Rajesh Chithira’s Aadhi and Athma is a peek into the lives of immigrant who had to leave their motherland in search of a better life for themselves and their kin.
The lives of these migrants come across in the words of Chithira as sometimes being fortunate and sometimes being unfortunate – Fortunate enough to lead a quality lifestyle in most cases and unfortunate that they cannot lead that lifestyle in their own homeland, fortunate to enjoy the quality of life in a better managed country, but always unfortunate that they never have a sense of belonging.
Chithira deftly bring this conflict out through the eyes of two kids – Aadhi and Athma, children of first-generation immigrants who has spent most of their childhood lives in Dubai.
The book also deals with the trauma that a family, left to fend off for themselves in a foreign land must undergo, through the uncertainty of job security, always living under the constant fear of being expendable. But Chithira is also gracious enough to showcase the resilience of these people through the eyes of the protagonists. The father of the children immediately plans for a future of uncertainty, by planning to send off the children and their mother back to Kerala, their homeland. Even though the family is devasted by the news, they immediately adapt to the new circumstances and bravely march ahead with plans to enjoy the remaining life as an immigrant.
The story being told through the eyes of Aadhi is a prime example of the hardships that the immigrants face when they stop being immigrants and return with lots of hope to their own homeland. Even in their own land, they are branded as pariahs, by the family, by friends. The entire scope of the life changes for them. The life that they had in Dubai that was dictated by the immediate surroundings and the insulation offered by the pluralistic nature of the society is suddenly upended. The new circumstances that they find themselves in offer them no insulation whatsoever from the prying eyes of relatives, neighbors and even the from their school mates. Suddenly the entire family is forced to live a life that is supposed to satisfy a plethora of people, a life that is supposed fit into the defined dimensions of local social norms. A vibrant, three-dimensional lifestyle was suddenly transformed into a two dimensional monochromatic one.
But Chithira subtly transmogrifies the narrative to the flexibility of human nature adapting to the challenges that the circumstances throw at them. Aadhi’s mother becomes self-sufficient in standing on her own feet and bringing up the children on her own. The children soon get immersed into the new lifestyle that the wheel of time has offered them. They make new plans to enjoy every bit of their new surroundings and succeeds in doing it.
Chithira is successful in painting a story that is a vibrant canvas of relationships, of resilience, of adaptability and finally of the tears and toils of a group pf people, some time fortunate in being an immigrant and the same time often unfortunate in being one.
