The Immigrant, By Manju Kapur
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Your support makes all the difference.Since her popular debut, Difficult Daughters, Manju Kapur has written a series of comic and worldly novels detailing the common concerns of middle-class Indian women: A Married Woman even included a lesbian romance. The Immigrant, her fourth work, chronicles the lives of two NRIs (non-resident Indians), Nina and Ananda, and their newly-married life in 1970s Canada.
Ananda, a freshly trained dentist, is still grieving for his parents, recently killed in a rickshaw accident; Nina, a 30-year-old teacher from Delhi, realises that Ananda is her last shot at marriage and children. The couple embrace the "empty prettiness" of Nova Scotia with enthusiasm. Novels about the trials of assimilation are two-a-penny but Kapur, an astute observer, gives the familar story a cheerily satiric spin. While Ananda finds it scarily easy to exchange dhal for spareribs, and Nina soon ditches her saris in favour of sweat pants, what proves more difficult is adapting to the alien rituals of married life.
For Nina, in particular, there are disappointments in store. A passionate woman, she is miffed to discover that her husband harbours a sexual dysfunction that requires the spritzing effects of a dental anaesthetic spray.
Kapur captures Nina's exposure to 1970s feminism, and Ananda's growing interest in sexual healing. Matters come to a head with the news of Nina's mother's death - an event that prompts her daughter to realise that even immigrants are allowed to head for new lands.
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