The Shape of Family

by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Karina and Prem were the only two members of their club, even if no one believed they could belong together.

3 | Keith APRIL 2009

This is one of my favorite chapters (and it was fun to write), because it shows the everyday dynamic of the Olander family - the inside jokes, the roles everyone plays, their history and the love between them. This scene shows the family as an ecosystem, which is one of ideas I wanted to explore in this novel.

6 | Prem

I never planned to write from Prem's perspective after his death, or to consciously introduce an element of magic realism into this story. But right after I wrote the preceding scene, in which Karina finds her brother, what I felt like I needed was to hear Prem's voice: to know what he was thinking and feeling, and to know that he was OK and forgave his sister. So I immediately turned the page from the last chapter and began writing this. I didn't know if what I was writing would be part of the book or just for me. Ultimately, I decided that Prem's voice was an important element of the story, and ending up threading it through at key moments.

And now, in her grief, her love for Prem had no home.

This chapter shows Jaya's experience with grief, and it's one of several I explore in the next chapters. Keith and Karina each respond in their own ways. In reality, people who suffer grief can have different, conflicting responses within themselves, even the space of a single day. How have your personal experiences with grief manifested? Did you feel as if you were having a common experience or an alienating one? Did it pull you closer to your loved ones or further apart?

As he pulled into the driveway that night, Keith felt more hopeful than he’d been since Prem’s death. He was back to work, where he felt competent again. He could return to normal. That’s what he wanted. And that’s what he began to strive for, with what was left of his family. He still had a beautiful, intelligent wife in Jaya. He still had a smart and healthy daughter. They could still be a family. They still were a family.

Inexplicably heartened by this sight, Karina put down her backpack and dug inside the front pocket for Prem’s small Swiss Army knife. She turned it over in her hand, noting its smooth, unscratched surface. She pulled out the large blade and pressed it gently into her finger pad. Then in a single, swift motion, she drew back her arm and flung the knife into the broken cavern.

What does this gesture mean to you, that Karina throws the pocketknife, one of her few mementos of Prem, into the empty pool?

After trying so hard to make her parents happy and hold her family together, Karina had still failed, so the only thing left to do was save herself. Now, beginning her junior year, she only had to hold on to her tenuous existence for two more years until she would leave for college. It would be a clean start. She could seek the place where she truly belonged, free from the baggage of her family. A shift occurred inside Karina, unnoticed by her parents but significant, as she redirected all her energy toward the one thing she could now control: her own future.

It had been over four years since Prem died, and Keith still keenly felt his absence. What would his son be doing today? How would he be feeling? Would he be sad to see his sister go, or happy to come out from her shadow? Keith was always accompanied by the ghost of an eight-year-old boy frozen in time, a son he would never teach how to shave, tie a necktie or drive.

“He’d be thirteen now, the same age I was when . . .” She hesitated, unsure if she should share the next thought with him. “Sometimes I picture him . . . sitting next to me in the front seat of the car when I drive home to Los Altos. I explain how to drive, how to merge onto the highway. He loved understanding the mechanics of how things worked.” Was it crazy that she had imagined him growing up alongside her, a way to recapture all the moments they had lost together?

Another difference in the grief experience: Karina pictures Prem growing up alongside her, getting older, while Keith sees him as perennially froze at eight years old. A little further on, we will see how Jaya sees him, again differently from the others.

The Guru’s words brought her peace when she thought of Prem. All our lives on earth were fleeting, connected to who we were before and everything that would come after, he explained. In this way, she was never really separated from her son. Jaya had been acquainted with reincarnation since she was a child—the cycle of birth, life and death repeating itself over time, throughout the ages—and believed it to be true in a nebulous way. But now she found herself looking for signs of Prem everywhere: his smile on a newborn baby, the joyful squeal in a younger child scrambling across a hanging rope bridge. At times, she felt his presence so strongly, it was as if he was right next to her, telling her something funny to make her laugh out loud, guiding her gently away from the dark abyss of sadness. Other times, it felt like an effort in vain, like she was trying to recapture something that was forever gone.

Micah shrugged. “Once you understand what makes people tick, you can help bring them into brighter lives. If all human beings lived like that, the world would be a different place. One day, I was sitting on the beach in Santa Cruz, my bare feet in the sand, gazing out over the blue water, and I just had this vision of a world where every organism functioned together and every human being strived for full potential.” He looked wistful. “Ever since then, I’ve been working toward building a place like this.”

Originally, I had several chapters from Micah's point-of-vew, explaining who he was, his background, and those elements that contributed to him playing the role he does. I was disappointed that they didn't fit into the final version of the novel, but I tried to include some of the more salient bits here.

Karina felt tears well in her eyes as Micah expressed gratitude for healthy food cooked with love, the fresh air outside, and spending a special day with people to whom he felt a deep connection. She was emotional because she felt it too. As she looked around the room at the mash-up of skin tones and cultures, for once she didn’t feel like an anomaly. She dared to believe that they saw something in her: a better version of herself that she could nurture into the light. Karina knew then, for the first time in as long as she could remember, perhaps the first time in her life, she was where she belonged.

A key turning point for Karina, feeling like she belongs and has a "family" here.

She told herself this was not a stupid thing to do as Micah tethered the board strap to her ankle and led her toward the water. He stayed right next to her, coaching her as she entered the ocean, jumped over the waves and paddled out beyond the break. The familiar sensation of being buoyed by the surf reminded her why she’d loved the ocean so much as a child. As she lay face-down on the board, Micah treaded water as they waited patiently for the right wave. “I’ll count to three and push you in front of the wave, then you pop up, just like we practiced, okay?” “Okay,” Karina said, taking in the expanse of open water in front of her. In her mind, she saw the image of herself as the mermaid superhero that Prem had drawn in Hawaii. Micah counted, “One . . . two . . . three!” She felt the board thrust forward, as if powered by motor. Hearing Micah’s instructions, she reflexively jumped into a crouch-standing position. The board skimmed the surface of the water like a seagull. Karina felt a split moment of exhilaration, air rushing past her ears, before she lost her balance and tumbled off the board, plunging into the water.

I probably wouldn't have envisioned this scene if it weren't for my own personal experiences learning how to surf as a adult. It truly is an exhilarating, inexplicable experience. If I had been younger when I tried it for the first time, I can imagine losing a few years that way. But, alas, it is not a sport for the middle-aged.

She no longer had to look for Prem reincarnated in other individuals; his spirit simply inhabited her. Jaya felt his presence so strongly at times, it was as if he was right next to her, telling her something funny to make her laugh out loud, guiding her gently away from the dark abyss of sadness. She marveled with his childlike wonder at the tendrils of the jasmine blossoms that flowered outside the ashram. Her days were unhurried, full of the small pleasures he used to enjoy while the rest of them bustled around him—an unexpected sun-shower, a comfortable pillow, a midday nap. In the wake of Prem’s death, her abiding love for her son had had no home. Now she had found one, and he was with her everywhere. She felt blessed to have Prem in her life for eight years, and even after his death, she was still learning from him.

Looking around the circle, she saw everyone around her feeling what she was feeling, sharing her pain. They were celebrating Prem’s presence in her life and mourning his loss from it. They were dividing and diffusing and diluting her pain, the pain she had carried around with her for so long. She had mistakenly thought that if the people who knew and loved her best—Dad, Mom, Izzy (indeed, the same people who had known Prem best)—if they couldn’t help lessen her pain, then no one could, ever. But, as Micah had explained to her the previous night, the Sanctuary was here for her, not only to share food and work and joy, but to share pain and grief as well. She didn’t have to feel guilty for reminding them of something so painful. She didn’t feel like she owed them a certain kind of signal so they could stop worrying about her. They didn’t want or need anything from her, except to hear and honor and share her pain, to lift up the community as a whole.

“There’s legal and then there’s right. Something may be legal, but it’s not right. And something can be right but might not be legal. I believe in applying our intelligence and sense of right and wrong to situations, not just blindly following the letter of the law like a lemming. You agree?”

What do you think about Micah's definition of legal vs. right? In the examples that follow, do you think there's an argument to be made for contextual justice or operating outside the letter of the law for the greater good?

“Pain is always there to serve a purpose,” Jaya says, “to teach us something, whether it’s to not reach into a hot oven or to not fall in love with the wrong person.” Karina looks up at her with startled eyes, but of course there’s love involved here. What else could cause such pain? “And once we’ve learned what we’re meant to learn,” Jaya continues, “we are better than before. The wounds will heal.” She lightly touches Karina’s arm. “And that pain inside will help you grow.”

They have all been speaking more honestly than ever before, and sometimes that is shockingly painful—more painful even than the therapy after Prem died. But their honesty is buying them something more valuable than the pain it causes: a way to move forward, a way to forgive each other and themselves, a future as a family rather than just three individuals.

Everyone at the Sanctuary was seeking, just as she was. Everyone was looking for a place to belong. Even Micah, if she’s truthful, wasn’t wholly bad. He did some good things for her, taught her some valuable insights about herself. There was some truth in his beliefs and his vision; that was why he spoke to all of them. Karina has finally come to realize that the kind of belonging she seeks is already here. She has told her parents every awful thing she’d kept from them for years and, after hearing it all, they have stood by her. They are flawed, all three of them, but they belong to each other.

50 | Prem

Once Prem's voice was part of this story, I knew he'd have to have the last word. I wanted to capture the initial innocence of family love, along with the progression of their journey together. This chapter is also where I finally found the ultimate title of the book.