The Elsewhereans: Read an exclusive excerpt from Jeet Thayil’s new book

The Booker-nominated author’s deeply personal new work merges memoir, history, myth and fiction. Here, a conversation with his mother on longing and regret.

Ammu gets her wish. A boat to take her on the Muvattupuzha. George refuses even to consider it.

.

He can’t swim and it is too late to learn. And there is one more thing. ‘Your people don’t believe in life preservers,’ he says to Ammu.

‘My people?’

‘River people.’

‘We’ve been preserving very well so far.’

‘Without life preservers. Or jackets. Or belts. Or flotation devices of any kind.’

‘We don’t need them. We can swim.’

Not strictly true, she knows. In her newly weakened state, she wouldn’t be able to swim very far. When her father was alive, the boathouse was full of vessels. Narrow canoes the width of a man’s foot and wide-bottomed boats that could seat a dozen people. Under the new management, some of the boats wear holes the size of someone’s head.

Jacob cleans up the only serviceable canoe, points it upstream and pushes off, rowing against the current towards the other side. On both banks, trees sprout into the sky, framing images. A river temple. Women washing vessels and clothes. A makeshift landing stage churned by many feet. Ammu puts her hand into the green water and touches a moment that had occurred, is occurring, would occur in the future.

‘The river smells different today,’ she says. ‘It’s going to rain.’

An hour later, in the middle of the day, the sky goes from blue to black. The wind breaks dry branches to the ground. Birds fly helter-skelter. In the small hours of the night, a sudden coolness. Such a relief from the heat that it wakes me with a dream of air conditioning. Then the skies break and rain drops on the roof-tiles with the sound of stones.

The storm tears rents in the banana leaves and churns the river into froth. At dawn, I see red pools in the gravel of the courtyard. Beyond, where the paddy fields begin, there is only muddy foam and rain haze.

I am at the window when the door creaks open and a frail figure stands in the half-light. ‘Boy,’ Ammu says, ‘do you know it rained like this the day you were born? I almost died because your head was too big. Your grandmother allowed no more births in this house after yours.’

‘Really? I had no idea. You never said this before.’ She gives a short laugh and tugs at the scarf she wears like a belt for the pain in her lower back.

‘I want to ask you something.’

‘Ask anything you want.’

‘Do you ever regret it?’

‘Regret what?’

‘Going through all of that? The childbirth. For me.’ She comes to the window and watches the rain slowly brightening on the fields, hands lifted to her face.

‘I’m your mother. I don’t regret anything except growing old. I regret that you got old and now I can’t hold my little boy’s hand.’ She sits on the bed, her eyes held by the haze outside. ‘I always thought it was a bad bargain. You’re born. You’re young and you marry. Make your own family. Then everything goes one by one. Your health goes. Everyone you love dies. What kind of bargain is that?’

‘We don’t have much say in it.’

‘But we have to believe. I don’t regret anything I did. Maybe I regret some things I didn’t do.’

‘You’re telling me I should do what I want?’

‘Yes. Do everything. You want eggs for breakfast?’

‘As long as you don’t tell me that story about how you almost died, my head was too big, et cetera, et cetera.’

(Excerpted with permission from The Elsewhereans: A Documentary Novel by Jeet Thayil, published by HarperCollins; 2025)