One Amazing Thing

As an English Literature major I do a lot of reading. I don't like all the authors or works we read. In fact, some of them I rather hate. But sometimes, I'll really enjoy an author we read. When that happens, I'll look up the author and see what else they have written, and then I'll check to see if those books are at the library. I've expanded my reading horizons a lot by doing this.

One of the authors I enjoyed is Chitra Divakaruni, an Indian-American author. Her works take place in both America and India, and are exotic and exciting. I recently read her novel One Amazing Thing. The novel is about a group of nine people who get stuck in an underground office after an earthquake. Everyone begins to freak out because they don't know if they'll ever be rescued. One of the people suggests that everyone tell a story from their life, a story about one amazing thing that's happened to them. Each character tells their story in a different way. Some are first person, some third, some a combination. All of the stories deal with India in some way. The office they are stuck in is at a visa office at an Indian Consulate in America.

The people in the office are Jiang, a Chinese woman who grew up in India; her granddaughter Lily, who is quite gifted with the flute; an ex-soldier named Cameron who grew up in the ghetto; a young Muslim man named Tariq who is having issues adjusting to America post-9/11; an Indian-American girl named Uma who is in college; an elderly married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Pritchett, who have been having issues since Mrs. Pritchett tried to kill herself; the receptionist, Malathi, who distrusts men, even though she likes her married boss; and Mangalam, the man who runs the visa office.

They each tell their story and all of them are heartbreaking. All of their stories deal with loss and love, with a struggle to do what's right versus what they want. I think Jiang's is one of the saddest, although Mr. Pritchett and Mangalam both have stories that are rather sad as well. Malathi's story is probably the most cheerful and the funniest. I would not want to be in any of their shoes, either in their stories or in the office after the earthquake.

I love the way that Divakaruni wrote the novel. She begins before the earthquake and lays out the landscape. We follow the characters through their thought process about what to do and how to survive long enough to be rescued. She doesn't have the stories follow one after another. Instead, she interjects the stories in the action, so you go from a story back to the office. It's rather like Canterbury Tales, which the character Uma is reading in the office before the earthquake hits. I think it was very well written and really conveyed the fear that people have during a situation like that. People were lying and hoarding things at the beginning, but as they all connected they began sharing with each other.

How does the story end? Do they get rescued? Well, I wouldn't want to spoil the ending. And even if I wanted to, I couldn't. Divakaruni ends the novel on a cliffhanger. Uma is just about to end her story and they can hear people moving around upstairs. And the story ends. That's it. It's frustrating and maddening, and brilliant. If I was ever an author, I would write endings like this, ones that are incomplete and leave everything open. They're cruel and unusual, but they make a point. And in a story like this, where the characters are hoping they will be rescued and not die, leaving the ending open is perfect. Would you rather know they were never rescued and died, or would you like to hope they were found on time?