Sunder

Sunder is a village in Maharashtra where Lin learned Marathi and encountered a community whose language, land, and welcome gave the place lasting meaning in his life. It is both a specific rural home, shaped by generations of farming, and the setting of a formative memory that returns to him in a moment of grief.

Language and Generational Home

Lin describes Sunder as a small village of native Marathi speakers. Its residents spoke Marathi as their first language, knew little Hindi, and did not speak English. He presents their connection to Maharashtra as ancient: the region had been their home for at least two thousand years, and fifty generations had farmed its land. Sunder’s identity is thus grounded not only in its language but in the continuity between its people and the land they worked.

Lin’s Learning and the Village Community

Lin says he learned Marathi in Sunder. His account makes that knowledge a consequence of living among villagers for whom Marathi was not an acquired skill but the language of everyday life. The experience also informs his later response to questions about being an outsider in Bombay: he draws on what he saw among Maharashtrians from villages like Sunder, including the hardship of people who worked and lived in poverty in their own capital city. The village therefore remains a point of reference through which he understands both local belonging and urban inequality.

A Memory That Returns

Sunder reappears in Lin’s memory as the setting of his first night in the village. In a dream, he is carried back to the murmuring voices of that night, when Prabaker’s father placed a hand on his shoulder and Lin clenched his teeth against the stars. On waking, Lin finds Kishan beside him with a hand on his shoulder; the remembered gesture and the present one meet as both men break down in tears. The scene gives Sunder an intimate emotional significance: its remembered welcome returns at a moment of loss, linking the village to Lin’s bond with Prabaker and his family.