the Ghetto” (294). We learn that Hema has absconded there for no real reason, although she has told her parents and fiancée, Navin, that she is working in Rome as a visiting lecturer at a classical studies institute. By now, she has earned a PhD and a tenure-track professorship. Giovanna, Hema’s colleague, has made it possible for Hema to access the American Academy’s library, and also supplied Hema with the telephone numbers of her nearby friends, whom she assures Hema will be happy to host her. Hema also plans to wed Navin in Calcutta, where her parents have relocated to, right before Christmas.

Hema thinks about the life she has temporarily escaped from: the way the Wellesley campus looks at this time of the year, her students struggling over their Latin lessons. She has taken up going to one restaurant, very close to Giovanna’s apartment—due to the foreigner’s problems she comes up against when trying other options.