47 pages • 1 hour read
Jhumpa LahiriThe Lowland
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3, Chapter 1 Summary
In December, Subhash travels back to his home in Tollygunge. During the long journey of multiple flights and trains, he starts to learn about local news that was never broadcast in the United States. The Naxalite movement went underground, attacking public places, government officials and causing immense fear. This fear led the government to start searching without warrants and raiding neighborhoods.
Back in India, Subhash realizes how different his new life is in Rhode Island. At the busy train station, only two cousins greet him. He is reminded of the day he left India, when Udayan asked him to return home one day. As they approach his house, and the two ponds, he is overcome by the smells of the neighborhood, of his childhood. He walks past Udayan’s footprints and hits the buzzer, but “[h]is parents did not stand or say his name. They did not come downstairs to greet him” (90). Meeting his parents upstairs, he sees that grief has changed them, and he starts to cry when he sees Udayan’s photo.
Subhash goes for a walk in the neighborhood past the two ponds and visits Udayan’s memorial tablet. It is in the lowland, where the water would sometimes cover the memorial. He is flooded with another memory of Udayan helping Subhash return home after hurting his ankle playing football with the neighborhood boys.
When Gauri, Udayan’s widow, does not join the family for lunch, Subhash is upset that she is not treated as an equal member of the family. He learns that she is pregnant. Napping past dinner, he meets Gauri in the kitchen as he looks for food: “You have the same voice, she said” (94). Their conversation is brief as she is not very interested in talking.
Subhash no longer feels at home. His parents are distant and don’t look him in the eye; the new renovations make the house uninviting. His parents are so stricken with grief that they keep to themselves. Once a day in the evening, his mother, Bijoli, takes flowers to Udayan’s memorial.
When his parents won’t tell him how Udayan was killed, he asks Gauri.
Part 3, Chapter 2 Summary
Gauri recounts the day of Udayan’s death from her perspective. Gauri was out shopping with her mother-in-law, and upon returning to their neighborhood, they see a police van. They arrive at their house and see that Udayan’s father is being held at gunpoint, but the police are there to arrest Udayan.
Gauri knew that Udayan would hide in the lowland if the police ever came for him. After the police threaten to kill his family, Udayan emerges from the water. Gauri and her in-laws are sent back into their house; they climb to the third story terrace where they can see the van stopping by the lowland. The police shoot and kill Udayan, put him in the van, and then drive away. The police never give Udayan’s body to the family to mourn; the police deny any involvement.
While raiding the house, the police had found Udayan’s diary with incriminating evidence of his participation in the Naxalite rebellion, directions on making a bomb, and information on the most opportune time to bomb the Tolly Club.
Udayan had been worried in the time leading up to his arrest and murder that the police would find him. He had accidentally detonated a bomb when constructing it and had permanently injured his hand. The police were already conducting regular raids in Tollygunge. For weeks, Udayan had been in hiding, traveling from safe house to safe house. When he returned home, he didn’t leave the house and stayed out of view: “He complained of feeling alone even though they were together. Feeling isolated in the most basic way” (108).
Gauri is a widow at 23 years old. She isn’t allowed to eat meat or wear any colors other than white. A month after Udayan is killed, she learns that she is pregnant. They had been using the rhythm method to prevent having a child during the rebellion but had lost track of the days. Gauri is living with extreme anxiety, not knowing how the future will play out: “There was the anxiety that one day would not follow the next, combined with the certainty that it would. It was like holding her breath, as Udayan had tried to do in the lowland” (111).
Part 3, Chapter 3 Summary
Taking the bus into the city to go to the tailor and clear his head, Subhash buys shawls for his mother and a turquoise one for Gauri: “He imagined it wrapped around her shoulders, trailing over one side” (113). His mother is mad that he is befriending her, and they argue openly. Worried about Gauri and his brother’s child, Subhash decides to ask Gauri to marry him and move to Rhode Island. He doesn’t want the child to grow up in a negative household.
After the police show up to interrogate Gauri on Udayan’s connections, of which she lies, Subhash explains his proposition. Despite knowing that Gauri was still in love with Udayan, and this marriage would hurt his parents even more, Subhash is sure that he wants to follow through. Gauri appears to accept: “You don’t have to do this, she said to Subhash the following morning” (120).
Part 3 Analysis
The lowland plays a large role in Part 3: It is where Subhash and Udayan lived and played during their childhood, and it is where Udayan’s life ends. Udayan’s memorial stone is set in the lowland, signifying both life and death in the ebb and flow of the lowland’s waters.
When Subhash comes home for the first time in two years for his brother’s funeral, the two ponds of the lowland are separated. Though differences in personality traits, beliefs, and location had previously divided Subhash and Udayan, Udayan’s death creates a permanent separation between the two brothers.
When Subhash was a child, he believed that his parents loved Udayan more than Subhash, despite Udayan’s disobedience. As an adult, Subhash continues to feel this way when he returns home as both of his parents are distant with him. Though this distance is not new to Subhash, it is stronger: His parents do not even look him in the eye.
The theme of duty reappears when Subhash feels a sense of responsibility toward Udayan’s unborn child and widow. For the first time, Subhash disobeys his parents; he speaks out against their treatment of Gauri and offers to marry her. While his motivation to marry Gauri is through duty to take care of his brother’s family, it is also due to Subhash’s struggle with belonging. He is lonely in Rhode Island and is looking forward to having family with him.
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