The Lowland: Part 5, Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

Subhash and Bela adjust to life in the wake of Gauri’s abandonment. Bela is entering the seventh grade and is maturing into a young woman. She grows thin and quiet, and keeps to herself most of the time—“behaving,” Subhash observes, “As Gauri used to.” Subhash is shocked by the realization that Bela is “establishing her existence apart from him.”

One day, Bela’s guidance counselor calls Subhash. She is concerned by Bela’s performance in middle school so far—she is unprepared and distracted, disconnected from her classmates and not a part of any clubs or activities. Most worryingly, Bela was recently seen walking down a highway by herself, balancing on the guardrail beside the shoulder lane. The guidance counselor suggests Subhash and Gauri come in for a meeting. When Subhash tells the guidance counselor that Gauri no longer lives with them, the counselor is shocked—she asks whether Subhash and Gauri sat down with Bela to discuss the separation before it happened, to prepare her. As Subhash hangs up the phone, he feels fury towards Gauri for having left Bela with him in one way and taken her away from him in another.

On the guidance counselor’s recommendation, Bela begins seeing a psychologist once a week. She attends the sessions alone and does not discuss them with Subhash; the psychologist does not seek out Subhash to discuss Bela’s progress with him, either. One afternoon, Subhash asks Bela if she would like to write Gauri a letter. She says no, and then begins weeping.

As the year goes by, Subhash can see Bela experiencing a “release.” She grows calmer and more confident and begins making many friends in school. By eighth grade, Bela’s appetite and grades have improved, and she has joined the marching band and a nature studies club at school. As she moves through high school she becomes an active member of the community, collecting discarded food from restaurants and bringing it to shelters, assisting at children’s summer camps, and going door to door with other students collecting signatures for local action petitions.

The summer Bela graduates from high school, Subhash receives a letter from Deepa informing him that Bijoli has had a stroke. While Subhash travels back to Calcutta, Bela stays behind in Rhode Island, wanting to spend time with the friends she will soon leave behind for college.

In Tollygunge, Subhash finds that Bijoli’s mind has truly left her now—she believes she is in the past, and speaks to Subhash in fragments, as if he were a young child. She tells him not to dirty his shoes playing in the lowland or stay out too late with Udayan and their friends. Subhash laments that he does not exist in his mother’s mind anymore. Eventually, Bijoli is hospitalized; she has a heart attack and dies late one night, without Subhash by her side.

Subhash returns to Rhode Island. Bela goes off to a small liberal arts college in the Midwest, where she majors in environmental science. Subhash hopes that Bela will attend graduate school, but it is of no interest to her. Subhash senses that Bela carries disdain for Subhash’s own life within the walls of a university—not to mention Gauri’s faraway position as a teacher at a college as well.

After college, Bela moves to Western Massachusetts and takes a job on a farm as an agricultural apprentice. She visits Subhash on the weekends, as she is not very far away, and Subhash watches as Bela grows and changes. She lives simply and grows weathered and brown in the sun; she gets a tattoo, dyes her hair, pierces her nose. She soon moves on from the farm in Massachusetts and takes a series of jobs in places around the country, always in isolated, rural towns. She makes no money and is instead paid in food and shelter. She sends Subhash postcards and boxes of fruits and vegetables, never staying in one place for very long.

Subhash has maintained a quiet social life, but the only company he longs for is Bela’s. She is skittish, though, and returns to Rhode Island infrequently and unpredictably. Even when she is home on visits, she is closed-off and quiet; Subhash fears that Bela is a little lost, and worries that she is, like Gauri, allowing her vocation to define her and direct her course. 

Over the years, Subhash notices Bela becoming more political and socially active. On her visits home, Bela berates Subhash for not buying locally and for not composting his food scraps. Subhash is wary of Bela’s rootless but passionate path—nonetheless, he lets her go and accepts her for who she was, embracing all the turns her life has taken. He admires her resilience in the face of Gauri’s abandonment. Sometimes, Subhash worries about Udayan’s influence on Bela—though it is irrational, he fears that Udayan has, in a way, returned, and claimed Bela “from the grave as his own.”