If Today Be Sweet - Softcover

Umrigar, Thrity

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061240249 ISBN 13: 9780061240249

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2008

Synopsis

“Ultimately, [If Today Be Sweet] reflects on what makes an individual part of a community, and movingly depicts the heartaches, responsibilities, and rewards of family life—among one’s own blood relatives as well as one’s ‘family of choice.’ . . . [A] meditation on the complex process of building a new life.” — Charlotte Observer

The recent death of her beloved husband, Rustom, has taken its toll on Tehmina Sethna. Now, while visiting her son, Sorab, in his suburban Ohio home, she is being asked to choose between continuing her old life in India and starting a new one in this unfamiliar country with her son, his American wife, and their child. Her destiny is uncertain, and soon the plight of two troubled young children next door will force the most difficult decision she has ever faced. Ultimately the journey is one that Tehmina must travel alone.

Eloquently written, evocative, and unforgettable, If Today Be Sweet is a poignant look at issues of immigration, identity, family life, and hope.

About this title

About the Author

Thrity Umrigar is the author of seven novels Everybody’s Son, The Story Hour, The World We Found, The Weight of Heaven, The Space Between Us, If Today Be Sweet, and Bombay Time; a memoir, First Darling of the Morning; and a children’s picture book, When I Carried You in My Belly. A former journalist, she was awarded a Nieman Fellowship to Harvard and was a finalist for the PEN Beyond Margins Award. A professor of English at Case Western Reserve University, she lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

 

From the Back Cover

The recent death of her beloved husband, Rustom, has taken its toll on Tehmina Sethna. Now, while visiting her son, Sorab, in his suburban Ohio home, she is being asked to choose between continuing her old life in India and starting a new one in this unfamiliar country with her son, his American wife, and their child. Her destiny is uncertain, and soon the plight of two troubled young children next door will force the most difficult decision she has ever faced. Ultimately the journey is one that Tehmina must travel alone.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

If Today Be Sweet

A NovelBy Thrity Umrigar

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2008 Thrity Umrigar
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780061240249

Chapter One

Tehmina "Tammy" Sethna sat on a lawn chair next to her daughter-in-law, Susan, and basked in the warmth of the hot sun that she had brought with her all the way from Bombay.

It was a week before Christmas and Ohio was enjoying a virtual heat wave. The two women sat in a companionable silence on their front lawn, Tehmina wearing a navy blue sweater over her batik-print shalwar-khameez. Her gray hair was held down with two bobby pins, so that the slight, lazy breeze that ran its fingers through the grass on the front lawn could not do much to ruffle it. There was not a lick of snow anywhere.

"Seventy degrees," Susan said, for the fifth time. "December in Cleveland and it's seventy degrees. This is unfrig—unbelievable."

Tehmina beamed. "I told you," she said.

Susan pushed her sunglasses down her nose and peered at her mother-in-law. "Well, you've made a believer out of me," she said lightly. "Importing all this sunshine from India. Heck, Mom, if this trend continues, there's no way we'll let you go back to India. The mayor of Rosemont Heights will pass a proclamation or something, forbidding you from ever leaving."

Something inside Tehmina melted and turned to honey at Susan's words. She looked at the younger woman at her left. The sunshine had massaged and lifted Susan's mouth, which usually curved downward, into a smile. Susan's hands—Tehmina still remembered the first time she'd seen those hands and marveled at how large and masculine and raw American women's hands were—Susan's hands were resting limply by her side, unclenched, relaxed. The harried look that she wore most of the time, that made Tehmina jumpy and nervous around Susan, that look was replaced by contentment and happiness.

Tehmina remembered how Susan had been during her past visits to the United States—relaxed, fun-filled, happy. Something was different this time around, something was missing, and Tehmina knew exactly what—who—was missing. Her dearly departed Rustom was not with her this time. Rustom with his big laugh and boundless confidence; Rustom who could step foot anywhere—in a new restaurant, a new apartment, even a new country—and make himself and the people around him feel at home right away. Rustom who could make his white, blond daughter-in-law giggle and blush as if she was a schoolgirl again. Rustom, who could make his serious, earnest son, Sorab, burst with pride over his old man.

Tehmina pulled on her lower lip with her thumb and index finger. Unlike me, she thought. My presence only burdens Susan and Sorab now. Not like the old days. So many times Rustom and she had visited the children in America and always it had been a good time.

The light shifted in the trees across the street and it reminded Tehmina of something. An incident from last year. "You know what we're doing?" Rustom had bellowed at all of them from the pool at the hotel in San Diego. "We're making memories, for the future. Something happy for you kids to think of, when we oldies are no longer around."

Sorab had immediately thrown one arm around his father's neck. The two men were standing knee-deep in the water, while Tehmina and Susan lay poolside in lounge chairs. Little Cavas, whom everybody called Cookie, had been napping next to Susan. Tehmina looked at the blue water and at her husband and son. Water glistened off their brown faces and chests. She noticed idly that Rustom's belly was firmer than his son's. Too many years of this pork-beef diet for Sorab, she thought. I need to remind him again about his cholesterol.

"What're you talking about, when you're no longer around?" Sorab said, tightening his grip and bringing down Rustom's head so that it rested on his son's shoulder. "The way you're going, Dad, you'll outlive all of us."

Rustom shook his way out of his son's grip. "When it's your time, it's your time." He grinned. "?The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on,'" he added, swimming away from Sorab.

Sorab groaned. "You and your Omar Khayyám," he said. He turned to Susan. "I swear, my dad has an Omar Khayyám poem for every occasion."

Tehmina now shifted in her chair to look at Susan. "Remember our trip to California last year?" she said. "Remember what my husband said in the pool? About the moving finger writes and then moves on? Do you think he had a—a feeling or a sense—about his death?"

Susan stared straight ahead. Even behind her dark glasses, Teh-mina could feel her daughter-in-law stiffen. The suddenly cold silence buzzed around them. When Susan spoke, her voice was tight as a ponytail. "Mom, you remember what Sorab told you? About how you're not to keep thinking about the past? What's the point of thinking about—the sad stuff—if it just brings you down?"

Tehmina started to reply. She wanted to say: When you have known Sorab and loved him for as long as I'd known my husband, then you will know what it's like to miss someone so badly it's like your own organs betray you. Your heart, your skin, your brain, all turn into traitors. All the things you thought belonged to you, you realize you shared with the other person. How to explain to you, Susan, what the death of a husband feels like? Such a shock it is, like experiencing your first Ohio winter, with that bitter wind slapping you on your numb face."

She also wanted to say: That's what's wrong with you Americans, deekra, you all think too much of laughter and play, as if life was a Walt Disney movie. Something a child would make up. Whereas in India, life is a Bollywood melodrama—full of loss and sadness. And so everyone rejects Bollywood for Disney. Even my Sorab was seduced by your Disney life—all this pursuit of happiness and pursuit of money and pursuit of this and . . .

Continues...

Excerpted from If Today Be Sweetby Thrity Umrigar Copyright © 2008 by Thrity Umrigar. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0061240249
• ISBN 13: 9780061240249
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320