Product Description

In this beautifully crafted novel about the interlinked lives of two women, Thrity Umrigar explores the complex relationships between the classes in India, rarely addressed in contemporary fiction. 'Bhima is real. She worked in the house I grew up in, year after year, a shadow flitting around our middle-class home, her thin brown hands cleaning furniture she was not allowed to sit on, cooking food she was not allowed to share at the family dining table, dusting the stereo that mainly played American rock and roll, music that was alien and unfamiliar to her, that only reminded her of her nebulous presence in our home, our world, our lives.' Thrity Umrigar Set in contemporary Bombay, 'The Space Between Us' tells the story of Sera Dubash, an upper-middle-class Parsi housewife and Bhima, the woman who works as a domestic servant in her home. Despite their class differences, the two women are bound by the bonds of gender and shared life experiences -- both had marriages that started out with great romantic love and promise, but ended up as crushing disappointments. Ultimately, Sera Dubash faces a decision that will force her to choose between loyalty to gender and friendship or loyalty to her social position and class.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36747 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
'A Mumbai Parsi novel, a post-nationalist slum poverty novel, and perhaps most compellingly, a maid-and-mistress story: think Douglas Sirk's film "Imitations of Life". The varied elements of this tale of affection and class conflict are carried off with a winning ease and enthusiasm that make it both engrossing and moving.' The Independent 'Thrity Umrigar has a striking talent for portraying pain and suffering and the sheer unfairness of life!The result is a vital social comment on contemporary India.' The Financial Times 'It is a great book; I love it!I am so happy for Thrity Umrigar! And proud of her as a woman, too. What a gift she has given us. Please tell her of my admiration, joy, delight and relief (it is so precious to have a book about a woman one rarely even "sees" in society, whether Indian or American).' Alice Walker, author of 'The Colour Purple' 'Joyful, lyrical, tragic -- and a real page-turner.' Voyager magazine 'As subtle in its portrayal of character, as it is devastating in its indictment of the injustices of the caste system, "The Space Between Us" is a novel that is hard to forget.' Times

Voyager magazine
'Joyful, lyrical, tragic – and a real page-turner'

The Financial Times
'...Umrigar has a striking talent for portraying...the sheer unfairness of life...a vital social comment on contemporary India.'

Customer Reviews

Lovely
This quietly beautiful novel set in contemporary Bombay unveils the lives of two women from very different backgrounds, showing their powerful connection despite layers of class and circumstance. I found much to admire in these pages. Thrity Umrigar shows such humanity and wisdom in her every observation and the story reveals itself so easily, so unpretentiously, that it would be easy to underestimate the skill it requires to write such a lovely novel.

The paradox that is the Indian society...
A key element of this rich and detailed narrative of the inter-twined lives of a domestic servant, Bhima, and her mem-saab, Sera Dubash, is the absence of a glossary or the use of italics for words, that may not feature in the vocabularies of non-Indians or even of those Indians, who are not Parsis; words such as agyari (the Paris fire temple) and sadra (a kind of vest)... There is also plenty of Gujarati in the book. To me that is a sign that the Indian diaspora writing in English needn't stand apart culturally any more as if apologising for that difference.

Another thing a reader will notice is the ample use of Hinglish, or Indian-style English, such as the use of the word yaar almost as a punctuation, the word Mausi in certain social classes to address an old lady or a female family friend with respect, and even the peculiar use of language as a tool to signal how a relationship has changed (e.g. Bhima addressing Viraf as 'seth', a word for a rich or powerful man, towards the end and not as 'baba', a word of affection for boys used by their mothers or maternal women).

These 'literal' points aside, the book flows like a river once you start reading it. In a culture where servants are called and treated like servants, with their separate cutlery and sometimes entrances (latter not in this book though), there also co-exists deep poignancy and loyalty implied in the actions of both the servant and the sa'ab/ mem-saab. The story captures it beautifully. Bhima is but like Jeeves minus the clean clothes or the sharp wit, but with a deep sympathy and sense of loyalty for Sera. I wondered at the end how Sera would survive without Bhima, not because she cannot cut onions but because she loses a part of herself that she doesn't realise while our story ends.

The real touch of genius however lies in capturing the uncertain values of the emergent Indian generation (I daresay, my own), which picks and chooses from a smorgasbord of values to suit its own purposes, but amidst whom truly compassionate people like Sera's daughter Dinaz also exist.

The book holds many different threads together - how Chowpatty in Bombay has changed over the years, how the dwindling Parsi community still largely does not accept non-Parsi spouses with open arms, how the educated in India often balance a load of conflicting values and expectations to hold their lives in one piece - quite vividly.

Above all to me this wonderful book is a powerful narrative of the paradoxes that make up modern India. I could see bits of myself and my friends in Sera, Dinaz and even Viraf as well as Maya..

The only reason for giving it 4 stars is that I do not think this book is unique in its genre; I was also sometimes a bit confused by the use of Bambaiya (i.e. of Bombay) language in the book which is beyond even me and I found that distracting; I was also put off a bit by the repeated use of some metaphors such as a puppy eager to please and the use of double words such as slow-slow/ hot-hot which are commonly used but not often in contexts which the author has used them and did seem like a drag at times.

"an endless cycle of birth and death; of love and loss"
Using turbulent India, with all its social, environmental and economic problems as a background, author Thrity Umrigar tells a very humanistic tale of love, loss and ultimately betrayal. Two very different women who, in their struggle to cope with their heartache and sorrow, discover an inevitable commonality, a spiritual unity, even though they are divided by the seemingly insurmountable gulf of money, opportunity and class.

Sera Dubash is a wealthy educated Parsi, who lives a privileged upper-class life in Bombay. Her married life fraught with violence and brutality, she ached for a marriage that was different from all the "dead sea of marriages she saw all around her," a marriage begun with such high hopes that fizzled out. Now she is widowed and lives happily with her daughter and son-in-law, looking forward to the birth of her first grandchild.

Bhima is poor and illiterate, forced to eek out an existence on the edges of Bombay, enduring the stench and fifth, the open drains with their dank pungent smell, the dark rows of slanting hutments, and the gaunt and open-mouthed men. Bhima has worked for years as Sera's domestic housekeeper, and has built up a trustworthy relationship with her employer's family; Sera's the only person who treats her like a human being, has been steadfast and true to her, and never despised her for being ignorant, or illiterate or weak. Sera even promises to financially help Bhima's granddaughter Maya go to college. But no one - least of all Bhima - expects the seventeen-year-old Maya to get pregnant.

Bhima is convinced that only education is the key to success, an escape from the back breaking and menial labor that has marred the lives of her mother and her mother before her, and aware that a child will end Maya's chance at a better life, she tells her granddaughter she must have an abortion. Bhima seeks Sera's help; both convinced that terminating the baby is only way to ensure Maya will be able to break the hold poverty has had on the family.

Bhima, however, has had her own demons to contend with. Her daughter and son-in-law are dead, stricken by an incurable disease; the elderly woman talking herself into believing that this unborn child is but a "demon growing in her granddaughter's belly." Her emotions run the gamut of anger and fear, fear for this stupid innocent pregnant girl; yet she holds onto the unacknowledged hope that the child's father will perhaps step forward to assume his responsibility, to marry and build a life with the woman who would bear his first child.

Through their shared experiences, Sera and Bhima are inevitably bound; and it's almost as though Bhima has an eyeglass to Sera's soul, feeling exposed under the x-ray vision of Bhima's eyes. But they are divided by a hypocritical society that perpetuates discriminative caste differences, and looks down upon the poor: Sera is kindhearted and concerned for Maya's welfare, but during lunch, Sera always sits at the table, whilst making Bhima squat on her haunches on the floor nearby, forced to use separate utensils. Sera is secretly disgusted at the foul odor of the tobacco that Bhima chews all day long, the woman almost embodying everything that is repulsive about the slums just a short distance away.

Umrigar writes of a jolting, momentary world that is full of illusion and false hope, where Sera and Bhima – both disappointed by the men they loved – are obliged to make the best of any given situation they land themselves in. Sera often resorts to tears and frustration, determined to shut out the realities of the evil that lurks within her family, whilst Bhima is left to pick up the pieces, to soldier on, cloaked in anger and misery. Each wound penetrating deeper and deeper, as she feels the old familiar yearning of what she has left behind.

The author excels in vividly bringing to life the sights, sounds and smells of Bombay, the street urchins, the stray dogs, the impoverished nut vendors, and the hollow-eyed slum dwellers, a city mad with greed and hunger, power and impotence wealth and poverty, where the weak and vulnerable are elbowed out of the way, and where the poor treat the middle class like royalty, when they should actually hate their guts.

Gorgeously imagined, this intimate and sensuous tale is constantly fraught with tension, the human condition this author's specialty. It is impossible to imagine more frightening circumstances than those conditions that Bhima must endure at her age, her heart broken by the people around her with their deceit, their treachery, their fallibility, and their sheer humanity. Through the course of the story, Bhima learns that none of the old rules, the old taboos apply, hers is a fragile existence, a world constructed of sand – shaky ambiguous, and ultimately impermanent. Mike Leonard January 06.