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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Unaccustomed Earth, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Cultural Identity and the Immigrant Experience
Family and Generational Conflict
Love, Loss, and Nostalgia
Loneliness and Isolation
Home and Belonging
Summary
Analysis
After Ruma’s mother suddenly passes away from heart failure during a routine surgery, Ruma’s father begins taking long trips to Europe, often for weeks at a time. He sends postcards to Ruma in Seattle, where she recently moved with her husband, Adam, and their young son, Akash, from Brooklyn. Overwhelmed and bereaved, Ruma left her work as a paralegal after her son’s birth and her mother’s passing. Now, her father is planning his first visit to her home before continuing to Prague, while Adam is away on a work trip. Ruma, newly pregnant, is mildly anxious about her father’s stay, as they never formed a close relationship independent of her mother. Still, she feels a duty as his daughter to host him.
A lot changes for Ruma and her father after her mother’s sudden, tragic death. Ruma’s father begins traveling the world on his own, exploring a latent wanderlust, while Ruma relocates to a new city and falls pregnant with her second child. In the absence of Ruma’s mother—their former familial “anchor”—Ruma and her father are forced to redefine their relationship, beginning anew in unfamiliar territory.
Themes
Ruma’s father enjoys traveling alone, liberated from the stress and anxiety of managing his family and their belongings during trips. Before Ruma’s mother passed, their family often traveled to Calcutta—largely at her insistence, as Ruma’s father never much cared for these vacations to their homeland. On a recent solo trip to Italy, he met Mrs. Meenakshi Bagchi, a widow and fellow Bengali in his tour group, and they quickly formed a friendship. He intends to share a hotel room with Mrs. Bagchi during his upcoming trip to Prague—a significant step in their romantic relationship.
Following his wife’s passing, Ruma’s father begins to broaden his horizons through travel. Unlike past family trips, which were dominated by his wife’s preferences, these solo journeys allow him to engage with the world on his terms. Meeting Mrs. Bagchi reveals his readiness to move forward and find companionship once again. His grief, while still present, has pushed him to embrace new experiences and people.
Themes
Ruma finds herself less patient with Akash during her second pregnancy and wonders how Ruma’s mother so effortlessly managed her own household, husband, and multiple children. She reflects on the differences between her parents, acknowledging that Ruma’s father doesn’t embrace his Bengali heritage as loudly as her mother did. As Ruma shows her father around her house, he, an avid gardener, insists on watering the delphiniums in her garden. She watches him tend to the flowers, noticing his old age and privately lamenting that her children will never know their grandmother.
Ruma’s anxieties during her second pregnancy are intensified by her mother’s absence. Ruma viewed her as the perfect Bengali wife and mother, and now that she’s gone, Ruma feels unmoored—from both her family and her own culture. She fears that, without their grandmother’s influence, her children will lose access to their Bengali heritage. In caring for her garden, Ruma’s father symbolically tends to their family’s roots, despite his weaker connection to Bengali culture.
Themes
Ruma’s father distributes gifts from his Italian vacation. He doesn’t share that Mrs. Bagchi selected all the gifts. He doesn’t intend to tell either Ruma or her brother, Romi, about his new relationship. Before Ruma’s mother passed, she and Ruma had planned a girls’ trip to Paris, but after her death, Ruma chose not to go. Instead, her father asked for the tickets and went alone. Now, as Ruma and her father eat the Indian meal she prepared, she worries her cooking doesn’t measure up to her mother’s. Akash refuses anything but macaroni and cheese, and Ruma is ashamed that her child is seemingly rejecting the culture she was raised in—one she’s felt distanced from for much of her adult life.
Ruma’s feelings of inadequacy in her role as a mother are amplified by Akash’s preference for Western food, a reminder of her own ambivalence toward her cultural identity. As Ruma tries to live up to her mother’s legacy, she becomes aware of the quiet cultural divide between their generations. Caught between her desire to uphold tradition and the realities of her American life, Ruma’s struggle reflects the broader immigrant experience of balancing two worlds.
Themes
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After dinner, Adam calls, and Ruma muses whether she should invite Ruma’s father to live with them in Seattle. Though he’s supportive, Ruma senses an underlying hesitation her husband refuses to voice. Since Ruma’s mother passed away, she and Adam have been disconnected—mostly because Ruma doesn’t think Adam understands her grief. Though her mother initially disapproved of their marriage, she eventually came to see Adam as a son. When Ruma had Akash, her relationship with her mother improved greatly, as she finally felt she’d done something right, something her mother could be proud of.
Ruma and Adam’s conflict is indicative of their cultural divide, and it reflects Ruma’s hesitancy to embrace one culture over the other when she still doesn’t know exactly who she is. Her mother’s death has thrown her personal identity into flux—she always tried to be the ideal daughter and live up to her mother’s expectations, but without that external validation for guidance, she now feels lost.
Themes
Privately, Ruma’s father notes that the older Ruma gets, the more she resembles Ruma’s mother, and the thought pains him. He remembers the early days of parenthood, when he worked exceptionally hard to provide for his family while his wife cared for their children. His friends have begun asking if he’ll move in with Ruma, as is customary in their Indian culture, but he doubts she’ll extend him the invitation—she’s become too independent and westernized. In any case, he’s enjoying his newfound freedom, learning to appreciate life more in the wake of his wife’s death.
Although Ruma’s father has begun a new relationship with Mrs. Bagchi, he still grieves his wife’s death—he always will. He sees her in Ruma’s aging face and reflects on the sacrifices they both made to build their family. Still, he acknowledges that over time, he and Ruma have become ingrained in Western culture in ways that Ruma’s mother never was. He doesn’t blame Ruma for abandoning many of the Bengali customs she was raised with, as he now finds himself doing the same.
Themes
The next morning, Ruma presents Ruma’s father with a list of activities they could do together during his stay, but he says he’d prefer to take it slow and rest before his trip to Prague. As they drive Akash to his swimming lesson, Ruma’s father asks about her employment, stressing the importance of maintaining a job despite her parental responsibilities. She quietly seethes, knowing Ruma’s mother would have been more supportive of her extended hiatus from work. When her brother moved abroad and distanced himself from the family, Ruma effectively assumed his role of the eldest son, but she has never felt that she met her parents’ heightened expectations.
Ruma places a lot of pressure on herself to ensure her father’s visit goes well, as she has effectively adopted the esteemed “eldest son” cultural role within her family. Her father’s comments about her job make her miss her mother, who would have championed Ruma’s more traditional choice to raise her children over returning to her paralegal work. Ultimately, their exchange underscores Ruma’s lifelong feelings of inadequacy around her Bengali American identity.
Themes
While showing Ruma and Akash the videos he took in Italy, Ruma’s father panics when Mrs. Bagchi briefly appears on screen, and Ruma asks who the strange woman is. He evades the question, quickly changing the subject. He always felt that Ruma and Ruma’s mother were “allies,” whereas he was resented and condemned as both a husband and father, never fully appreciated for his sacrifices. Fearing that Ruma will one day regret prioritizing motherhood over her career, as her mother did, he urges her to return to work. He wants his daughter to have the successful life she deserves.
After spending decades in an arranged marriage with Ruma’s mother, Ruma’s father struggles to reveal his new relationship with Mrs. Bagchi. Sensitive to Ruma’s feelings, he hesitates to be fully transparent. Though he’s content in his budding romance, he’s still adjusting and finding his footing in the unfamiliar world of dating. His memory of feeling like an outsider within his own family may also contribute to his guardedness with Ruma as he slowly adapts to their new familial dynamic. Additionally, it stands out that he wants the best for Ruma and really, wants her to be happy—which is the same thing she wants for him. But neither is honest about their thoughts or motivations, and so neither feels truly seen or heard.
Themes
The following morning, Akash wakes Ruma, scared that Ruma’s father is nowhere to be found. But, before Ruma can panic, she sees her father pulling into the driveway. He’d gone to a nearby plant nursery and then purchased a treat from the bakery next door. Later, he returns to the nursery with Akash, and they come home with flowers, topsoil, and shovels. Together, the two of them get to work planting flowers in the garden, with Ruma’s father teaching his grandson the names of colors in Bengali.
Akash’s fear that his grandfather may have left without saying goodbye speaks to the influence Ruma’s father has already had on her small family. He teaches Akash both how to breathe life into the world and how to name what he sees with brand-new language. The act of planting is a metaphor not only for his budding relationship with his grandson, but also with Ruma.
Themes
At dusk, Ruma and Ruma’s father sit on the front porch, drinking tea. He compliments her home, remarking how much he would’ve enjoyed having a similar porch at the house where Ruma grew up. Thinking of her childhood home makes Ruma emotional, and she recalls one of the last conversations she had with Ruma’s mother, saddened that loved ones can be present one moment and simply gone the next. Watching her father and Akash bond so quickly, Ruma is struck by how her father has “fallen in love” with his grandson in a way he never seemed to with his own children. For a fleeting moment, she feels envious of her son.
The bond between Akash and his grandfather stands in contrast to Ruma’s childhood experiences with her father, emphasizing the lingering emotional distance she still feels between them. She yearns for the same warmth she now sees her father readily share with Akash, a bittersweet realization of how time—and loss—has changed her father and reshaped how he connects to those he loves.
Themes
Though he’s proud of the garden he and Akash planted, Ruma’s father knows that neither Ruma nor Adam are likely to maintain it. He hopes for the best, privately recognizing that gardening reminds him most of Ruma’s mother. Before she passed, he would grow all the vegetables she wanted, and she would incorporate them into their meals. As he prepares to leave Seattle, he discreetly tucks a postcard for Mrs. Bagchi into a book, ensuring Ruma won’t find it. While explaining to Ruma how to care for the new garden, Ruma asks her father to move in with them. Initially hesitant, he declines, but Ruma makes him promise to think it over.
The garden Ruma’s father plants is both an homage to his late wife and a symbol of his new bonds with Ruma and Akash. It represents Ruma’s commitment to keeping these connections alive, as well as her connection to her mother. The life that Ruma has built is rooted in the foundation her parents once laid. Now, in choosing whether to maintain her father’s garden, she must also choose whether to nurture their changing relationship. To preserve their bond, it is now her responsibility to actively cultivate it.
Themes
As Ruma’s father reflects on Ruma’s offer, he realizes that she only asked him to stay because she needs him. Though he’s tempted by his love for his daughter and the kindred spirit he recognizes in Akash, he decides he’d rather be a little selfish and embrace this new chapter of his life on his own terms. Ruma has her own life and marriage, and he does not wish to live “in the margins” of that world. The morning he leaves Seattle, he tells Ruma he can’t move in. Though she understands, she’s saddened by his firm resolve. He promises to visit again, when Ruma’s new baby is born.
In declining to stay, Ruma’s father both embraces his newfound independence and acknowledges that Ruma’s life has its own unique rhythms. His decision demonstrates his desire to live beyond the boundaries of his previous roles as husband and father, but it also speaks to his hope for Ruma to grow on her own terms, rather than prioritizing his needs and expectations at her own expense.
Themes
As Ruma and Akash examine the garden after Ruma’s father leaves, Ruma notices a stray postcard buried in the dirt. Akash explains the card is his and that he planted it there, and he cries when Ruma exhumes it. Though she cannot read Bengali, she recognizes her father’s handwriting instantly, understanding that this postcard is meant for his new love—the same woman, she presumes, she saw in his Italy video (Mrs. Bagchi). Meanwhile, at the airport, Ruma’s father regrets losing the postcard. Ruma, however, affixes a stamp to the letter, planning to give it to the mailman later that day.
Ruma’s discovery of the postcard meant for Mrs. Bagchi recontextualizes her father’s visit, as it dawns on her that Mrs. Bagchi might have positively influenced her formerly rigid, inhibited father’s behavior. Her choice to quietly mail the postcard demonstrates her acceptance of his new relationship and her desire for his happiness. Their bond is evolving, now rooted in mutual understanding and trust.
Themes
