As I started reading 
Elsewherians by Jeet thayil it reminded me of Moor's last sigh because of the journey from Kerala to Bombay, but on to the second chapter, realised that the similarity ended there. The book had much more to it.
The book is filled with poetic language, intersting new words, places, people and food. Jeet traces his families journey from Kerala to Bombay, Bihar, Vietnam, Hong Kong, New York and back to Mumbai, Bangalore and Kerala. So the title. Beginning with how his father T.J.S George proposed Ammu, wrote letters from US which she preserved, he wanting a marriage outside church but heeds to the family request, his journey towards becoming the top journalist & first one to be arrested in independent India for criticising government in Bihar. Along with Mike they start Asiaweek, which is sold to Times who dissolve it and start Time Asia. Most of what his father did in public is known. He does mention about how he was as a person at home and as father and husband.
Behind the successful man was his mother buying and building home, managing relationships with heart rooted to her 'home', being all the places she had lived in.
Few other interesting points to ponder in the book were:
1.Writer means you are poor and you are 'thief'.
2.Where we are really from is where we are going now.
3. To know history, is to know loss and the displaced knows it the best.
4. On why poetry? It shows me there is a world beyond our poor village. ..Knowing it is there will make me a better man.
5. Among crowds of people of every race and religion, she knows internationalisam as the true nationalism and freedom as the only patriotism.
6. To wait is to give up. Better to risk everything, than do nothing.
7. Movement. Movement is God's message. ~ Migration of Mary, Joseph, Jesus.
8. You're born, you're young and you marry. Make your own family. Then everything goes one by one. Your health goes. Everyone you love dies. What kind of bargain is that?
There is narrations and chapters dedicated to other members of the family as well. Touching ones being that of aphorisms, 'No one is to be blamed', lockdown, Corona, flood, failed Marriages and uncles love and French connection.
Having just re-read Em and the big Hoom and this years book by Arundhati Roy Mother Mary this too is about the author writing about his parents and calling the book a fiction. While Em and the big Hoom went in a story like flow and was confined to parents, Mother Mary had lot of Arundhati's own story and personal ventures and this is a different kind of narration all together. As the author writes in a chapter about Earth/life, this book too is like the Suez Canal, this is a mental waterbody, more than a physical one. Connecting. The common factor in these three books is the mother child relation/bond written after the loss of mother and each father being different.
Here the story begins and ends with the river 'Muvattupuzha'. The river that becomes the sea, the ocean, that will forever remind him of her.
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Nandakishore Sir's review
The Elsewhereans: a Documentary Novel
by Jeet Thayil
//I hear a question these days, people asking: Where are you from? The reply is always one or two words, always inaccurate. Nobody is from one place.//
We are all migrants.
Humanity migrated out of Africa in prehistoric times and spread throughout the world. In those days, there were no fictitious entities like nation states, borders, passports or visas. The earth, all of it, belonged to all living beings equally. Nobody came from 'elsewhere'.
It changed, of course. As we grew 'civilised', we divided up the earth and erected boundaries. And parcelled off small bits of land for ourselves. The people who crossed the border legally were 'expatriates': those who did so illegally were 'encroachers' or 'invaders'.
The creation of 'elsewhere' was complete.
***
We Malayalis (natives of the state of Kerala in Southern India) are known for our globe-trotting habits. "There is a Malayali in every corner of the world" is a popular saying in India. There is a famous joke that when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, he found a Malayali selling tea and snacks there.
Jeet Thayyil's parents, the famous journalist T. J. S. George and his wife Ammu, are already migrants (first within India, and then outside it) even before the travel bug has really bitten the Keralite. They settle in Bombay (now Mumbai) as outsiders; when they return to Kerala, they are still outsiders.
//There is no sense of belonging or welcome. They’ve lived Elsewhere too long: they’ve become Elsewhereans.//
This book is a collection of the disjointed reminiscences of the author, as well as the fictionalised reminiscences of his parents and relatives. The one common theme binding them as they flit across time and space, is migration. Whether it be the journalist settling abroad as part of his profession or the gardener walking across a Covid-struck India to his faraway homeland or the penniless refugee grubbing in the dirt to make a living, they share something common - the great Elsewhere.
//In the pageantry of the island, unfolding district by district, Ammu experiences Elsewhere as a spiritual calling. Among crowds of people of every race and religion, she knows internationalism as the true nationalism and freedom as the only patriotism.//
Jeet's family, including himself, comes across as pretty dysfunctional, comprising brilliant but troubled people. Of course, the author warns us in the beginning that the story is only partially true; but that is the case with all biographies. They are part truth, part false memory, part lies. But whatever be the veracity, the story is compelling. And the language is poetic.
Towards the end of the book, Ammu has an epiphany:
//Now it seems to Ammu she has no home, for home is no longer a city or a country and the people in them, but the rooms of the houses in which she’s lived. The big bedroom she shared with her sisters at Anniethottam. The teacher’s quarters, two cots to a room, in Alwaye. The small front room in Mahim that served as both living and dining room, the city outside, just steps away from the floor she shared with her new husband. The balcony that ran the length of the apartment by the Arabian Sea on Cadell Road. The front room of the apartment at Pataliputra Housing Colony that became a meeting place for students. She’d taken care of the children there while George was in jail. The small living room of the apartment in Shirin Building, near Navy Nagar in Colaba. The bedroom of their first apartment in Hong Kong, at Arts Mansion. The kitchen of the second on McDonnell Road, where she thought of tearing into a hundred pieces the picture of the Vietnamese woman. The view from the apartment in New York, twelve floors up, of the canyons of Seventy-Ninth and York. Sirens at any hour of the night. The large front room of the first apartment she bought in Bombay. A six-inch view of the sea. Palm trees outside the fourth-floor window. The sunken living room of the first house they owned in Bangalore. The sunlit bedroom and garden of the second. The jackfruit tree and the butter fruit.
The remembered rooms unfold in her mind like pictures from an album with sheets of tissue between the pages. They bring vivid sensations that leave her grateful and surprised. She traces herself through the rooms of her life, opening seamlessly one into another, forward and back. So, on a rainy day in Mamalassery, when she steps indoors from the porch, it is to the cold muted light of a northern country. It seems correct then that these memories have lost their sting and can no longer cause hurt or happiness. They are only receptacles to return to her the past.//
We are our memories - 'true' and 'false' have no meaning. Neither has space and time. It's one continuous experience, the transitory soul, the anatman, changing from moment to moment. A human being is not an entity but a process which unfolds in time. And 'Elsewhere' is an illusion.
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