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Diasporic 140615004444 Phpapp02 PDF
Diasporic 140615004444 Phpapp02 PDF
x Prakash Bhadury
Abstract:
The act of Ashok and Ashima of owning a home is indication enough of their
acceptance in the secular space. In the meantime, their ties with the
ancestral land begin to weaken. "As their lives in New England swell with
fellow Bengali friends, the member of that other, former life slowly
dwindle"(Lahiri-63). They are therefore forced to distance themselves from
the endearing, fictional family and community back 'home'. They slowly but
surely allow themselves to move towards a hybrid cultural location,
On the other hand, the second generation feels the absence of any cultural
moorings , for they belong to none. This has even been the author's own
experience in America. Divided identity always vexes an individual as s/he
has to act in duality, one to satisfy the parents and their culture and the
other to the peers of the land of immigration.
Trans - cultural dilemma: The family traverses a long journey where all
the characters encounter difficulties in different spaces and undergo
transformation of identities through the drama of cultural conflicts that
create pain and passiveness and anxieties and alienation. Transculturation
begins with Ashoke and Ashima and shifts to their next generation. Ashima
attempts to cope in the alien culture by reading the Bengali novels she
brought with her or retreating with her familiar world, The dilemma becomes
acute when her son Gogol is born for the difficulty of raising the child there.
They adopt first the process of acculturation for the sake of their child and
simultaneously start losing many of their own thus undergoing a process of
transition, hybridization and the conditions of diasporas there of all at a
time. Gogol too in his career suffers bears the brunt of cultural alienation
and identity crisis. His very name epitomizes the confusion of cross-cultural
dilemma. Just to fit into the American culture he not only adopted their
culture but also started hating his own name, culture and roots. He distances
himself from his family, Indian acquaintances and values. He takes India not
as his homeland but as a country the way other Americans view it to be.
While he tries to become more an American, dates with American girl
Maxine, adopts her lifestyle and changes his own name little does he realize
that it is difficult to realize fully the alien culture, The name still remains of
Indian origin. Further, he fails to understand that an identity is not in change
of llfestyle or name; it's something more than that
Jumpha Lahiri throughout her novel looks at her Indian counter parts, from
her own diasporic lenses. The characters, in a trans- cultural situation,
attempt to belong while celebrating their roots. Sometimes the attempts to
erase the history are discursively found in literary text but the author could
drive the reader's attention to the fact that the history is inerasable,
something permanent.
The characters struggle with the memory of their homeland as it happens for
the author herself or many other diasporic authors, like Rushdie and Naipaull
as India is a homeland in their imagination. Rushdie in his Imaginary
Homeland has shown the vexed issue of cultural displacement when he says:
"A full migrant suffers, traditionally a triple disruption. He loses place. He
enters into alien language...what makes immigrants such a pathetic figure."
(Imaginary Homeland-Rushdie) It is diasporic Consciousness of the
protagonist hat their memories engage them in a struggle against forgetting.
Conclusion: Gogol accepts the destiny, his own unique roots and turns
more emotionally balanced and matured. Ashima and Gogol occupy different
geographical spaces, away from their roots and attemptto assimilate the
alien culture at different stages. In other words they move from an
epistemological situation i.e. understanding their two worlds to the
postmodern trend of fragmentary experiences. But they find meaning and
belonging in their diasporic situation with the amalgamations of Indian roots.
Work Cited:
1. Appiah, Kwame Anthony and Henry Louis Gates, )r., Eds. The
Dictionary of Global Culture. New York: Alfred A.Knof, 1996.
2. Foucault, Michel. *Of other Spaces. Heterotopias'(1976) (trans. Jay \
Miskowiec).3&6 .