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Ruma
Recently retired, Ruma’s father is an intelligent, practical man who has begun to embrace his newfound independence following his wife, Ruma’s mother’s, passing in “Unaccustomed Earth.” Rather than adhering strictly to Bengali customs, he seeks adventure, traveling around the world on his own and beginning to connect with new people—including Mrs. Bagchi, a woman he met on his travels and with whom he has since become romantically involved. He’s wary of the cultural expectations he fears Ruma may have of him, and though he loves his family deeply, he struggles to express his emotions openly. During the course of his stay, he bonds with his grandson Akash as they plant a garden in Ruma’s backyard. This relationship is unexpectedly fulfilling, allowing Ruma’s father to “root” himself anew within her family, ensuring that they always remain connected despite the physical distance between them. He ultimately declines Ruma’s offer to move in with her family, which is traditional in their Bengali culture.
Ruma’s Father Quotes in Unaccustomed Earth
The Unaccustomed Earth quotes below are all either spoken by Ruma’s Father or refer to Ruma’s Father. 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:
).
1. Unaccustomed Earth
Quotes
“You’re always welcome here, Baba,” she’d told her father on the phone. “You know you don’t have to ask.” Her mother would not have asked. “We’re coming to see you in July,” she would have informed Ruma, the plane tickets already in hand. There had been a time in her life when such presumptuousness would have angered Ruma. She missed it now.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Bengali had never been a language in which she felt like an adult. Her own Bengali was slipping from her. Her mother had been strict, so much so that Ruma had never spoken to her in English. But her father didn’t mind.
The garden was coming along nicely. It was a futile exercise, he knew. He could not picture his daughter or his son-in-law caring for it properly, noticing what needed to be done. In weeks, he guessed, it would be overgrown with weeds, the leaves chewed up by slugs. Then again, perhaps they would hire someone to do the job.
That loss was in store for Ruma, too; her children would become strangers, avoiding her. And because she was his child he wanted to protect her from that, as he had tried throughout his life to protect her from so many things. He wanted to shield her from the deterioration that inevitably took place in the course of a marriage, and from the conclusion he sometimes feared was true: that the entire enterprise of having a family, of putting children on this earth, as gratifying as it sometimes felt, was flawed from the start.
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Ruma’s Father Quotes in Unaccustomed Earth
The Unaccustomed Earth quotes below are all either spoken by Ruma’s Father or refer to Ruma’s Father. 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:
).
1. Unaccustomed Earth
Quotes
“You’re always welcome here, Baba,” she’d told her father on the phone. “You know you don’t have to ask.” Her mother would not have asked. “We’re coming to see you in July,” she would have informed Ruma, the plane tickets already in hand. There had been a time in her life when such presumptuousness would have angered Ruma. She missed it now.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Bengali had never been a language in which she felt like an adult. Her own Bengali was slipping from her. Her mother had been strict, so much so that Ruma had never spoken to her in English. But her father didn’t mind.
The garden was coming along nicely. It was a futile exercise, he knew. He could not picture his daughter or his son-in-law caring for it properly, noticing what needed to be done. In weeks, he guessed, it would be overgrown with weeds, the leaves chewed up by slugs. Then again, perhaps they would hire someone to do the job.
That loss was in store for Ruma, too; her children would become strangers, avoiding her. And because she was his child he wanted to protect her from that, as he had tried throughout his life to protect her from so many things. He wanted to shield her from the deterioration that inevitably took place in the course of a marriage, and from the conclusion he sometimes feared was true: that the entire enterprise of having a family, of putting children on this earth, as gratifying as it sometimes felt, was flawed from the start.
