Saborna Roychowdhury’s novel, Everything Here Belongs to You, written in the aftermath of 9/11 and the subsequent backlash against Muslims, takes on the ambitious task of addressing the vast gulf of prejudice across nations, religions, and classes by brilliantly bringing together under one roof all the characters who embody different positions in this geopolitical conflict that spans nations, from the US to Afghanistan and India. The story takes place in a middle-class house in Calcutta, home to a young Hindu woman named Mohini. Another young woman, Parul, the same age as Mohini works as a maid in Mohini’s parents’ house. While Mohini and Parul are close friends growing up, as Parul grows older, she realizes the extent to which the two are divided by class. Mohini’s mother mistreats Parul as a maid and forbids her from practicing her religion (Parul is Muslim and has to hide her identity in this household), while Mohini often forgets Parul when she is with friends. The most startling moments of the novel occur when the reader gets a sudden glimpse into the powerless and repressed Parul’s perspective. At one point, when Mohini’s mother locks her in her servant’s room to teach her a lesson for wanting to cover her hair, Mohini comes to see her.
“Paruldi,” she said. “What is going on with you? Why are you being so defiant?”
Parul shook her head in disbelief. Here she was, held captive in her own terrace room, and Mohini was asking her why she was so defiant? Was she blind or only pretending to be?
Looking at Mohini in her room that day, Parul found herself becoming unaccustomedly outraged. Mohini cared so much about her college that she was neither curious nor sensitive about what was happening in her own house. Lately, Parul was getting the feeling that it was a chore for Mohini to make an appearance in her terrace room even once in a while. She was immersed in her college books or talking in English on the phone with her friends.
“You know you can talk to me. Tell me everything,” said Mohini.
Parul busied herself folding a sari.
“Why are you being so fussy about a stupid scarf?”
Parul inhaled sharply. “It is not a scarf. It is my identity.”
“The scarf is your identity?”
“You won’t understand.”
The gentle social critique of the novel, shown through Parul’s experiences, leaves a poignant mark, showing how little the middle-class people care about the people who work for them.
Into this scene enter the love interests of Mohini and Parul. An American young man named Michael whose father died in the Afghanistan war comes to stay with Mohini’s family to train in weightlifting with Mohini’s father. He is dejected and angry because of his father’s deployment and death in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Parul, searching for her identity and religion, falls in love with Rahim, a Muslim, who works in a printing press located in the same building. Rahim is a young Muslim man whose life experiences have filled him with hatred for Americans. When Rahim learns that an American is staying at the house, he sees Michael as an embodiment of America itself, and all kinds of chaos ensue.
I was taken aback by the boldness of the book, addressing such large questions of politics and social critique, subjects that would daunt most writers. In the end it is the two young women, young, innocent, and torn apart by the events around them, who take a stand and establish what is important in life, giving a nod to our shared humanity, relationships, and care for one another.
Gemini Wahhaj: The architecture of the house is an important part of the novel. Can you explain how the different spaces and features of the house function in the novel?
Saborna Roychowdhury: I used the mansion with its two wings, two floors, back alley, terrace and courtyard to set the scenes in my novel. In the beginning of the novel, I gave a lengthy description of what the place looks like.
Mohini’s house has two wings and two floors. Mohini’s family couldn’t live on the entire second floor. The west wing of the second floor was falling apart. This wing was believed to be haunted and remained unoccupied and locked. So in my book, the haunted west wing becomes a perfect place for Parul and Rahim’s meetings. This is where they sneak in and have their secret affair. Mohini and her parents lived on second floor east wing. This wing had only two bedrooms. Mohini slept in one of them and the bigger room belonged to her parents. When Michael shows up at her house, because of scarcity of rooms, she has to give up her own bedroom for Michael. This is the beginning of her resentment and dislike for Michael which does obviously turn into love later on.
Downstairs in the east wing was Mohini’s father’s weightlifting gym. I used this gym for the subplot of Mohini’s weight-lifting. Mohini’s fascination with the gym was her way of getting close to her father and later this gym and weightlifting connected her to Michael.
Last but not the least was the all-important printing press on the first floor. The printing press was where Parul met Rahim. Rahim was the manager of the printing press. His melodic afternoon prayers drew Parul to the printing press. So I used the whole house to establish setting and character.
GW: I loved the relationship between Mohini and Parul, and between Mohini’s mother, the mistress of the house, and the young maid Parul. Can you speak about what you notice in societies in the Indian subcontinent about the relations between the middle class and working class? What were you trying to express, what impulses did you write from?
SR: Growing up in a middle-class Hindu family in Kolkata, I have seen very young girls from rural families come to work in our house. Even though my mother called them her daughters, she always made a clear distinction between her own children and the maids. The maids were not allowed to sit on the house furniture. Instead they sat on the floor and ate and drank from separate plates and cups. We had separate bathrooms for our maids. While I attended a prestigious private school, the maids were enrolled in free government schools. My mother always said, “You have to go to college. The maids will study for a few days and drop out.”
In my book, I portray “Ma” as a strict but kind woman who tries to uphold the social standards that are norms for her middle-class life. She has more compassion than some in her social class in that she allows a poor Muslim girl to secretly join her household. At the same time, she thinks nothing of employing a motherless child and forcing her into labor at a young age. She makes Parul sit at her feet, discourages her from playing with friends as a child, and prevents her from pursuing a proper education. While Parul sweats in the kitchen day and night, Mohini is not allowed to do any household chores.
Ma, who represents the middle class in India, thinks her behavior is normal and acceptable because everyone else in her social class is doing it. She tells Mohini over and over again– “Don’t forget you are the daughter of a bhadralok. This kind of work does not suit you.”
This is a fundamental pillar of Hindu middle class belief that Ma keeps falling back on. That Bhadraloks are refined, cultured and high caste. They attend school and college and don’t do manual labor. But people like Parul who belong to the Chotolok class must do menial jobs and pay for the mistakes they made in their previous life.
GW: The family seems to really like Michael, and pampers him, whereas there is a lot of hatred for Rahim. In the novel’s plot as well, Michael remains an innocent, whereas Rahim is imbued with feelings of hatred and with agency to act on this. Rahim becomes a stereotype of an evil Muslim man. Did you deliberately set this up to show how Michael and Rahim experience the world differently? Is it a critique of Indian society?
SR: In this book, I chose to tackle a very taboo topic—Muslim/ American relations and I tried to do so in a balanced and respectable manner. Both Rahim and Michael carry a heavy baggage and both are not likeable characters, but by revealing their background at the right moment, I tried to explain the reasons for their actions/behavior.
I was surprised that you felt Michael was good and innocent. That was not my intention at all. Like Rahim, he too was filled with bitterness and thoughts of revenge. His father’s deployments, illness, and death sat inside him like a boiling cauldron ready to overflow. He had lost his motivation to go to the Olympics and wanted to join the army and go to Afghanistan. He was rude to Mohini and Baba in the beginning. Later we saw Michael change when he opened up to Mohini and got close to her. Michael’s love for Mohini healed his pain and his outlook toward life changed.
Rahim on the other hand could not shed his baggage. He too made an emotional connection with Parul but his ideology and hurt by then was so deep rooted that he could not turn back. There were times when he wanted to be honorable with Parul, but, ultimately, he was too driven by his own loneliness and the despair of losing his brother that he could not go back to the love that might have given his tired soul some respite. He remained committed to his ideology till the end that pushed him toward extremism.
I don’t think Rahim is a stereotypical evil Muslim man. There are genuine reasons for his extremism. Rahim’s brother and Michael’s father die on two sides of an ideological “war.” By conveying both their stories, I tried to show how “war” affects real human beings. Violence has consequences that reverberate on both sides.
And yes I have shown that Rahim gets more hatred than Michael. Through Rahim’s experiences I wanted to show the many conscious and unconscious prejudices, bias, and intolerance of Hindu society toward the Muslim minority in India. Everyday injustice leads to suffering and sometimes devastating consequences.
GW: I love how much empathy you have for the two young women. They observe the adults around them, and absorb the news on TV, the voices around them, but ultimately decide to respond very differently to the world. I felt that they were such genuine, strong, fearless characters. We often speak of powerful, feminist roles in literature, but I believe Mohini and Parul feel like authentic, refreshing, and powerful characters because they are not stereotypical symbols of strong feminist characters. I love the interiority of Parul, how she is both deprived of things and also critical of the society around her and how she tries to have agency even in her limited situation. I also love that she is capable of love, passion, and mistakes. Similarly, Mohini trains with her father, she is strong, and she is a rebel. I would love to hear from you how you saw the friendship between the two young women, what pressures are exerted on this friendship, and what the friendship gives to them.
SR: I agree with you that both Mohini and Parul are strong women with a mind of their own. Parul was born into an unfair and burdensome situation. She was given no opportunity to develop her sense of self outside of being a servant. Growing up as a servant left a huge hole in her psyche that she eventually faced when she realized that her father won’t find a husband for her. Even in these subjugated circumstances, Parul attempts to claim power over her life. She seeks her own freedom by getting involved with Rahim and reclaiming her Muslim roots.
Mohini, too, as you point out, is powerful in her own way. She hangs out in the gym from an early age and learns weightlifting from her father. Her extended family is against this male sport but still Mohini dreams of winning trophies and contests and making a name for herself.
From the beginning, I tried to show a very close connection between Mohini and Parul. Through several anecdotes I tried to establish the sisterly relationship and emotional bond between the two. But the class difference between them always interfered in this close relationship and constantly tried to pull them apart. As children, Mohini excluded Parul from her play and reminded of her of her role as a servant. As a young adult in my book, I show how Mohini reflects on the moments she treated Parul badly and feels regret.
I wanted the reader to realize, even if Mohini doesn’t, that they were both part of a system that they didn’t control. Their roles were chosen for them, and they tried, rather impossibly, to find friendship and sisterhood within that. They navigated a very complicated relationship, which was part friendship and part master/ servant.
In the end, both regret the unwinding of their relationship. Society and circumstances tried to separate them forever. But these two strong women defied the discouraging voices and decided to unite again. Their love ultimately overcame the hatred around them.
Saborna Roychowdhury‘s second novel, Everything Here Belongs to You, was released in June by Texas based publisher, Black Rose Writing and received a starred review from Indie Reader. Kirkus Reviews called her book, “A heart-wrenching family drama, as powerful as it is delicate.” The novel was well-received in other publications in the U.S. and elsewhere, including the Sublime Book Review and Readers’ Favorite. On September 1st, 2022, her book won 3rd Place/Bronze Medal in the prestigious Reader’s Favorite International Book Awards contest, competing against thousands of entrants worldwide, category Fiction-Drama. In 2004, Saborna’s short story “Bengal Monsoon” appeared in New York Stories magazine and received a Pushcart Prize nomination. Saborna was born and raised in Kolkata, India, and moved to the U.S. for undergraduate work in chemistry. She lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband and twin daughters. When she is not writing and chasing fictional characters, she is a very earnest Chemistry Instructor at various Community Colleges
Gemini Wahhaj’s novel Mad Man will be published in Fall 2023 by 7.13 Books, and her short story collection Katy Family will be published by Jackleg Press in Spring 2025. She is Associate Professor of English at Lone Star College in Houston. Her fiction has been published or is forthcoming in Granta, Zone 3, Northwest Review, Cimarron Review, the Carolina Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review, Chattahoochee Review, Apogee, Silk Road, Night Train, Cleaver, Concho River Review, Scoundrel Time, Chicago Quarterly Review, Arkansas Review, Allium, Valley Voices, and other magazines. She has a PhD in creative writing from the University of Houston, where she received the James A. Michener award for fiction (judged by Claudia Rankine) and the Cambor/Inprint fellowship. Her short story collection Katy Family was a finalist for the Acacia Fiction Prize by Kallisto Gaia Press and the Hudson Prize by Black Lawrence Press, her novel was a finalist for the Big Moose Prize by Black Lawrence Press, and her YA novel was a semi-finalist for the Leap Frog Global Fiction Prize in YA.