Book: The Inheritors
Author: Nadeem Zaman
Publisher: Hachette
Price: ₹450
There is more to ‘home’ than the house you’ve grown up in, the park you’ve played in, the garden that you’ve tended to, and all the other fleeting but distinct elements that make up the fabric of your life.
‘Home’ is a familiarity so deeply ingrained that it is seemingly stamped onto your genes. In The Inheritors, although Nisar Chowdhury initially struggles with this idea of ‘home’, not quite belonging to either Chicago or Dhaka, he quickly feels the tug of the familiar when he starts exploring Dhaka upon his arrival.
Dhaka is at once familiar and alien. Nisar wants to be an observer, a chronicler, and also keep an objective distance. But the lines keep blurring till he is deeply enmeshed in the lives of the people around him and the city itself. Dhaka’s diverse facets come to life through vignettes of disparate lives — the duplicitous Mr Ehsan; the unpredictable Tarek; Guru, always happy to serve up a joint; Gowhar and Manisha, whose marriage is falling apart; Jasmine and her tragic past.
These tertiary characters highlight the sheer range of experiences that Dhaka accommodates. They also serve as the proverbial crutch to explore wealth-based social division, corruption, misuse of power, political instability and the struggles of a young nation. But it is the relationship among Nisar, Disha and Gazi, damaged and unconventional as it may be, that the narrative focuses on, turning the reader’s gaze more on Nisar than on Dhaka.
Nisar comes to Dhaka as an executor of his father’s will and to sever the ties that still moor him to the city. But he departs enmeshed in more bonds than he had made in a lifetime. For ‘home’ is not always about coming back but also “going away, contained in loss, obscured by the brushstrokes of memory.”
In the end, Nisar takes full possession of his inheritance, not only in terms of wealth and property but also of ‘home’. From a man almost completely detached from his roots, he becomes an inheritor of his past.
