Resilience amidst loss

Sudhirendar Sharma

Sudhirendar Sharma

Under Water is a short novel about friendship and grief, that is pitched across widespread ecological change and perilous natural calamities. It recounts the protagonist’s life between Thailand and the USA and evokes the intensity of Marissa’s devastating loss of her friend Arielle. It is a heart wrenching novel that is a meditation on loss. It is a remarkable debut that is as much immersive and mysterious as overwhelming and exquisite in reflecting deep feelings about human emotions and ecological sensibilities. 

Under water

Tera Menon has written a deeply emotional and evocative novel that meditates both love and grief. The story centers on a woman who has suffered a profound heartbreak and unfolds both her physical relocation and emotional turmoil. In beautifully written prose, the story captures the tension between the desire to live and pursuit for life. It considers grief as invisible force that is everywhere and knocks the wind out.  

Menon’s research for her debut is deep and varied – reflective of the science supporting nonfiction narrative about the sociology and ecology of change. The depictions of forests and sea life are vivid and immersive, and many observations have an extraordinary and amusing sense. Hurricanes are named after women, why? Because when they arrive, they’re wet and wild, but when they go, they take your house and car. Amusing but reflective, nonetheless. The weather itself has a powerful presence in the novel, seeking attention and appreciation. 

Under Water follows Marissa, who grows up in Thailand with her closest friend Arielle, and the two of them move through the sea as though it belongs to them. Then the tsunami arrives and splits their life cruelly into two. Arielle is lost to the oceanic waves. Marissa rebuilds her life in New York, but as Hurricane Sandy barrels towards the city it pulls her back to the days of the  earlier catastrophe. The novel shifts between those two events, and it does so beautifully.

What makes this more than a grief story is its clear-eyed anger on the state of the planet. The seas are warming, the reefs are bleaching and the storms are growing in strength. There’s a steady, unsentimental recognition that mankind has not been a careful custodian. Nature here isn’t romantic backdrop; it’s damaged, volatile, and entirely indifferent to us.

Under Water is a deeply emotional and evocative novel that explores love, pain, and loss. The story centers on a woman who has suffered a profound heartbreak and chooses to disappear from her familiar life in an effort to start over. What makes the story particularly compelling is how it portrays the inner life of someone trying to rebuild after heartbreak. The protagonist’s doubts, fears, and moments of clarity are all drawn with sensitivity and nuance. 

While telling the story of love and loss in the backdrop of ecological crises, Menon gives reader space to feel the emotions as these unfold alongside the narrator. There’s a meditative quality to the storytelling that mirrors the ebb and flow of the sea. However, the novel explains or rather overexplains with information and details on species, years, and death tolls, that digresses from the narrative and acts as a break. Further, the novel carries repetitive expressions and patterns. 

Despite such shortcomings, there is something that makes it a special novel. It's the kind of writing that makes you taste and feel and hear and ponder over. It forces you to hold your breath as if you're underwater. 

Under Water  

by Tara Menon

Summit Books/ S&S, New Delhi. 

Extent: 212, Price: Rs. 699.

(Dr. Sudhirendar Sharma is a writer and researcher specialising in development issues. He is based in New Delhi, India)

Commissioned by Deccan Herald.