The Space Between Us:

a novel
by Thrity Umrigar
Publication Date:2005
Pages: 321 (hardcover)
ISBN: 0060791551
Publisher: William Morrow, New York

Awards : Finalist for Pen/Beyond Margins

award

Synopsis
Thrity Umrigar's poignant novel about a wealthy woman and her downtrodden servant,
offers a revealing look at class and gender roles in modern day Bombay. Alternatively told
through the eyes of Sera, a Parsiwidow whose pregnant daughter and son-in-law share
her elegant home, and Bhima, the elderly housekeeper who must support her orphaned
granddaughter, Umrigar does an admirable job of creating two sympathetic characters
whose bond goes far deeper than that of employer and employee.

Summary
Each morning, Bhima, a domestic servant in contemporary Bombay, leaves her own small
shanty in the slums to tend to another woman's house. In Sera Dubash's home, Bhima
scrubs the floors of a house in which she remains an outsider. She cleans furniture she is
not permitted to sit on. She washes glasses from which she is not allowed to drink. Yet
despite being separated from each other by blood and class, she and Sera find themselves
bound by gender and shared life experiences.

Sera is an upper-middle-class Parsi housewife whose opulent surroundings hide the

shame and disappointment of her abusive marriage. A widow, she devotes herself to her
family, spending much of her time caring for her pregnant daughter, Dinaz, a kindhearted,
educated professional, and her charming and successful son-in-law, Viraf.

Bhima, a stoic illiterate hardened by a lif,e of despair and loss, has worked in the Dubash
household for more than twenty years. Cursed by fate, she sacrifices all for her beautiful,
headstrong granddaughter, Maya, a university student whose education - paid for by Sera
.. will enable them to escape the slums. But when an unwed Maya becomes pregnant by a
man whose identity she refuses to reveal, Bhima's dreams of a better life for her
granddaughter, as well as for herself, may be shattered forever.

Reviews
From Publisher's Weekly
Umrigar's schematic novel (after Bombay Time) illustrates the intimacy, and the
irreconcilable class divide, between two women in contemporary Bombay. Bhima, a 65-
year-old slum dweller, has worked for Sera Dubash, a younger upper-middle-class Parsi
woman, for years: cooking, cleaning and tending Sera after the beatings she endures from
her abusive husband, Feroz. Sera, in turn, nurses Bhima back to health from typhoid fever
and sends her granddaughter Maya to college. Sera recognizes their affinity: "They were
alike in many ways, Bhima and she. Despite the different trajectories of their lives
circumstances... dictated by the accidents of their births they had both known the pain of
watching the bloom fade from their marriages." But Sera's affection for her servant wars
with ingrained prejudice against lower castes. The younger generation Maya; Sera's
daughter, Dinaz, and son-in-law, Viraf are also caged by the same strictures despite efforts
to throw them off. In a final plot twist, class allegiance combined with gender inequality
challenges personal connection, and Bhima may pay a bitter price for her loyalty to her
emproyers.

Library Journal Review

Journalist Umrigar (Bombay Time) evocatively describes daily life in two very different
households in modern-day Bombay, where the traditions that separate the classes and the
sexes still persist. The relationship between Sera Dubash, an upper-class Parsi housewife,
and Bhima, her servant, is full of contradictions. They talk over cups of tea like girlfriends,
but Bhima must squat on the floor using her own cup, while Sera sits on a chair. Bhima is
loyal to Sera, but sometimes has to talk herself through minor humiliations and slights from
her employer by reminding herself how generous this woman has always been to her.
While money and class keep these two from fully bridging the gap between them, they
remain closer than either of them can fully see, for as women, they suffer equally the
abuse of men, the loss of love, and the joys and sorrows of motherhood. Umrigar
beautifully and movingly wends her way through the complexities of these unequal but
caring relationships

From Booklist
Sera Dubash is an upper-middle-class Parsi housewife in modern-day Bombay. Bhima is
her domestic servant. Though they inhabit dramatically different worlds, the two women
have much in common. Both married men they alternately love and loathe: Sera's moody
husband frequently beats her, and Bhima's betrothed falls into an alcohol-drenched
depression after losing his job. Sera's civil treatment of her servant--she overlooks Bhima's
frequent tardiness and treats her like an equal--dismays her neighbors and friends. She
also offers to fund the college education of Bhima's granddaughter, Maya, whom Bhima
adopted when the girl's mother died of AIDS. The bond between the two women deepens
when Sera (whose own daughter is happily wed and expecting her first child) arranges an
abortion for unmarried Maya. Veteran journalist and Case Western Reserve professor
Umrigar (Bombay Time,20O1) renders a collection of compelling and complex characters,
from kind, conflicted Sera to fiercely devoted Bhima (the latter is based on the novelist's
own childhood housekeeper). Sadness suffuses this eloquent tale, whose heart-stopping
plot twists reveal the ferocity of fate. As Bhima sits at her dying daughter's side, a fellow
hospital visitor speaks the simple, brutal truth: Here, we have all hit the jackpot for grief.

For more reviews, visit the author's website

http://www. um riqar.com/space between. htm I

Biography
Author's official website http://www. u m riqar. com/

(Born 1962in Mumbai India- )

A journalist for seventeen years, Thrity Umrigar

has written for the Washington Post, the Plain
Dealer, and other national newspapers, and
contributes regularly to the Boston G/obe's book
pages. Thrity Umrigar received her Bachelors of
Science from Bombay University, her M.A. from
Ohio State. and her Ph.D. from Kent State
University. She teaches creative writing and
literature as an associate professor at Case
Western Reserve University. She was a winner of
the Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University.
Umrigar was a 2006 finalist for the PEN/Beyond
Margins Award. Umrigar lives in Cleveland, Ohio.
2009 Winner of the Gleveland Arts Prize.

Bibliography
The Weight of Heaven: a novel(2009)
In the years following the sudden death of their seven-year-old son, Benny, Michigan
residents Frank and Ellie Benton have witnessed the steady deterioration of their marriage.
So when Frank's boss offers him a position overseeing a company factory in the rural
Indian city of Girbaug, Ellie convinces her husband it's just the change they both need.

First Darling of the Morning: Se/ecfed Memories of an lndian Childhood: a memoir

(2008)
Umrigar alternates between sweet and biting accounts of her middle-class Parsi upbringing
in 1960s and 1970s Bombay. With a mixture of rawness and warmth, she recalls moments
from her tumultuous childhood through her teenage years, and finally into her early 20s
when she leaves India for the U.S.

IfToday Be Sureef; a novel(2007)

Tehmina, a middle-aged widow from India, is visiting her 38-year-old son, Sorab, his
American wife, and son at their home in Ohio. (Sorab left his native India for graduate
school in the U.S. and has lived there ever since.) Heartbroken by the death of her beloved
husband, Tehmina is hardly in a position to face the life-altering choice before her: to settle
in with Sorab in the safe, antiseptic Midwest or to live out her days in earthy, chaotic
Bombay.

The Space Between Us: a novel (2005)

Bomhay Time: a novel (2001)

The middle-class denizens of a Bombay apartment complex come to life in Umrigads
engaging debut, which tells the story of a half-dozen protagonists through the prism of a
wedding hosted by respected lawyer Jimmy Kanga.

Link to Essays written by Umrigar

http /iwww.
: u m ri gar. com/reviews/#essavs

INDIAN EXPRESS INTERVIEW with the Author

by Sujeet Rajan
(from www. umriqar.com)

Q. How much time did it take you to research

and write "The Space Between Us"? The actual
writing of the first draft of the novel took less than
six months. But the research for it took a lifetime.
What I mean by this is that growing up in Bombay,
I was always aware of this strange, complicated,
emotionally complex relationship between
mistress and servant. With the dramatic class
differences, with the kind of apartheid that exists in middleclass homes-where servants
cannot sit on the furniture they clean, where they have their own separate dishes and
glasses etc.-it's a relationship that would be easy to simplify and caricature. But what I
wanted to show in the novelwas both, the connections and the separations, the intimacy
and the distance between women of different classes.

Q. Did the novel evolve?

The novel evolved in the sense that when I started it I had the first line and the last line in
my head. I knew that these two lines would act as bookends to the novel. Then it was
simply a matter of filling in the story between the two lines.

To be totally honest, I am amazed-and dismayed-at how little I remember about the writing
of this novel. lt feels like a blur to me, probably because I wrote it so fast I mean, I
remember specific moments in the writing of it, particularly this one afternoon when it felt
like the writing was pouring out of me. But in terms of, when did I come up with the plot
etc., I simply can't recollect the whole process.
Q. What were some of the challenges you faced writing the novel?
The biggest challenge is always the same-getting it right. I have not lived in Bombay in
over 23 years. And I have not kept up with the pop culture-who the latest movie stars are,
what the hit songs are, etc. So it's a little intimidating to write a book about contemporary
India. So what I do is write about things that are timelessthe things that divide and bind
people, the eternal, life-affirming presence of the Arabian sea, the incredible instinct for
survival and joy that every Bombayite possesses. The journalist in me knows the
importance of getting facts and details right. But the novelist in me knows that people turn
to literature not for facts but for eternal and universal truths.

Q. Bombay was the setting for your Parsi characters in your debut novel "Bombay
Time" and your Memoir "First Darling of the Morning." You revisit the city, with
some new Parsi characters in "The Space Between Us." What do you find most
fascinating about Mumbai?
I think what I love and admire the most about Bombay is the sheer tenacity of its people.
The desire to get up and face another day, even if you're living in the worst of squalor and
misery. The rag pickers, the ear wax removers, the old women who make a living selling
four cabbages a day. Just the sheer gumption, the creative energy it takes to make a
living, to keep a foothold in the city. This is my personal definition of courage and bravery.

Q. Which is your favorite book on Mumbai?

Well, for purely sentimental reasons, I have to say, Rushdie's Midnight's Children. lt was
the first book I read that had names of streets I recognized, streets that I had actually
visited, unlike, say, John Steinbeck's Salinas Valley. lt was the first book that captured the
nuances of the wonderful, linguistic hodge-podge that is Indian English.

Q. Apart from you, there are some other notable writers and artists from the Parsi
community, including Rohington Mistry and Firdaus Kanga. Many films have been
made on the community. What do you find most compelling about the community?
When I was a teenager, it was fashionable for us to mock our parents for their obvious
pride in their religion. But the older I get and the more I see of the horrors committed in the
name of religion, the more respect I have for the faith and its practitioners. lt's a peaceful,
live-and-let-live religion. I love how Parsis celebrate Diwali and ld and Christmas with the
same zest with which they celebrate Navroz. And the fundamental tenet of the reliqion-
Good thoughts, good words, good deeds. How can you go wrong with that?

Q. Despite living in the US since age 21, you revisit India for your works. Why?
Well, I often visit India to see my family. But whenever I'm there, I'm also taking mental
notes on what the current phrases are, how people are talking these days, what stories
they are telling, how much things cost. In other words, l'm trying to observe what has
changed since I last lived there. Also, what has not changed.

Q. Do you plan to write a novel based on the expatriate Indian American community
in the US?
Funny you should ask. As a matter of fact, I am close to completing another novel, which is
set in suburban Ohio and tells the story of this middle-aged Indian woman who has to
chose between living in the U.S. with her son or returning to India.

Q. You have been a journalist

for around two decades, writing for among others, the
Washington Post. Which do you find more challenging writing: journalism, non-
fiction or fiction?
All these genres have their own challenges. For me, journalism began to feel too limiting in
that I was only reporting someone else's words and ideas. Also, there are certain structural
constraints that one faces in journalism, not the least of which is space. Journalism is great
at getting the facts and the information across; it's not always good at telling the larger
truth. Put another way, journalism is about the outer world. Fiction is about the inner life-
which is so much richer and emotionally engaging.

In that sense, fiction has been really liberating for me. I get to say what I feel and think and
believe and there's no editor hovering around telling me to cut it short. And the act of telling
stories that illustrate who we are in a moment in time, that talk about human connections,
matters of the heart, is something journalism is not terribly equipped to do. Although the
great reporters often come close.

Q. Which are some of the authors who have inspired you, and you admire?
I love Virginia Woolf for combining two difficult tasks-creating psychologically complicated
characters and then writing about them in beautiful, lyrical language. I love Toni Morrison
for the same reason. I love some of Rushdie's earlier novels for their sheer insanity, the
pliable use of language.

Q. "The Space Between Us" seems tailor-made for a Bollywood film or a television
soap. Did you have an eye on seeing it on screen when you started writing it?
God, no. I wasn't even sure it would find a publisher, much less anything else. In fact,
when I'm working on a book, I try very hard not to think in terms of an audience or the
realities of publishing. I want to focus on the work itself, to enter it as deeply as I can and
make it as emotionally honest as I possibly can. lt's really a kind of game of self-deception
that I play with myself. And despite your suggestion, I still can't picture it as a Bollywood
film. Where would the song sequences come in?

Q. What do you plan to write next, or are writing?

As I mentioned, I'm finishing another book. And once that's done, I want to start on another
novel, this time about a seven-year-old child. This one is still percolating.

Rusoff Agency (2006) A Gonversation with Thrity Umrigar

How long did it take you to write The Space Between Us?
Well, I wrote the book-or at least, a solid first draft-in about six months in 2003.
But as I always say, I've been writing this book forever.

What do you mean?

I grew up in a middle-class home in Bombay where we always employed servants. And
even as a child I was always aware of what a complicated, emotionally charged
relationship it was between the mistress of the household and the domestic servant-who
was almost always a woman. I mean, it is impossible to have two human beings work and
live in a contained domestic space all day long and not form some kind of a bond or human
connection. And I thought that this was rich literary territory to explore. So in some sense-
in the sense of being aware of these issues and thinking about them, l've been writing this
novel at least since lwas a teenager.

The whole issue of employing servants is so alien to most contemporary Americans.

Gan you talk about this some?
Sure. The first thing to understand is that, unlike, say, the aristocrats of England or
something, in India, you don't have to be terribly rich to have servants. Almost every
middle-class home employs someone to come in to help with the cooking, washing,
cleaning, etc. Sometimes it's more than one person. And the reason for this is simple-
labor is cheap in India. And until very recently, most people didn't have washers and
dryers, vacuum cleaners-all the labor-saving devices that we take for granted in the
West.

So the way it works is that someone comes into your home early in the morning and
basically spends the day performing household chores. And if the mistress is a housewife
like Sera Dubash, if she's not a working woman, she will work alongside the servant. For
instance, she may cook while the servant is chopping up the vegetables or washing the
dishes. And the women talk. Often, the servant may unload her burdens onto the
mistress-tales of wayward husbands, children who refuse to attend school, oppressive
mothers-in-law-you know the normal things that women all over the world talk about. And
the servant is in the home for seven, eight, nine hours a day-she is a witness, she
observes everything that happens in the home. She knows the family secrets, all the
hidden things about relationships, problems, things that even the family's neighbors or
friends may be unaware of. And so a kind of unlikely friendship, a trust, an unspoken
language of understanding, springs up between the women. But there is always the
elephant in the room, and that elephant, of course, is class. There is always a formality, a
ritualized "space" that can never quite be bridged. Each woman is governed and restricted
by class divisions.

In the novel, Sera won't let Bhima sit on the furniture or drink out of the family's
glasses. ls that because of the caste system that one hears about in India? ls Bhima
an untouchable?
Sera Dubash is a Parsi, not a Hindu. And the caste system that you refer to-you know the
system where there are four different castes and each caste is governed by its own rules
and traditions-is something that's unique to the Hindu faith. And no, Bhima is not meant
to be an untouchable-that is, a member of the lowest caste.

I don't think this is a book about caste at all. Rather, it's a book about class divisions. All
the things that you noticed-Bhima not being able to use the family dishes, sit at the
table-are simply manifestations of how class issues have polarized people in India and
how those polarizations have gotten codified into traditions. Do you know what I mean? In
that sense, it's not so different from the American South fifty years ago, when the black
maid always had to enter from the back door and took all her meals in the kitchen. I was
doing a book reading in California earlier this year when a woman who grew up on the
Upper West Side in New York said the book reminded her of how her family treated the
nanny who had raised her. So these strange, dehumanizing traditions are not unique to
lndia.

How have Western audiences reacted to the book?

You know, when the book came out, my biggest concern was that Western readers would
read The Space Between Us as a book about a distant, faraway, alien culture with weird
customs-you know, the usual "exotic East" syndrome-and not get that the themes of the
book are universal. At its most basic, The Space Between Us is a book about what brings
us together and what divides us as human beings. So it has been particularly gratifying to
have smart, thoughtful, insightful readers make their own connections and apply the
themes of the book to their own conditions and lives. So many of them have talked about
their own encounters with the kinds of issues that Bhima and Sera face.

My Indian editor, Nandita Aganrual, coined a fantastic phrase-she said the novel was
about the "lndian apartheid." She was referring to this unfortunate attitude that middle-
class Indians have toward domestic help that allows them to not see and to marginalize the
people who sweat and work in their homes. And at each book reading we talk about this
and I ask the inevitable question: what is the American apartheid-what biases, prejudices
do we suffer from, what are the areas of our society that we refuse to face? And almost
always, people tell personal stories or talk about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and
how that exposed unpleasant truths about our own culture in America.

You now live in the US. Does that help or hurt when you're writing about India?
I think for the most part it's helpful. I mean, you have the inevitable worries about being
accurate, getting the details right. I usually solve that by staying away from what's current
and immediate-you know, what the latest movies are, what the big hit songs are-and
writing about things that are more timeless. Like the spirit and resiliency of Bombayites.
Like the Arabian sea-which is as polluted and gray and beautiful as ever. Like those
fabulous Bombay skies at dusk.

But I think the distance also helps me gain a certain critical perspective that's essential for
good writing. lt makes it possible to be more truthful in my writing, to speak some harsh
truths. And being an immigrant in America, always having this outsider-insider thing going
on, is such great training for being a writer. Because that's what writers are-outsiders
wanting to get on the inside and insiders longing to burst out.

What are you working on now?

l'm writing a novel, my first book set in the United States. lt's a story about immigration,
what it means to be an outsider-insider. to belonq to several worlds all at the same time.
D iscuss i on Questi ons (from www. read i nsq rou psuides. com )

{. At the end of The Space Between Us, Sera has a tough choice to make. Can you
envision a scenario where she could've made a different choice? What would it have taken
for her to have made a different choice? And what would be the conseouences of that
choice?

2" The novel deals with a relationship that, despite all the good will in the world, is
ultimately based on the exploitation of one human being by another. Has this novel caused
you to look at any situations in your own life where you may be benefiting from the labor or
poverty of another?

3. Remarking on the fact that Bhima is not allowed to sit on the furniture in Sera Dubash's
home, or drink from the same glass, it could be said that the novel is about a kind of
"lndian Apartheid." Do you think that's putting it too strongly? lf not, can you identify any
parallels in contemporary America?

4. The novel tracks the lives of two women. Trace some of the wavs in which their lives
resemble each other's. What are the points of departure?

S" Neither Sera nor Bhima end up with happy, successful marriages. Why? Trace the
factors that cause each marriage to fail. And for all its failings, which woman has the better
marriage?

6. Sera's mother-in-law, Banu, makes life miserable for the young Sera. ls Banu the kind of
mother-in-law that many American women can identify with? Examine the ways in which
she is or isn't the typical in-law.

7. The Afghani balloonwalla is a minor but pivotal character in the novel. What is his role?
What does he symbolize or represent?

8" The novel is told from the points of view of the two women, Bhima and Sera. Should it
have included more points of view? For instance, should Viraf have had his own "voice"?

9. How do you read the ending of the book? ls it a hopeful ending? Do you think the ending
is justified, given what awaits Bhima the next day?

1S. What is your opinion about Sera, especially given the choice she makes in the end. ls
she a sympathetic character? Or is she part of the problem?

11. This is a novel about the intersection of class and gender. Can you think of ways in
which gender bonds the two women and ways in which class divides them?

12. ls Gopal justified in being furious at Bhima for having signed the contract that the
accountant puts before her during the cab ride to the hospital? Would the family's fate
have been different if she hadn't signed that paper?

13. Two characters who help Bhima -- Hyder, the boy in the hospital and the Afghani
balloon seller, both happen to be Muslims. Why? What does the novel say about the
issues of religious and communal divisions in India?

14. What does this novel say about the importance of education? Think of some examples
where the lack of education hurts a character and conversely, instances of where having
an education benefits someone.

15. In some ways, the city of Bombay is a character in the novel. What are your
impressions of Bombay after having read this novel? Does the author portray the city with
affection or disdain?

16. What societal changes and/or personal choices would need to be different in order for
us to envision the possibility of someone like Bhima having a better life?

tT " The author has said that although the plot of The Space Between Us is a work of
fiction, the character of Bhima is based on a woman who used to work in her home when
the writer was a teenager. ls there any person in your own life who has inspired you
enough to want to write a book about them? What is it about that person that had a deep
impact on you?

For Further Reading

Aravind Adiga The White Tiger

Vikram Chandra Love and Longing in Bombay

Chitra Divakaruni Srsfer of Mv Heart

Leslie Forbes Bombay tce

Kiran Desai Baumgartner's Bombay

The lnheritance of Loss

Khaled Hosseini The Kite Runner

A Thousand Sp/endld Suns

Jhumpa Lahiri tJnaccustomed Earth

The Namesake

Rohinton Mistry Family Matters

A Fine Balance

Gregory David Roberts Shantaram

Arundhati Roy The God of SmallThings

Vikram Seth A Suitable Bov

Manil Suri The Death of'Vishnu

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