Subhash returns to Calcutta to find it completely changed by the violence of the Naxalites. At the end of summer, a letter arrives from Calcutta, telling Subhash that Udayan has been killed and urging him to come home as soon as he can. Subhash becomes involved with a young, married white woman named Holly though he knows the relationship is not tenable in the long-term, he is heartbroken when Holly ends their affair.

The letters almost never mention Naxalbari or any radical politics at all, and Subhash is relieved that his brother has settled down. Subhash, who had been proud of himself for taking a bold new step in moving to America, feels “defeated by Udayan all over again.” Throughout his second year of graduate school, Subhash fields frequent letters from Udayan asking when Subhash is going to come home and allow their parents to arrange a marriage for him. His feelings of isolation increase when a letter from Udayan arrives saying he has gone against their parents’ wishes for an arranged marriage and chosen to marry a woman named Gauri for love. In America, Subhash attends university in Rhode Island, at which he is one of the only Indian students. Udayan begs Subhash not to leave India, but Subhash feels the distance between himself and his brother is already too wide to bridge.

Amid the violence and unrest, Udayan devotes his days and nights to CPI(ML) activities, while Subhash decides to pursue a Ph.D. Udayan falls in with a group of radicals associated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)-a splinter group of the Communist Party of India with ties to the burgeoning Naxalite movement, a violent uprising originally started by poor sharecroppers in the West Bengal village of Naxalbari.

As the boys enter their collegiate years and attend separate local universities, they begin to drift apart for the first time in their lives. The older, more reserved Subhash often finds himself roped into trouble by his younger, more impulsive brother Udayan. The boys are one year apart in age, and inseparable. Between the two ponds there is a lowland, which floods in the rainy season.

Their neighborhood, Tollygunge, is full of refugees whose lives were displaced by the 1947 Partition of India, but the boys themselves live in a modest, middle-class home which sits on the edge of a stretch of land occupied by two ponds. Brothers Subhash and Udayan Mitra are growing up in Calcutta in the 1960s.

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri