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Rupa and Piu
Introduced in “Going Ashore,” Navin is Hema’s fiancé, an Indian physics professor at MIT. To Hema and her family, he represents stability, shared cultural values, and family—qualities that Hema believes will help her build a secure future. Though intelligent and caring, Navin is much more conventional than Hema, leading to a relationship that Hema finds stable but often dull and lacking in passion. Hema engages in an affair with Kaushik before she marries Navin, a betrayal she seems to have no intention of revealing.
Navin Quotes in Unaccustomed Earth
The Unaccustomed Earth quotes below are all either spoken by Navin or refer to Navin. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
8. Hema and Kaushik: Going Ashore
Quotes
It was her inability, ultimately, to approach middle age without a husband, without children, with her parents living now on the other side of the world, and yet to own a home and shovel the driveway when it snowed and pay her mortgage bill when it came [...] to abide that life indefinitely that led her to Navin.
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Explanation and Analysis:
It would be replaced tenfold in the course of her wedding. And yet she felt she had left a piece of her body behind. She had grown up hearing from her mother that losing gold was inauspicious, and as the plane began to climb, [...] a dark thought passed through her, that it would crash or be blasted apart in the sky.
And yet without his even realizing it, firmly but without force, Navin pulled me away from you, as the final gust of autumn wind pulls the last leaves from the trees.
Get the entire Unaccustomed Earth LitChart as a printable PDF.
Navin Quotes in Unaccustomed Earth
The Unaccustomed Earth quotes below are all either spoken by Navin or refer to Navin. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
8. Hema and Kaushik: Going Ashore
Quotes
It was her inability, ultimately, to approach middle age without a husband, without children, with her parents living now on the other side of the world, and yet to own a home and shovel the driveway when it snowed and pay her mortgage bill when it came [...] to abide that life indefinitely that led her to Navin.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
It would be replaced tenfold in the course of her wedding. And yet she felt she had left a piece of her body behind. She had grown up hearing from her mother that losing gold was inauspicious, and as the plane began to climb, [...] a dark thought passed through her, that it would crash or be blasted apart in the sky.
And yet without his even realizing it, firmly but without force, Navin pulled me away from you, as the final gust of autumn wind pulls the last leaves from the trees.
