Longing and Alienation in The Diasporas

International Journal on
Multicultural Literature
(IJML)
(A International Refereed Biannual Published in January and July)
Volume 2 Number 2 (July 2012) ISSN 2231-6248
Edited by
Dr. K. V. DOMINIC
Published By
Dr. K. V. Dominic,
Kannappilly House, Thodupuzha East,
Kerala, India – 685 585.
Email: prof.kvdominic@gmail.com.
Phone: +91-9947949159.
Web Site: www.profkvdominic.com
Blog: www.profkvdominic.blogspot.in
2 z International Journal on Multicultural Literature (IJML) 2.2 (Jul 2012)
CONTENTS
Editorial 6
Culture, Multicultural and the Case of India 8
- Sudhir K. Arora
Change and Dynamism in African Society:
Exploring New Directions in the Novels of Chinua Achebe 16
- Monir Ahmed Choudhury
Black American Discourse and Women Writers 24
- Rohit Phutela
Reflections on the “Feminine Cause” in 32
Robin S. Ngangom’s Poetry
- Rosaline Jamir
Parvathy Baul’s Way of Life: An Interview (Interview) 39
- Aju Mukhopadhyay
Relationship (Short Story) 44
- Pronab Kumar Majumder
Silent Voices and Liberated Women: Bhandaru
Acchamamba and Savitribai Phule 48
- Sujatha Rao
George Lamming’s Silent-Violent Voice in
Water with Berries 54
- Sajitha M. A.
Socio-Historical Documentation in Select Novels of
Amitav Ghosh and Rohinton Mistry 61
- Chikkala Swathi
Longing and Alienation in Diasporas 69
- Bishun Kumar
International Journal on Multicultural Literature (IJML) 2.2 (Jul 2012) z 3
The Pleasures and Principles of Culinary Art: Shifting Paradigms

in Cooking with Stella and Mistress of Spices 74
- Gigy J. Alex
An Unrealized Dream (Short Story) 82
- Ketaki Datta
Triumph of Evil in Rohinton Mistry’s Novels 89
- Ezzeldin Abdelgadir Ahmed Elmadda & Nagya Naik B. H.
Between Two Worlds: A Study of Bharati Mukherjee’s
The Tiger’s Daughter 96
- S. Bhuvaneswari
Redefining the Individuality in the Autobiographies of
Indira Goswami and Binodini Dasi 102
- Dhanusha Vyas
Portraiture of Colonial and Post-colonial India in
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s Heat and Dust 108
- S. Lavanya
Cracked Legs (Short Story) 115
- Jayanti M. Dalal (Trans. Pramesh Lakhia)
Class, Culture, and Language:
A Study on Mahesh Dattani’s Plays 122
- Madhur Kumar
Conflicts of Globalization, Multiculturalism and 130
Economic Inequity in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss
- K. Mangayarkarasi
The Legacy of Non-violence: J M Coetzee’s Fiction in Context 135
- Namrata Nistandra
A Prodigious Tale (Short Story) 143
- Rajshree Trivedi
Salman Rushdie’s Shame: A Postcolonial Study 146
- Punyajit Gupta & Shrikrishan Rai
Portrayal of Women and their Sufferings in

Select Plays of Mahesh Dattani 154
- K. Sathya Devi
Conflict of Culture in John Steinbeck’s “Flight” 161
- S. Sujaritha
What a Great Republican Shore are We Basking in (Poem) 169
- Aju Mukhopadhyay
Culture (Poem) 170
- PCK Prem
Time: The Crazy Clock (Poem) 43
- Itishri Sarangi
Multiculturalism (Poem) 67
- K. V. Dominic
India, Number One! (Poem) 68
- K. V. Dominic
SUNDOWN POETRY (Poem) 23
- Pronab Kumar Majumder
Martin Luther King (Poem) 160
- Hazara Singh
March of Life (Poem) 142
- Hazara Singh
Krishna (Poem) 145
- O. P. Arora
The Riddle (Poem) 107
- O. P. Arora
Nightmare (Poem) 173
- S. V. Rama Rao
The Prophecy (Poem) 174

- S. V. Rama Rao
Amputee, about an abused child (Poem) 175
- Stephen Gill
K. V. Dominic—A Humanitarian in Conception and Socio-
Consciousness: An Analytical Study of Write Son, Write
(Review Article) 177
- D. C. Chambial
K. V. Dominic, ed. Critical Perspectives on the Poetry of 183
R. K. Singh, D. C. Chambial and I. K. Sharma (Review)
- Kavitha Gopalakrishnan
Our Esteemed Contributors 189
EDITORIAL
Multicultural Coexistence
It is interesting to note the march of the world from colonialism to
postcolonialism and now to multiculturalism. As man is an evolutionary
being, this evolutionary process has been going on for millennia and in
this modern world, is galloping at a faster rate from centuries to decades.
Pre-colonialism, colonialism, postcolonialism and multiculturalism are
different phases of this evolutionary stride of man. Appropriately, I, who
have been the editor of a postcolonial journal (Indian Journal of
Postcolonial Literatures) in the last decade, have now evolved to the
editor of a multicultural journal.
Though western colonialism was the result of man’s quest for
adventure and exploration, avarice, supremacy and hegemony, it was
never a one-way traffic. As the colonizers amassed wealth through
tapping the resources with the help of modern science, there was
development in all the sectors of the colonized country. Naturally the
colonized people also gained; their standard of life increased. If we make
an honest assessment of the postcolonial, colonial and pre-colonial
periods of the country, we cannot but admit that colonialism paved the
seeds of growth and development. The common people in the pre-
colonial period were exploited by the native rulers and upper class; they
were subjected to all kinds of tortures in the name of race, caste, religion
etc. Bereft of bare necessities of life and education, the common folk
were struggling for their existence. The plight of the marginalized and
women was atrocious. Rule of the jungle—might is right—prevailed in
societies. All kinds of superstitions, and exploitation as a result of them
reigned supreme. Taken these facts as granted, wasn’t colonialism a need
for the under-developed countries? Can one ignore the services
rendered by the colonialists in establishing schools, colleges,
universities and thus spreading education in towns as well as villages?
Don’t the colonized owe to the West for being cultured and civilized?
Haven’t the colonizers promoted agriculture, industry, transportation,
healthcare, communication, print etc. using scientific inventions and
techniques? Aren’t the colonizers responsible for the growth of regional
languages and the global language, English? Isn’t it the colonial powers
who replaced autocratic, tyrannical rulers of the under-developed
countries with democratic regimes? When we now talk of universal
family (vasudeva kudumbam), western people’s advent or settlement in
other continents could be considered only as an unavoidable,

multicultural coexistence.
Colonialism to postcolonialism was just a shift of power from the
foreign rulers to native rulers. In fact the native rulers were reaping the
harvest of colonialism. A rewriting of the history books which cover
the freedom struggle is required now. When the present postcolonial
governments involve in multi-billions’ scams and corruption, looting their
own people who voted them to power, strangle them with over-burdened
taxes and regulations, deny them justice and protest—the subjects are
compelled to believe that the colonial rulers were far better than their
own elected representatives.
Multiculturalism has become a reality now. No nation can exist
without a multicultural existence. No race, no religion, no caste, no tribe,
no language can claim to be superior to others. As particles of an atom
are different, fingers of a hand are different, brothers and sisters of a
family are different, variety is the very essence of creation, whether it is
human beings, other beings, or inanimate objects. It is selfish to call a
place—village, town, city, district, state or country—as one group’s and
deny others entrance to it. It is happy to note that most of the countries
in the world are becoming more and more multicultural now,
accommodating thousands of foreigners representing different cultures.
Kerala, a small state in the southern part of India is a role model in
multiculturalism. Even though the reason for its multiculturalism is hazy,
thousands of labourers from other states of India are working in all
sectors, earning high wages, inter-mingling with different cultures.
This multicultural coexistence demands a common language for
communication and English has succeeded in filling this vacuum at a
universal level. The universal acceptance and rapid growth of English
can be attributed to the evolutionary process in languages. From a
metalanguage English has now risen to become the global language.
There are nineteen critical and research articles on multicultural
themes and aspects in this issue. In addition, there are four short stories,
thirteen poems of nine poets, one interview, one review article and one
book review sprinkled as spices to make the book more attractive. Before
winding up let me express my deep gratitude to the contributors and
subscribers who sustain and immortalize this journal. Wishing all readers
a mental feast,
Thodupuzha Dr. K. V. Dominic

1 July 2012 Editor, IJML
CRITICAL ARTICLES
Culture, Multicultural and the

Case of India
Sudhir K. Arora
Human culture, which determines the growth of a nation, is itself

an outcome of a vision and art of living. Social, economic and political
ingredients prepare the environment that shapes the attitude of the
people. The growth of a human being in the given environment
demonstrates the graph of a culture. Culture, which gives an identity to
people, differs from group to group. Cultural growth is not simply an
individual growth but a community growth. Societies, which vary in
beliefs, customs, values, structure, policies and visions, have different
cultures. Though the people are basically same physically, they differ
because of a unique personality. Culture becomes a cementing force in
binding them together into “a group sharing a certain degree of
similarity, overcoming individual differences while setting us apart from
other groups” (The Human Portrait 88). Hence, it binds the people in
group and also differentiates from other groups.
Culture is a comprehensive term to the extent that it is often
misunderstood and wrongly used. Even today, the definition given by
Tylor is worth-mentioning. Tyler defines culture “as that complex whole
which includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law, customs, and any
other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a members of society”
(qtd. in The Human Portrait 88). Hence, he believes that culture is
acquired or learned from the members of their group through the process
of socialization that includes physical and mental aspects. It cannot be
an individual phenomenon; rather it is a group one. In plain words,
culture is “a way of life that is common to a group of people, including
a collection of beliefs and attitudes, shared understandings, and patterns
of behaviour that allow those people to live together in relative harmony,
but set them apart from other peoples” (The Human Portrait 110).
Culture brings refinement and excellence in life. Notwithstanding
its categorization into regional culture, national culture, society culture,
Hindu culture, Muslim Culture, global culture etc., it possesses some

universal ingredients which become keys to the basic solutions to the
problems of living. Human welfare is ever present in the roots of every
culture. Embracing the good things from others for the sake of human
welfare is the sign that makes a culture living. Any culture that opposes
changes and follows the path which does not take man to progress,
peace and prosperity is no culture at all. Indian culture is dynamic not
because it is Indian but because of its adaptable and assimilative nature
to the changes. If it had not adopted what is good, it would have
decayed earlier. Positive approach, tolerance and the ability to assimilate
what is good are some ingredients that make a culture alive. Matthew
Arnold, for whom, “the pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of
sweetness and light” believes that “He who works for sweetness works
in the end for light also. He who works for light works in the end of
sweetness also. But, he who works for sweetness and light united, works
to make reason and the will of God prevail” (47). The concept of
providing an environment of happiness and welfare all around can be
an outcome of a cultured mind that thinks of bright and peaceful future.
Culture is often misunderstood as civilization. It is culture that
provides the foundations to any civilization. Culture contributes to the
inner growth while civilization to material growth. Culture with
motivational force instills an ability to invent in man who invents and,
hence, contributes in making civilization rich. Civilization is what a man
invents while culture is his ability to invent. Culture, the abstract makes
civilization, the concrete. The abstract culture makes a man think to the
extent that he develops means that makes the building of civilization.
Language, an ability to communicate creates culture which, in the long
run gives birth to civilization. The foundation makes the building strong
and durable. The cultural intellectual makeup prepares the civilized path
for social development.
Diversity is now not a negative concept; rather it has become more
popular than ever in its new form of multiculturalism. Though it is
sometimes misused or overused for people with more than one culture,
it is a right term for respecting and promoting multiple cultures.
Respecting and acknowledging the differences or diversities create an
environment for healthy relationship among the people of various
groups. Multiculturalism does not force to cook various ingredients in
order to turn them into one kind of food. Rather, each ingredient seems
to have its own uniqueness. Its uniqueness is its beauty. Language
communicates; communication makes interaction possible with different

cultures resulting in acknowledging the differences which finally give
birth to multiculturalism. The concept of multiculturalism is favoured not
because of diversities but because of its being a possible way of
protecting the local culture of a particular place or nation which certainly
be a promoting factor in making the global cultural diversity rich and
safe. Two cultures come together and get in touch through a contact
region which provides circumstances for learning from each other’s
ideologies oriented by culture. Cultural diversity is not a sin; rather it
has become a virtue. One can learn what is best in other cultures and
leave what clashes with the basic cultural structure. Multiculturalism
provides multiple approaches to life and vision and helps in
understanding the extremes—cultural interface and cultural seclusion.
It does not believe wholly that race, religion and caste create culture.
But, the champions of multiculturalism argue that culture is the
consequence of multiple ingredients which vary with the variations in
the global world. They also consider multiculturalism as the best way
for maintaining the concept of egalitarianism. What translates justice
into reality is not the yardstick from one culture but cultural
communications via dialogues among multiple cultures. The magic is
done by the idea of multiculturalism which offers possibilities to several
different cultures for coexisting peacefully and fairly.
No doubt, the concept of multiculturalism seems to be alluring and
protective if it is put into practice. But, some fanatics who are not in its
favour perform destruction and torture the people other than their
culture. Such narrow minded people certainly obstruct the path of culture
that aims at welfare of the people. That everyone is ethnocentric more
or less has somewhere a grain of truth. This love for one’s culture in
preference to other culture can be seen in the over praise of their myths,
folk tales, proverbs and also language. To love one’s culture is not bad
but to think other cultures bad or inferior is not justified from any angle.
People should be broad-minded and catholic in appreciating positive
ingredients in other cultures. It is true that morals and values are based
on the culture that people live and embrace but to judge other cultures
on the basis of their set parameters is not fair. Cultural shock is felt
when a man leaves his own culture and embraces another. He oscillates
between the two cultures and feels frustration not only because of the
clash of the old values with the new ones but also because of the
attitude towards solutions to the problems which vary from one culture
to another. Differences concerning behavioural practices, norms and

morals give each culture its uniqueness. The differences add beauty to
every culture in one way or other. But, ethnocentrism present somewhere
in man makes him a bit partial to his own culture to the extent that he
feels that anyone who does not follow his culture or departs from the
ways of his culture is a queer.
Indian culture, in spite of being influenced by the modern means
of living and life-style, remains unchanged in her basic structure, No
doubt, people may change their styles in clothing, eating and living but
will never be away from Indian values and traditions which are deeply
rooted in their heart, mind, body and soul. Spiritualism is the life breath
of Indian culture. People search for solutions of their problems in
spiritualism and have firm faith in cosmopolitanism. The myth, folk-tales
and rich past are the archetypes before them. The action plan with the
united effort is the very characteristic of the Indian people who fight
against injustice. Patience and tolerance are the mantras in the reign of
Indian culture. Even the foreign language is given the native touches.
De-colonizing of English is being done by the Indian authors who either
writing in English or in any other language are successfully propagating
the Indian Culture to the West. Indian culture is not confined to any
individual but is the result of totality of group ways, thoughts and action
as accepted and followed by a group of people. The rich heritage of
customs, traditions, values, beliefs, spiritualism and the mind-set is a
legacy of the past which differentiates Indians from other groups.
Indian culture is distinctive in itself because of its rich tradition
and values that follow the goal of Satyam, Shivam and Sundaram. Being
secular in spirit, Indian culture with the feeling of cosmopolitanism has
become human culture. Indian culture is based on the mantra of:
Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinah,
Sarve Santu Niraamayah,
Sarve Bhadraani Pashyantu,
Maa Kashchid Dukhabhaavbhaveta,
Om Shanthi Shanthi Shanthi. (“Shanti Mantras”)
Indian culture talks of the well-being of all without confining to a
particular place. It longs for happiness, health and well-being of all the
people. As it is broad in approach and catholic in vision, it considers
the whole world its family. It promotes peace everywhere and invokes
God for leading people from unreal to the real, darkness to light and
death to immortality. The Shanti mantra reflects its character:
Om Aasto ma sat gamaya

Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya
mrityor ma amritam gamaya
Om Shanti Shanti Shantihi. (“Shanti Mantras”)
Gayatri Mantra: “Om Bhur, Bhuvah, Svaha / Tat Savitur
Vareniyam / Bhargo Devasya Dhimahi / Dhiyo Yo Nah Prachodayat”
(Omnipresent Lord, Most worthy of worship / We meditate you /
Remove our ignorance / And illuminate our minds) is chanted by Indians
who get inner illumination and feel contentment. The spiritual character
of Indian culture makes people grow inwardly. People treat their guest
as god, respect elders, consider others as equal, become helpful to
others in need, develop co-operation and high level of tolerance,
multiply joy and happiness, share pain, embrace the Yoga and do their
best to make the world a better place for all. Secularism flows in its veins.
Though joint family system is the mantra that it chants, it has not denied
the possibility of nuclear family in the changed circumstances. Dance
and rituals are its part and parcel.
‘Unity in Diversity’ is the thread that binds all the people in India
resulting in one composite culture—Indian Culture. Indian culture is
considered to be a composite one because of her consisting of separate
interconnected parts. All parts are somewhere connected resulting into
a conceptual whole. But, recently some intellectuals have interrogated
her composite character as they trace out multiculturalism in India. They
argue that in India there is not one composite culture but several
different cultures, which are coexisting successfully because of secular
Indian spirit. Indian culture includes all—Tribal culture, Hindu Culture,
Muslim culture, Jain culture, Buddhist culture, Christian culture, culture
based on big cities like Mumbai culture, Delhite Culture, Bangali culture
and the long list goes on. The question arises here: Are they really part
of Indian culture? Or do they have Indian culture? Certainly they have
their separate identities. When they have their identity, how can they
be a part? They cannot assimilate their identity with others. Attempts
have always been made but finally resulted in their recognition.
Assimilation among them is possible to some extent but complete
assimilation is a dream. The concept of composite culture is a way to
bind all cultures into one while the reality seems to be different. Local
culture never leaves its identity. If it leaves, how can it survive? All
cultures struggle for their existence. Hence, they celebrate their identities,
do their best to keep their uniqueness and become interconnected with
the concept of Indian culture without losing their basic structures. If

minutely observed, the whole exercise leads to the way to
multiculturalism. In India, theoretically there is one composite Indian
culture but practically the waves of multiculturalism flow. The term,
‘Multiculturalism,’ is new one to Indians who, rather, use ‘Diversity.’
But, how far ‘Diversity’ differs from or equals to ‘Multiculturalism’ is a
question worth-considering.
The concept of global culture once again has voted for the
celebration of all cultures which differ from country to country or region
to region but on macro level they contribute to one global culture. When
one talks of country, the concept of Indian culture arises. But, when
one talks of global culture, the concept of Indian culture gives place to
culture of India. Again, Indian culture and culture of India differ as
Muslim culture differs from culture of Muslim or Hindu culture from
culture of Hindu or Christian culture from culture of Christian. It creates
confusion because when concepts like Muslim culture or culture of
Muslim are discussed, one fails to understand whether it is of Indian
Muslim or Muslim residing anywhere in the world. Without making
further confusion, it is better to confine to the theoretically concept of
Indian culture which has roots in Hindu religion for its broad outlook,
vision and the feeling of cosmopolitanism. There is one commonality in
Indian culture in spite of different languages, religions, arts, literatures,
customs and architectures. Tolerance and secularism bind all into one
thread giving the form of unity in diversity. In comparison of European
importance to reason, beauty, utility, pleasures and material welfare—
the ingredients which serve body, Indian culture recognizes spirit and
considers life to be psychological and spiritual. Man is a spirit that
includes life and body. As he is a spirit, he is capable of being a god.
For Westerners, man’s reasoning mind and will power can make him
better than what God has made him. They never consider that man is
capable of becoming a God and people who think so live in illusion
which is created out of their barbaric ignorance and arrogance.
Aurobindo considers “philosophy and religion” to be “the soul
of Indian culture, inseparable from each other and interpenetrative” (55).
He stresses that the main objective of Indian philosophy is “the
knowledge of the spirit, the experience of it and the right way to a
spiritual existence” (55). He pleads to search for the founts of native
power in oneself in order to draw “deeper, more vital and fresher streams
of the power of life than from anything the West can offer” (34). Indian
culture considers the growth and evolution of the sprit to be the main
goal for which life is lived. Hence, it values architecture, sculpture and
painting as they appeal the spirit through the eye.
Indian culture is spiritual to the core. Mysticism is India’s
invaluable heritage that believes in the concept of oneness in the entire
creation, offers the message of satyam, shivam and sundaram to make
man’s life worth-living and commends the paths of knowledge (jnana),
work (karma) and devotion (bhakti) that will take him to the gate of
divine love which showers the spiritual delight—a stage of ananda that
finally takes to the stage of satchidananda. The mystic, after following
the eight steps—yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara,
dharana, dhyana and samadhi, makes himself entitled for attaining
unitary consciousness. To realize the Divine, he crosses the jagrat,
svapna, susupt and turiya states and feels His presence in soul, nature
and the whole universe. For him, the world seems to be transitory.
Hence, he releases himself from the samsara, the cycle of birth and
rebirth in order to enter the state of bliss—nirvana. The main sources
that make Indian culture spiritually rich are Vedas, Upanishands and,
Smritis, Darshans, Puranas, the Ramayan, the Mahabharata and the
Bhagwad Gita etc.
India is not simply a geographical land. It is much more than that.
Assimilation and synthesis are her two virtues that make her alive
despite of many races, tribes, languages, religions and creeds. Cultural
synthesis is in her blood. Spirituality is her life-breath. Yoga is her
strength. The figure of the cosmic dance of Shiva is her symbol that
reveals the concept of creation, preservation and destruction. Though
the Western culture has embraced her body closely, her spirit remains
untouched. The concept of composite culture is yielding place to the
light of multiculturalism which values the uniqueness of different
cultures and traditions. The western storm, no doubt, has shaken the
leaves of Indian culture but failed to destroy its roots which are firm
and strong in their spiritual foundation. The spirit of tolerance and
cosmopolitanism (vasudevkutumbukum), already includes the concept
of multiculturalism in itself. Indian culture is now on the way to adapt
itself to the new global environment that prefers the metaphor of “salad
bowl” to the metaphor of “cooking pot.” India which is known as
Hindustan or Bharat is not simply a country but Bharat Mata, the mother
who has fostered a continuous and uninterrupted civilization “for about
five thousand years of known and partly recorded history.” She is not
to be judged by the weaknesses of a few centuries but by her long
history of establishment and accomplishment. “A culture,” writes
Aurobindo, “must be judged first by its essential spirit, then by its best
accomplishment and, lastly, by its power of survival, renovation and
adaptation to new phases of the permanent needs of the race” (64). Indian
culture, by virtue of its tolerance and cosmopolitan character, has
translated itself into all-embracing human culture. The emerging
multiculturalism, though seems to be new, is somewhere an outcome of
seeds sown earlier in the form of diversity in ancient times. “Diversity
has a meaning and a value. I am one—may I be many—this omnipotent
will of the Lord fulfils itself by projecting infinite diversities . . . . Indeed,
it is the diversity on the surface projected and controlled by the Divine
Unity inside that gives rise to the beauty, order and harmony of nature”
(Hinduism at a Glance 227). There is no denying that, to some extent,
the Indian culture is in the grip of Serpentine Western Culture but its
spiritual roots and positive viewpoints make protective cover round it
against all the polluted forces. It is hoped that it will survive because it
teaches how to see “the Eternal One among the many and diverse”
resulting in the unity in diversity. Swami Nirvedananda writes: “There
may exist diversity of castes, but there must not be any hatred or rancor
between them. Each group is sacred. Each has its place and function .
. . . Each group must have a scope for cultural uplift” (235). Hence, Indian
culture is altering its composite design without altering its basic design
so that it may cope with the present day multicultural fashion. It has
neither left its composite spirit wholly nor embraced multicultural one
in toto. It lies somewhere in between but its needle gravitates towards
multiculturalism.
Works Cited
Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy. London: Smith, Elder & Co,
1869. Print.
Aurobindo, Sri. The Foundation of Indian Culture. Pondicherry: Sri
Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1959. Second Impression 1980. Print.
Friedl, John. The Human Portrait Introduction to Cultural
Anthropology. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1981. Print.
Nirvedananda, Swami. Hinduism at a Glance. Kolkata: Ramakrishna
Mission, 1944. Rpt. 1979.
“Shanti Mantras.” Web. 15 Jan. 2012. http://hinducosmos.com/
mantra_shanti.html.
Change and Dynamism in African Society:

Exploring New Directions in the Novels
of Chinua Achebe
Monir Ahmed Choudhury
The theme of change and dynamism in African society has been

one of the most stimulating issues in African literature. The western
writers, explorers, and missionaries tended to depict Africa as a stagnant
continent unaffected by the progress and development in the outside
world. Joseph Conrad, in his novel Heart of Darkness, describes a
journey through the river Congo into the heart of Africa as wandering
“on a prehistoric earth” (37). The result consequent upon this was the
development of self-denigration in African society. Chinua Achebe took
to writing novels as a means of protest against what he thought racial
misrepresentation. He realised, “there is such a thing as absolute power
over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can
arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like” (Home
24). So, he tried to capture their past in fictional terms to instill in his
people some degree of confidence and to help them grow out of their
self-denigration. He felt it was his duty to do “the task of re-education
and regeneration” (Morning 45) of his society with/about the civilized
values and philosophies of their traditional past. He argued further that
the real challenge lies not only in recovering their suppressed civilization
but also in learning wisdom from it. The wisdom that will enlighten Africa
on how this cultural disruption—resulting from the cultural colonization
by the white man—can be re-ordered by giving new directions in
consonance with their latent cultural and traditional forces.
The exploration of how Achebe has tried to ‘re-order’ his society
through his novels calls for a very close reading of the texts because of
the nature of his creative bent and critical acumen. In the first instance,
he emphasizes that when generating wisdom from their oral literatures
and cultural traditions one needs to be divergent in attitude and
simultaneously look for multiple, often contradictory, interpretations. In
an interview with Feroza Jussawalla, Achebe affirmed this dynamic

aspect of his society: “Where one thing stands another thing must stand
beside it” (Jussawalla 63). In the same vein, he further stated, “For every
proverb you produce I can give you one that says the opposite. This is
the way it seems to me that the world is made to run” (qtd. in Mugo
34). Since he has transmitted these Igbo philosophies into his fictional
texts, they create a complex web of meanings. This makes every new
reading an ever enriching experience. So the texts have the potential to
create multiple complementary directions for the growth and
development of their society and culture. Perhaps he wanted to leave
them that way to generate diverse path breaking ways in the society.
Ikem Osodi, a poet and the editor of the National Gazette in the novel
Anthills of the Savannah, seems to resemble his mind in the best
possible way when he says: “contradictions are the very stuff of life”
(Anthills 100). Secondly Achebe in looking for new directions for his
society in the crossroads of African culture does not see west as ‘the
Other.’ He once stated that the emerging African society after its contact
with the western cultures found a regrettable direction. Instead of
accepting good things from both the cultures, the society has
unfortunately retained “some of the worst elements of the old . . . and
some of the worst of the new are added, and so on. So if it were for me
to order society, I would be very unhappy at the way things have turned
out” (qtd. in Killam 4-5).
To get rid of this situation, Achebe tried to find out when and
how things went wrong. This search starts from the pre-colonial African
society. When Beatrice Okoh, the fiancée of Chris, asked in Anthills of
the Savannah “What must a people do to appease an embittered
history?” (Anthills 220), she was actually exploring how to re-set a
society which has been programmed by a colonial past. Achebe laments:
The lack of real leaders in Igboland goes back, of course, to the
beginnings of colonial administration. Once the white man had
crushed Igbo resistance it was relatively easy for him to locate
upstarts and ruffians in the community who would uphold his
regime at the expense of their own people. From those days the
average Igbo leader’s mentality has not been entirely free of the
collaborating Warrant Chief syndrome. (An Image 68)
So, any attempt to explore and re-orient dynamism in African
culture and society inevitably involves the colonial discourse. Because
it is this colonial experience that
created the ‘man of two worlds’ theory to prove that no matter

how much the native was exposed to European influences he
could never truly absorb them; . . . Now, did this mean that the
educated native was no different at all from his brothers in the
bush? Oh, no! He was different; he was worse. His abortive effort
at education and culture though leaving him totally unredeemed
and un-regenerated had nonetheless done something to him—it
had deprived him of his links with his own people whom he no
longer even understood and who certainly wanted none of his
dissatisfaction or pretensions. (Morning 5)
The result is a great disaster for them as they have been cut off
from their great source of education and regeneration.
One of the tasks that Achebe did in his novels like Things Fall
Apart (1958) and Arrow of God (1964), which were set in traditional
African settings, is to try to recover their lost culture, history and
tradition because it is only from their root that they can start looking
for new directions towards modernization. That is why Achebe says,
“we are all engaged, we are all embarked on a journey through history”
(qtd. in Vijayasree 226). Thus he re-narrated their past in the form of
fiction from the native perspectives and unfolded the store house of
their traditional knowledge to begin their journey afresh. He has clarified
that African culture and her identity would remain distinct from that of
Europe. To quote: “Most African writers write out of an African
experience and of commitment to an African destiny. For them that
destiny does not include a future European identity . . .” (Morning 7).
The readers themselves will have to be decolonized to appreciate
the aesthetics, beauty and dignity of their people. They are expected to
be oriented to the African “stand-point” (qtd. in Mugo 2) only then
they can be able to do justice to the understanding and appreciation of
their culture. Thus describing African culture from her own perspectives
unfolds the real aspects of African dynamism which the western writers
failed to notice for ages. This task of the reconstruction of one’s true
self-image is indispensible because the colonizers first destroy the
native’s mind of their positive self-image to construct a justifiable pretext
to rule them. As Achebe puts it: “Colonization may indeed be a very
complex affair, but one thing is certain: you do not walk in, seize the
land, the person, the history of another, and then sit back and compose
hymns of praise in his honor” (The Education 112).
Europe’s construction of the image of Africa as a backward

continent prompted Achebe to create his fictional works with a view to
showing that their past “was not one long night of savagery” (Morning
45). He wants to rewrite his past to restore their lost culture and dignity.
He believes “art is man’s constant effort to create for himself a different
order of reality from that which is given to him” (Hopes 95). His first
novel Things Fall Apart demonstrates African culture in her very own
perspectives. He evaluates African life, culture, society and tradition in
the light of African value systems. He argues that anyone willing to
seek “an insight into their world must seek it along their own way. Some
of these ways are folk-tales, proverbs, proper names, rituals and
festivals” (Morning 94). He delineates the Igbo culture and its history
through these methods. So, its history remains open-ended as the
narrative voices, in his novels, change their perspectives, and multiple
voices emerge to delineate multiple versions of the time. From his novels,
one can get histories of the era rather than one single History. This
sense of multiple histories illuminates diverse ways of growing towards
progress and development.
The novels, Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, basically depict
how some people of that traditional society violated the wisdom and
knowledge of the oral literatures and paved the way for their respective
tragedies. For example, in Things Fall Apart, the society honors a man
by judging him “according to his worth and not according to the worth
of his father” (Things 6). It opens the door of greatness for each and
every individual of the community. That is the reason why Okonkwo,
the protagonist, succeeded in becoming one of the lords of the clan. In
such a society, depriving an osu of his or her social status only because
of their forefather’s role may be a part of that tradition, but it was
essentially against the law of the land. It was because of the violation
of such laws that the clan ultimately disintegrated as the outcasts, like
others, forsook the African traditions for Christianity. A tradition which
had been changing, for instance, Ogbuefi Ezeudu, himself an old man,
cited that his father was told how in the past an evil custom of punishing
a man by death “was stopped because it spoilt (the week of) the peace
which it was meant to preserve.” (Things 23), but the change was not
fast enough and in the proper direction. What Ulu, a god created by
the people of Umuaro in the novel Arrow of God, means when he cries:
“If the rat cannot flee fast enough / Let him make way for the tortoise”
(Arrow 229) seems to be the reason why the traditional society had given
way to the whiteman’s invasion.
The novels, No Longer at Ease (1960), A Man of the People (1966)
and Anthills of the Savannah (1987), which were set in the modern era,
emphasize the need for the re-education and re-generation of western
educated elite who have lost all touch of spiritualism and become
alienated even in their own country. Christopher Oriko, Minister of
Information, in Anthills of the Savannah, lamented the way “Lord Lugard
College trained her boys to be lonely leaders in separate remote places,
not cooped up together in one crummy family business” (Anthills 66).
And at the end of the novel we see Ikem Osodi, in the same vein,
diagnosing the prime failure of the government “is the failure of our
rulers (who studied at Lord Lugard College) to re-establish vital inner
links with the poor and dispossessed of this country” (Anthills 141).
Perhaps Achebe here is emphasizing the need for Africanizing the
educational systems for orienting the people close to their culture and
tradition. These novels constantly try to re-interpret the myths and
stories of the oral tradition to meet the emerging socio-economic
environment. For example, Beatrice Okoh in Anthills of the Savannah
became Chielo, the priestess of the new society; and the old man of the
Abazon delegation illuminating the underlying significance of the
traditional saluting “to everyone his due” (Anthills 123) that in a modern
African society it is telling us, “every man has what is his; do not by
pass him to enter his compound” (Anthills 123). That co-existence of
individualistic and socialistic attitudes of Africa’s traditional culture still
pervades the rural societies. But their adequate representation is not
there because their leaders like the tortoise of the folk-tale in Things
Fall Apart do not belong to them (Things 68). That re-education was
necessary for the leaders of Postcolonial African states. In A Man of
the People, Achebe re-educated his hero, Odili Samalu of his western
perception, in evaluating native values and people when his father
Hezekiah Samalu sadly analyzed his non-belonging to western education
and culture as the reason for not getting any information regarding
Odili’s dealings with the local MP, Chief Nanga. Hezekiah Samalu
protested: “It does not surprise me that you slunk back and said nothing
about it to me. Not that you ever say anything to me, why should you?
Do I know book? Am I not of the Old Testament?” (A Man 108)
This alienation of the western educated native elite from their
people and culture brought disaster to Sam, the military dictator of
Kangan in the novel Anthills of the Savannah. Christopher Oriko

realised the lesson at the end of his life and redeemed himself. After the
fall of Sam, the depiction of the unruly way of the celebration of the
masses was there to warn the people that Africanization is not the final
solution to the problem. Natives are expected to bring about a synthesis
of the good things from both the cultures, and fight against the evils of
both the cultures, rather than branding either of them as ‘the Other.’
Ikem Osodi fought against the evils of western culture represented by
Sam and sacrificed his life. Christopher stood up against the crimes
perpetuated by the post-dictatorial regime of Sam and laid down his life.
In the novel No Longer at Ease, Achebe shows how the society, instead
of accepting the good things of both the African and western cultures,
imbibed the bad things from them. They retained the evil custom of
regarding osus as outcasts and imbibed the corruption which the West
had brought to African society. Obi’s acceptance of western education
was not a curse to Africa. But when Obi, the protagonist of the novel,
insisted on marrying his beloved Clara, an outcast, Joseph, his friend,
thought it was another problem, rather than a solution to the problem,
that European education was bringing to Africa (No Longer 57).
In Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, Achebe narrates many
instances where evil customs were abolished by the people of the pre-
colonial era. This proves the society was dynamic and the change that
Africa went through in the colonial and the post-colonial periods is an
extension of that dynamism. His chief concern in the five novels is that
the traditional dynamism should not be hindered by anyone at any time.
This may be the reason, why at the end of some of his novels, there
exist certain implications which stand for the optimistic and bright future
of Africa. In Arrow of God, Achebe proves that in Igbo society new
myths can be made to face emerging situations. Ezeulu’s attitude to
change is in consonance with the traditional Igbo tradition. He has
sacrificed his son Oduche in the white man’s ways and seems to regard
this as the modern version of the traditional sacrifice. Ezeulu was not
suffering from any kind of self-abasement and yet sent his son Oduche
to learn the whiteman’s secrets so that he can defend his society against
them. He did not know that his son would be alienated from Africa’s
religion and culture in the process. Thus the subsequent fall of Ezeulu,
on one hand, the end of a glorious period of African society, and on
the other, it was the beginning of a new epoch. The birth of a new age
is suggested in the dream of Ezeulu where he saw Ugoye’s “hut was
already falling in and a few blades of green grass had spouted on the
thatch . . . . The noise of the burial party had since disappeared in the
distance. But beside the sorrow of the solitary voice that now wailed
after them they might have been returning with a bride” (Arrow 222). In
A Man of the People, it is heralded that a new school has been set up
in the name of Max, the martyr, and in Anthills of the Savannah it is
the naming ceremony of Ikem’s daughter in which the readers can pin
their faith on the regeneration of Africa’s cultural ethos. The novel ends
with the prayer for involving each and every individual of the society
in the nation building process.
This is how, Achebe, through his novels, not only constructs
a composite picture of Africa as a dynamic continent, inferior to no other
continents, but also heralds a new world of culture and civilization to
explore. His novels are also perfect pieces of art which represent and
recreate the respective times. They also give their readers room for
finding things to build even a better destiny for Africa and the rest of
the world as well.
Works Cited
Achebe, Chinua. Anthills of the Savannah. London: Picador, 1987. Print.

---. Arrow of God. New York: Anchor, 1989. Print.
---. The Education of a British Protected Child. New York: Anchor, 2009.
Print.
---. Home and Exile. New York: Anchor, 2000. Print.
---. Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays, 1965-1987. London:
Heinemann, 1988. Print.
---. An Image of Africa and the Trouble with Nigeria. London: Penguin,
1983. Print.
---. A Man of the People. London: Penguin, 2001. Print.
---. Morning yet on Creation Day: Essays. London: Heinemann, 1975.
Print.
---. No Longer at Ease. London: Penguin, 2010. Print.
---. Things Fall Apart. Oxford: Heinemann, 1996. Print.
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Ed. Robert Kimbrough. New York:
Norton, 1972. Print.
Jussawalla, Feroza and Reed Way Dasenbrock, cond. and ed., Interviews
with Writers of the Post-colonial World. London: UP of
Mississippi, 1992. Print.
Killam, G. D. The Writings of Chinua Achebe. London: Heinemann, 1977.
Print.
Mugo, Micere Githae. Visions of Africa: The Fiction of Chinua Achebe,
Margaret Laurence, Elspeth Huxley and Ngugi wa Thiong’O.
Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau, 1978. Print.
Ravichandra, C. Vijayasree. “A Journey through History: A Study of
Chinua Achebe’s Fiction.” Commonwealth Fiction. Ed. R. K.
Dhawan. New Delhi: Classical Publishing Company, 1988. 226-237.
Print.
SUNDOWN POETRY
Pronab Kumar Majumder
1) I am world’s last evening song

Only the drowning Sun knows it
Am I taking anything along?
No, crematorium puts the limit
2) Now nobody mourns Sundown
Those who remain think of happy night
I have nothing to fear evening frown
Somebody must be there to watch daylight
3) What if a drop of water is lost in sand
Huge water will come up to flood
Nevertheless I love my lived land
So long I am a man of flesh and blood
4) When my song will be over somebody will sing
One goes only another to bring
The world never perished altogether
Came other people, other order, may be better.
Black American
Discourse and Women Writers
Rohit Phutela
I’ve been a slave:

Caesar told me to keep his door-steps clean.
I brushed the boots of Washington.
I’ve been a worker:
Under my hands the pyramids arose.
I made the mortar for the Woolworth Buildings
.............................
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair
It had tacks in it, and splinters, and boards torn up
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
-Langston Hughes (Hutson 33)
American literature in English is dotted with complexities of

experience and imaginative fodder for the striving author. These
complexities and pluralities are not, however, subjective and
individualistic. It is the topographical and the anthropological grid of
America which gives it such varied hues. These shades comprise the
numerous accents, dialects and regions practised and inhabited by a
multiplicity of cultures co-existing, validated by the turbulent yet
thoroughly inviting history of Americas (the historical reference to
America propelled by the earliest settlers and the Spanish explorers).
From being a house to the Red Indians, the aborigines of America, to
the contemporary heterogeneity characterised melting pot, America has
been a feast to the anthropological inquiries all around the globe. The
evolution has been gradual yet steady. The earliest compositeness
stimulating factor was the influx of African slaves from the dark alcoves
of the Dark Continent, believed to have surfaced for the first time in the
closing years of 16th century. The slave trade was a legal practice and
the human trafficking was not as condemned and scourged lawfully and
humanitarianly as it is today. Such a disordering cultural exercise began

the tryst of hardcore Americanism with a new kind of foreign experience.
Such an encounter was both piquant in curiosity as well as racially
inflating. The second eventuality i.e. the race, needs bigger address,
since the race, colour, gender and culture are quite inextricably entwined
together in the human discourse for centuries.
The racial and gender pride is an instinctive commodity in the
human existence market marked with imperialistic aspirations. The toxic
impact of power defines the actions and strategies which have political
and economical implications. America and the American discourses had
been long overshadowed by the British and French colonialism fuelled
with a motive of positing their superiority over their colonial subjects.
The crowding of Puritanism in the New England and its surrounding
swathes, is an example of colonialism firming its foot into the already
riotous superstructure of America. Along with these self-proclaimed
moral police penetrated, the black human discourse in the form of African
slaves. The trading or bartering of slaves brought into America a new
way of reflecting upon the issues pertaining to and problemetising the
racial and ethnic identities.
The Afro-American history is tainted with the blot of slavery. The
slaves set free by the movement were haunted by the memories of the
past. The Blacks had a tough time in the South where the struggle for
survival was beyond explanation. The Blacks voyaged to the Northern
continent in a hope of finding a contented life defined by better opening
in terms of social and economic terms. But the hope was nothing if not
delusion as their racial bottleneck hung like an Albatross around the
neck. The hatred by the Whites reflected in the form of ferocious
intolerance and discrimination in all the spheres of life. Violent crimes
against the children and women further drove the Black community to
the pit. The harrowing racial and cultural genocide, economic
dependence in the shape of ghastly destitution and devalued ethnic
identity instilled in them a sense of shame, guilt, inferiority, cynicism,
and alienation rather than a camaraderie and oneness which such an
experience of such gigantic proportions entails.
The confluence of such a decrepit civilization with the hierarchal
White culture resulted in the new way of defining an American subject—
the White American and the Black American. Since the former had made
inroads into the Americas during its wilderness and also were the
representative of the white hegemonic superstructure, their claim towards
the logical and superior citizens was taken for granted. The outcome
was unappealing for the agents of other ethnicities and identities as
they were forced to get marginalized and subalterned. This unprivileged
class included many non-European characters gravitated from the Orient
and of course, the Black Africans who later were termed as Black
Americans. This phenomenon of Black Americanism is the hinge around
which the novels of some of the most endowed and accomplished writers
like C. L. R. James, Richard Wright, Alice Walker and Toni Morrison
have woven their tales. These novelists are the descendents of the Black
African diaspora and thus are not foreign to the oppression and
inequities of which their derivation had been at the receiving end for
centuries.
It is the consciousness of being at the fringes that informs and
defines a Black identity in America. From the days of slave-trade to the
carnage of Blacks in the American Civil war of 1842 as pictorially
highlighted in Martin Scorsese’s motions picture Gangs of New York,
the Black African generation of America had been at the radar of the
provincial Americanism and romping patriotism. American Blacks had
been subdued to poverty, subjugation and inequalities of all sorts. Racial
prejudices against the Black African community are reflected in the
pejorative name of “nigger” which has been glued to them by the
dominant white communities. Such an imbalance of power and hideous
injustice in political, social and economic contours of life is what has
defined the Blacks in America and also their ghettoisation. This is the
cardinal cause of ‘loss of self’ which emanates from the experiences of
thrusted alienation and marginalisation.
There had been other communities in America too which had been
on the perimeter for epochs. But none comes closer to the Black
experience which was marred by slavery and exploitation of the soul
and body. Other business classes and traders were also made to feel
their otherness at times like the sprawling Chinese diaspora and later
the Indian diaspora. But no one could go so deep into the skin of the
American culture as the Black diaspora with substantial reasons to back
it. While the Asian diasporas like Indian and Chinese have always been
stimulated by the economic bottlenecks of their countries and have been
mercantile in pursuing their aims in America, Black diaspora of America
has a different connection with America. The Blacks had come into
America not on their own volition, unlike the other diasporas, but by
the colonial hammer brought over them by the imperialistic powers
prevalent over the time. Their jobs as maids and bondmen in the
American households and farmlands were made to be internalised by
them as their destinies and not something as their assertion of
individuality by earning bucks and living lives on their own and of their
own choices.
The process includes erasing the Black history of the African
nativity and the homeland replacing it with the newer one which favours
and empowers the host culture. The design of the White culture was to
plunge the Black Africans further into the cesspool of slavery and
dependence to prevent any cultural and economic independence. All
ties with the past snapped, the Blacks Africans in America maintained
their situation in America as a point of no return. Though, the diaspora
with its ambivalent existence has to accept that the return to the
hinterland is not practically viable after firming their roots and their
further expansion, yet home as a place of safety, security and
belongingness is always seated in the hearts and remains frozen in the
memory. The alienation and a feeling of living at the fringes of the
mainstream are impossible to be denied and they surface over and over
again provoked by the racial and discriminatory dynamics of the
dominant culture. In such situation of emotional and psychological crisis,
it is the myth of home which eases out the trauma of getting uprooted
and marginalised. The Whites in America wrested this solace from the
Black Africans making them acknowledge their cultural bankruptcy and
“historylessness” unlike the Indian or the Chinese diaspora. With such
antecedents, the Black American diaspora became the sitting ducks for
the White dominance and thus, exploitation, discrimination, genocidal
offensives and ante were to be stacked upon and gelled with the Black
American demography forever.
Correlated with these subjugations, prejudices and biases are the
positions of black women in such turbulent circumstances. There is so
much in common to talk about between women and the oppressed lot
like the Black Americans. The gender inequality has been as old as the
human civilization and comes into being in every human discourse. The
female sex has been appropriated as weaker and fragile which needs the
shield of the masculine to protect and define itself. Thus, marriage as
an institution came into existence. The pretext of marriage thus assumed
form of a cultural licence to restrain the imaginative and potential
insurgent tendencies in women. Worse still the women and the feminine
served the purpose of defining the dichotomy between the male and
the female. The masculine stands for reason and logic while the
feminine, being the second half of the binary polarity is just the
embodiment of speculation and impractical ideas about culture and
civilization. Luce Irigaray, an eminent French feminist has made a highly
critical observation about the trend in the Western philosophy which
argues that the subject of knowledge and reason is always defined in
the western tradition as masculine. It
Comes into being through the subordination of the feminine, which
is associated with the inchoate, undifferentiated, formless,
in(de)finite materiality of the world that must be transcended,
objectified, and categorized into proper identities if rational
speculation, the power of reason to form concepts and rational
representations of the world, is to engage in ideation and describe
truth. Only an abstraction from matter can constitute the
transcendental subject of knowledge as an autonomous body
elevated above the specifities of empirical existence. The concepts
and representations of the subject of reason mirror the world,
and the material world has meaning only as it provides
reflection of rational ideas. (Irigaray 112)
Thus, the woman becomes a mere representation of the subjective
knowledge connotated by the masculine. Irigaray uses the term
“speculation” in a double sense of mirroring (specularity) and
conceptualizing (or rationally speculating) to describe the relation of
male reason to female matter. By disconnecting reason from matter and
by permitting matter to be taken as a separate object of knowledge that
mirrors rational concepts, speculation establishes the self-identity of the
masculine subject of knowledge. Thus, they are relegated into oblivion
by the rhetoric of the male politics which refuses to acknowledge the
power of the woman discourse on which the male discourse of
reason and logic thrives due to sociological dynamics. Subjugation
of women in the society is an important element of such social
patterning.
While the women in all the civilizations and citizenries are
subjected to the inequalities and domination, the position of women in
the Black-American circles is even more complexity-ridden and tragic.
The Black-American folk’s experiences of the identity-crisis are very
much understandable owing to the miserable slave history of America.
Yet there is another sphere of reckless and sadistic exercise of power
which harrows the alienation and identity-crisis further. This circle is
that of the Black American women who have borne the burnt of twin
oppressors – the White dominance and atrocious social practices and
the second one of the gender inequality dished out to them within their
households or their socially constructed edifices of relationships and
dealings. The chief among these relationships is the social institution
of marriage where the black women recognize themselves being subjected
to subjugation due to the masculine pattering of reason and logic as
suggested by Luce Irigaray in the article cited above.
The hegemonic ideology of the males is worsened further against
the women when the males themselves are kept at the periphery of the
power centre. The despair of the denial of inclusion in the mainstream
or the consequent economic, political and social backlogs of breakdowns,
the masculine reason may assert itself in exercising its facile power over
the speculation which is socially disproportionate in authority with it.
The speculation may become the victim of aggressive but powerless
materialism’s pent up emotions. This has been the case with the Black-
American women of America. Denied their imagination owing to their
sex, the Black-American women have also been subjected to numerous
offensives due to the colour of their skins and the collective history of
Blacks in America. They have been targeted and tarnished by both the
forces – racism and sexism. While racial bigotry is reserved for them by
the outside world of their houses, the sexist ideology has battered them
at home, within their families. It’s the double trouble which has created
the tottering and wheezing image of the Black-American women
struggling for its identity. The Black female’s unique position of double-
victimhood is suggested in the thoughts of Wade-Gayles who
acknowledges this disparity of experiences of Black-American women
and the White American women:
There are three major circles of reality in American Society which
reflect degrees of power and powerlessness. There is a large circle
in which white people most of them men, experience influence and
power. Far away from them there is a smaller circle, narrow space,
in which black people regardless of sex experience uncertainty,
exploitation and powerlessness. Hidden in this second circle is a
third small enclosure in which Black women experience pain,
isolation and vulnerability. These are the distinguishing marks of
black womanhood in White America. (Wade-Gayles 45)
The experiences of women in Black-American context pale further

in comparison to the White women who, although women, evade
at least one form of resistance to their flights towards identity and
individuality. While the White female has to rise against the odds
exemplified in its sexist agenda, the Black-American female has to
overcome the odds of womanhood as well as the prejudiced racial
practice.
Such an intricate position of the Black American women has given
force and imagination to propel the Black American narratives in the
form of novels and poetry. The writers of this tradition have reacted
pungently to the treatment dished out to the Blacks in America ever
since the Black diaspora set its foot in the American continent. These
narratives date back to the period of slavery as also spanning its
abolition and the surge in the protests against the white hegemony to
date when the Black Americans have seated themselves well in all the
social denominations of America yet are discriminated and biased on
some accounts. Back American literature thus, becomes a body of literary
works which reflect and critique the White hegemony and attribute the
loss of Black primitive innocence and cultural consciousness to the same
White prejudiced mode of behaviour.
Among the major voices of Black American literature and cause
have been Phillis Wheatley (perhaps the first littérateur of Black Ameican
origins), Fredrick Douglas, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Langston
Hughes, Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. The last two listed writers
are women novelists and their mode of narration is, ostensibly feministic
highlighting the multiple threats and challenges of subalternity borne
by the women of Black American descent. Their form of protests is
different from the sort displayed by the Black African novelists like
Buchi Emechta or Farida Karodia who also further the plights of Black
women but do so in the African contexts such as Nigeria, Kenya or
Zambia. The women novelists of this tradition tow the lines of their male
counterparts like Thiogo N’Gugi, Wole Soyinka, Andre Brink, etc.
encapsulating the consequences effected by the advent and blend of
European culture into the traditionality informed culture of the dark
continent. Their beliefs and customs ranging from rebirth, clairvoyance
and spiritual communion with the ancestors to the clannish conventions
and war-fares formed the warp and woof of the African novels penned
by the native Black African novelists. The pride and honour of being
descended from a great pedigree of Black gods and goddesses and its
susceptibility to corruption brought into the pristine hinterland of

African topography touted as the “White Man’s Burden” by the
imperialistic and colonial forces is the hinge around which these themes
have been woven and articulated in the colonial genre called fiction.
The women novelists of Africa have tarred their novels with the same
brush but have done so zeroing in on the position of women in such
patriarchal societies. The novels such as Joys of Motherhood (Buchi
Emechta) and the ensuing trilogy touch the issues of the Black African
women in the African and sexist context rather than racial context since
their continuity with their surroundings and cultural ambience prevent
them from any discrimination aligned to race or the colour of skin.
As discussed above, the women in Black American context have
to bear the brunt of being emasculated gender in the already battered
and bruised Black American cultural context. Their quest for self-
determination and self-stabilisation is wrought with spikes of both the
racial and gender biases. The novels and other literary variants are voices
of social protests and are cultural documents of the most hideous
discriminating politics played against the Black American women. Such
novels don’t fail to foreground the evils of exploitation, violence and
abuse in all forms targeted at the Black American women within their
own ghettoes.
Works Cited
Hutson, Jean Blackwell. “Remembering Langston.” Essence Magazine

(February 1992): 32-40. Print.
Irigaray, Luce. Speech is Never Neutral. London: Taylor & Francis
Group, 1998. Print.
Wade-Gayles, Gloria. Pushed Back to Strength: A Black Woman’s
Journey Home. New York: Beacon Press, 1993. Print.
Reflections on the “Feminine Cause” in

Robin S. Ngangom’s Poetry
Rosaline Jamir
There are not many poets in India, who write with more passion
than Robin S. Ngangom. In his poetry, Robin S. Ngangom subtly creates
an unvarnished history of the suppression experienced by the female,
expressing sensitivity to feministic issues giving a new language, colour
and expression to the importance of feminine physique and psychology,
in help shaping better homes and an amiable society. The heartstrings
of the poet, as he hearkens to the yells of the female and pays witness
to the slew of struggles with which she is engaged in a perpetual conflict
get opened up in the medium of poetry. The trepidation, surging through
the mind of the female, resulting from the unmanly attitude of the
patriarchal social codes towards the female, who is seen and branded
as a wonky creature, has been shared by the poet. Patriarchy demands
obeisance from the part of the female but at the same time the female is
viewed by the male, ripping her off an identity and individuality, as a
mere lascivious object, specially framed for his biological satisfaction.
This obdurate attitude of the patriarchy as well as the sensitive simplicity
of the female finds adequate representation in the poetry of Robin S.
Ngangom. He is not a feminist of the usual type with ‘much ado about
nothing’ and is a writer with a purpose. His love and concern for the
stratified gender is reflected in ‘At Noh Ka Likai’s’ in a much different
way than in other works. The poet eternalizes Ka Likai in this poem with
an amusingly fewer number of words. His concise diction speaks more
than elegant speeches, from the pulpits for the liberation of women. The
incident of Ka Likai’s suicide is made the theme of this poem with an
intention to open the mind of the society, towards the intolerable life
that most women are living in our society. The concept of womanhood
and the closely allied concept virginity, valued supreme but paid scarce
respect and reverence in the lusty expectations, mostly occurring as
futile, unreal dreams, find portrayal in the poem “Lessons.” Here the
poet unmasks the sensations and sensibilities of the female as she

passes through the diverse stormy experiences in the course of her
historic growth which in the eyes of the patriarchy is nothing but a
biological growth naturally occurring. But Robin S. Ngangom like a
mutinous writer, never circumscribed by the patriarchal notions, though
biologically a part of that specific culture and tradition, discloses the
pent-up emotions of the female, which find no outlet to extricate itself
freely. He says:
There was hard maidenhood
Preserved with cold kisses
and easy girls
trying to borrow virginity
for one solitary night.
There were widows concealing
quiet fears in urns
and rich women comforted
for the smallest pain
There were variations
of the same day
the same silent rain
and repetitive winters (Time’s Crossroads 38)
Robin S. Ngangom, while speaking in favor of the feminine cause,
often brings in the imagery of the winter, which, according to him, may
appear to be an eyesore and similar is the situation with the life of each
woman whose existence, to the patriarchal norms, may be having the
effect of a similar atmosphere and along with it the frigid, isolated
existence of the woman too, find representation here. The paroxysm of
ire, cast at the female, demolishes her to the core and even the riotous
protests, may be from very few corners, consequently get subsided
through the provocative proclamations of the male. “Cultural
cannibalism” reigns in the contemporary society, making clamor of
exploitation and amidst this the life of a woman gets sidelined and even
her words are given only the status of ‘fuddy-duddy’ ideas. The
excruciating agony suffered by a woman and the inescapable bond of a
woman to the household, which at times becomes bondage, where on
many occasions, she is forced to were the garment of a ‘doltish being’
and how even amidst all these a woman survives, is a question of
relevant and through the poem “Weekend,” Robin S. Ngangom makes
a brushwork of such an enduring woman:
.... The man starts berating, then beating the woman

Rather slowly, not violently
As if he is scrubbing a costly vase
Afraid to break her
The woman bowls in the still, humid nights
…In the morning the man teases the woman in bed
The woman not angrily, but rather pleasantly says
Please stop this not in front of the children
They share a smoke. After a while the woman
Gets up. She goes to the kitchen and sings
A popular film song (Words and the Silence 34)
Here we get a typical picture an Indian women along with the
carousing male in the Indian context where nobody empathizes with her,
rather emotive, sympathetic words flood her vicinity of suffering, which
instead of providing a consolation pricks her deep down in the heart
bringing to the realm of her memory visions of a homely existence. Robin
S. Ngangom, being a mosaic writer, gathers the little pebbles of female
life to erect a mansion which would certainly delineate a ‘complete
woman’ with all her frailties, frustrations, powers and potentials. In the
modern life a woman feels, in an irreparable way zonked due to the
diverse pressures that trounce her and brings herself esteem down to
the lowest pedestal and even while she is numb, due to the diverse
factors she is made liable to carry out the different roles which no one
except her could execute with perfection. These lifelong enterprises of
a woman, beginning initially as a daughter and passing through ‘woman’
‘wife’ and ‘mother’ and of course a laudable enterprise get portrayed in
“A poem for Mother.” Here the poet expressed his thorough awareness
regarding a woman especially a mother:
I know how you toil as all mothers do
For unmarried sons and aging husband
And aberated daughters-in-law
Worried about us, for a long time
Your lips couldn’t blossom into a smile
Times have furrowed your dear face and
The first signs of snow are on your hair. (Words and the
Silence 24)
Unlike a man, a woman has the capacity to be there in the extremes
as her nature is a highly flexible one. She can be grave and pure, as the
demand of the circumstances and these incredible dimensions of the
nature make her completely stay beyond the grasp of the male, who can
understand her only in biological terms. A woman can even scrimp and
allocate what is gathered out of it for higher purposes. This positive
life enduring tendency largely found among the poor, banished one of
the countryside who can placate themselves with their little joys and
hopes, gets a representation in the poem “Imphal” and here too, Robin
S. Ngangom points an accusing finger at the incompatible behavioral
patterns of the male in his treatment of the female, where he becomes a
demi-god and the female a subject carry out anything and everything
for the male. Here he says:
…. The mained woman with meager leaves
In the bazaars imploring pity
The men loading over them
And the girls ubiquitous
Spying from balconies
On display with renovated faces
In streets, in colleges,
Girls context as beauty queens. (Time’s Crossroads 62)
Robin S. Ngangom, like many other poets, exercises his poetic skills
in pursuit of the sinuous, serpentine beauty of nature and in this attempt,
often contrary to his sturdy confidence he finds the incongruity that
has befallen the state of affairs in the present due to the impact of the
past. The obnoxious appearance of the man and material in the present
day, brought about mainly as a result of the flowering of the natural
culture, nauseates the poet, but even here in this sorry state of nature
too he, obviously perceive the dramatic female life, shows of its plumy
magnificence which is projected out by the male in the open social
scenario. The masquerade conducted by the male in his approach to
the female mostly guided not by love but by lust comes under sharp
criticism in the hands of Robin S. Ngangom in the poem “When You
Do Not Return” and here he invites the attention of the public to the
parallel transitions occurring in the life of a woman as well as in nature
both of which are prey to the noxious consumerist culture of the male.
The poet discovers:
Leaves no longer respond
To the alchemy of seasons
And the heart lies fallow
Expecting winter rain. Erath
Has closed again like a woman
When you do not return and dreams

Turn to rust, the flame and the dew
Cannot create art. Only lust breaks
On the branches of night, and men
Wear hideous marks, the fragrance
Of the wild rose is lost, and only
The flowers of the market are on sale. (The Desire of Roots 59)
Robin S. Ngangom, as inveterate spokesperson for the feminine
cause, does not completely denounce the male or his contributions to
the ornamentation of the earth, may be through a process of scaffolding
provided to the female, by which he expects to bring about a rare
Socialism in the uniform endeavors and existence of the male and the
female—these he expects to uplift the woman form the dungeons, of
infamy into which she is cast from time immemorial as a result of the
implementation of the rotten social codes, which no longer bears any
worth or value today. Robin S. Ngangom, through experiences, have
come to the broader generalizations, that earth appeals to be
uncomfortable and inadequate to a jittery female, because only the one
with a fighting spirit amidst the travails of the day could move forward
with firm steps. He is expectant of the ultimate crowning of the female
along with the male when he will never have to lament as he did in “Arms
will flower here too” (Time’s Crossroads 52). The poet’s intention is
not to bring to light, what the revolutionaries want but to highlight, the
unheard cries of the innocent women and children, who are left
unnoticed many a time. Robin S. Ngangom gains momentum in his poems
because of the feministic values he regards. Boldly he asserts the
doormat status of a woman and can identify himself with the pain in
her. In “Weekend”:
The man comes home drunk
He bangs at the door,
Shouting at the woman
Bleary-eyed the woman opens the door….
The woman cleans up
After a while all is silence (Words and the Silence 34)
The picture is a candid representation of many a homes, and the
female status of being trampled upon mercilessly. In “There is a
consummate Woman,” the poet beautifies the physical and mental
aspects of a woman:
Her steps are light
Un-touching the stones of the street

Her body bamboo-supple….
Her laughter possesses my soul
. . . I will wait
For her to walk all over my life (Words and the Silence 54)
The strength of Robin S. Ngangom’s work is in the fact that he
does not criticize but empathizes—his strong sense of belonging, enables
him to empathize with people whom he has never seen, but know are
his own. The poet cannot afford to waste his precious time on jeremiads.
Many of his poems reflect a heart that yearns to understand and to be
understood. His poetry springs from his own experiences or from the
events he has absorbed, into the core of his being and felt so deeply
that they fill his heart and poetry flows from it. The frequently recurring
and dominant theme in the poetry of Robin S. Ngangom is linked to
Feminism in the same way as sea is linked to water or atmosphere to air.
Immense love for the home state, pity for the pathetic situation of his
people, empathy for the down trodden, the misled, the poor and the
second sex are the chief underlying emotions of his poetry. His poetry
gives the impression to the reader, that here is a poet whose real-self
and ideal-self are identical, that here is a poet who romances with
Feminism without any prior concern. He deals with Feminism because
he loves society, and he realizes that gender discrimination exists and
women are the objects.
The central theme in the poetry of Ngangom is the all pervading
love which is not only physical but spiritual. The innate tendency in
most of the living organisms is to love and to be loved. When people
begin to take weapons in the false hope of bringing peace to the nations
the poet cannot keep mum living and loving have clearly become
endangered aspirations. But in the face of that daily siege, the ability of
Ngangom’s poetry to ‘sing’ seems to have stayed intact. The ideas
arising in the conscious self of the poet are transmitted into not only
the head but also the hearts of the readers (for his poetry digs into the
intellectual and the emotional appeal) in a way that they gestate in the
mind of the reader. The poetry of Robin S. Ngangom has a universal
appeal. His verses have the magical power to bring minds together and
at the same time to hold them apart. Everyone gets the message that
the writer wants to convey and at the same time there is sufficient scope
for anyone to draw out his own conclusions. He never intends to convey
a message rather invites the reader to draw a message from his verses.
He exhibits an unusual fascination for truth and beauty. He shows

abundant courage to be critical of those he loves. His diction has a
texture that the reader can neither forget nor describe. The picturesque
quality of his verses is praiseworthy.
Robin S. Ngangom in his poems justifies his stand for the feminine
cause, believing that a writer does not need a tradition to lean upon,
but can be influenced by anything. The poet believes that his poetry is
a form of social progress and that all people should be viewed as moral
equals, which entails, an anti-oppression liberationist philosophy, toward
all people. Furthermore the poet believes that, literature is one of the
official natures, touching upon the rights of women that fosters, protects
and expresses that dignity in the exercise of freedom, is necessary. Any
individual can make difference to a society and for the women who live
there. Robin S. Ngangom agrees with Susan B. Anthony, who has rightly
commented, “There will never be complete equality until women
themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers” (Davies 66). Robin
S. Ngangom is one of these individuals who, makes his mark through
poetry inspired by a hill-world. “If I had not made use of this hill-world,
my poetry would have been false.”
Works Cited
Davies, Smith. Women Who Changed the World. Fifty Inspirational

Women Who Shaped History. London: Smith-Davis Publishing Ltd,
2006. Print.
Ngangom, Robin S. The Desire of Roots. Cuttack: Chandrabhaga
Publications, 2006. Print.
---. Time’s Crossroads. Hyderabad: Disha Books, Orient Longman Ltd.,
1994. Print.
---. Words and the Silence Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1988. Print.
INTERVIEW
Parvathy Baul’s Way of Life:

An Interview
Aju Mukhopadhyay
An Image of a Baul
A scene floats in my mind: A Baul in ochre alkhalla or robe playing
ektara, a one-stringed drone instrument in hand, dancing with rhythm
of the anklet, singing in full throated voice reverberating in the banks
of the flowing river and the vast paddy fields blessed with paddies half-
ripe, while the half clear golden-scarlet sky of the dawn above the earth
witnesses the self-forgetting action of the man; rarely seen by other
humans. Soon the scene shifts to another: a Baul apparelled the same
way, dancing in a crowded train occupies its place. He too is self
forgetting except when some wishes to drop a coin or two into his
begging bowl. After some stations he gets down and another of his ilk
enters the compartment singing another song to be patronized by the
passengers.
Neither a recluse nor a family man or woman, Baul and their songs
with ecstatic dance is an automatic creation, an offshoot of their religion
to live a simple life, singing its glory. It’s easy to identify a Baul singer
from his or her uncut, often coiled hair, saffron robe (alkhalla or sari)
and necklace of beads made of basil (tulsi) stems. They live on whatever
they are offered by villagers in return for the songs and dance and they
travel from place to place. But Bauls are not minstrels, they are not just
entertainers. They have a deeper base in their performance. With its
outward folk tradition it keeps the mystic in its inner fold.
Number of famous Baul singers have made the art known to wider
public all over India and abroad. Beginning with Lalon Fakir of
Bangladesh there were and are many Bauls in the world stage like Purna
Chandra Das or Purna Das Baul, Paban Das Baul, Nabani Das Khyapa
Baul and more. Fakir tradition, tied to Muslim link is more prevalent in
Bangladesh, associated with titles like aul, dervish and fakir; in Bengal,
India they are mostly from Vaishnav tradition calling themselves Das.
But sai or sain too is in use. It is to be remembered that Bauls have no

religious link, they are free sect having their own way of life.
Entering into the heart of ‘Gitanjali’ we find:
Thus it is that thy joy in me is so full. Thus it is that
thou hast come down to me. O thou lord of all heavens,
where would be thy love if I were not?
(Gitanjali 56)
It is a very mellow, heart-touching song we have heard
innumerable times. In his famous, “Religion of Man” the poet
Rabindranath Tagore concludes chapter 13, ‘Spiritual Freedom,’ with a
song of the Baul sect of Bengal, which echoes the above poem:
It goes on blossoming for ages, the soul-lotus, in which I
am bound,
as well as thou, without escape. There is no end to the
opening of its petals,
and the honey in it has so much sweetness that thou, like
an enchanted bee, canst never desert it, and therefore thou
art bound,
and I am, and ‘mukti’ is no where.
Parvathy’s Performance
Baul Gaan or song is a unique contribution of Bengal, considered
to be at the top of its folk songs. One has to be an adept in lyric poetry-
song, dance, narration, music and rhythm- in its overall performance.
The love lore of Krishna and Radha, as in Indian Purana, has attracted
the attention of all song and tale loving devout Indians for more than
500 years. Narration itself draws large gathering. And a performance with
Nupur or anklet, Ektara, one stringed instrument in hands, Dugi, a
drumming instrument tied to the waist, with matted hairs down below
the knees, her own paintings depicting the tales in cloths- demonstrated
by her while making the ecstatic dance with full throated song in clear
melodious voice in Kirtan style, reaching to the last hearer in the big
hall, playing all the instruments in harmonic order, showing her emotion
up to the mystic level, Parvathy Baul, playing the role of Radha (Radha
Bhava) quenched my thirst to a great extent in an evening at the Sri
Aurobindo Theatre, Pondicherry, on 13 March, 2012. She is at present
one of the top attractions of folk music from India. Following the way
of the Bauls Parvathy has taken the art to the world stage in a
spectacular fashion.
She performed twice more in other parts of the town and around
during her Pondicherry tour as Director of the Tantidhatri, International
Women’s Performing Arts Festival, between 11th and 15th March 2012.
Moved as I was, I interviewed her two days later at Aurodhan Art Gallery
hall, Pondicherry. Some of the importants points of my questions and
her answers are given below.
Questions to Parvati Baul and her answers
Q: We greatly relished your solo performance; acting, singing,
drumming and dancing, including displaying pictures supporting your
story. I understand that you are native of Chittagong. Have you inherited
in any way this art form with relevant philosophy, thus living a Baul
way of life? If not, how and when were you inspired to venture into
this life? Is there or were there one or more Gurus to whom you are
intensely grateful?
A: I was born in a Brahmin family of Chittagong, Bangladesh but
was sent in my childhood at the age of six, due to riotous condition
prevailing there for some time, to Cooch Behar in West Bengal. Born in
Assam in 1970, I was fascinated by the Bihu performances and Mahut
songs. I learnt Bengali songs from some teachers and Kathak from
Shrilekha Mukherjee for a while but as I came in touch with the Baul
Gurus I was greatly attracted by this life and art. My first Guru was
Bipad Taran Das. I learnt from Sashanka Gosain of Murshidabad and
others. But I am most grateful to Sanatan Das Baul of Bankura who
sheltered me in his family and taught me all the paraphernalia of this art
form.
Q: Would you tell me where you began learning this art and how
you moved to prepare for this life? How influenced and how trained
were you at Shantiniketan? Did Gurudev Rabindranath’s interest in Bauls
inspired you to seek the ambience of Shantiniketan?
A: Shantiniketan was a great influence for me in the ambience of
late Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore. I remained there for three years and
studied visual art in Kalabhavan, Visva Bharati.
Q: May I know the chronology of your movements from
Chattagram to Trivandrum?
A: As I told you, I remained in Cooch Behar for some 12 years, in
Bankura for two years, in Murshidabad for some time and at Birbhum
for more than three years including my studies at Shantiniketan but
before I concluded my studies there I was so drawn to Baul songs and
dance, so impressed I was by this art form that I gave up formal

education for practical training from the Babajis and Bauls.
Learning from some Gurus I was finally accepted in the family of
Sanatan Das Baul as in Gurukul system of the lore, and was mostly taught
by him; song and dance and everything, including begging with him at
times, as a part of this life. For all this I was almost shunned by my
family. Taking part in a street drama, I was called by a director of the
drama, Khaled Yochi, to Hampi and being introduced there to Ravi
Gopalan Nair of Thiruvanthapuram, Kerala, an expert in performing art,
I began visiting him. I received some Ayurvedic treatment there and
was initiated to Tantric rites. Eventually I married him. I stayed in Kerala
for two years. I stay there sometimes though I am known, quite aptly,
as Parvathy Baul of Bengal.
Q: Are you performing this Radha Bhav and related items only or
other items of Baul songs and dances too?
A: I have also performed the Persian story of Hamza. (The
Adventures of Amir Hamza or the Dastan-e Amir Hamza is a grand epic
from the Islamic cultures of the Middle East and beyond. Rooted in the
legends of valour of prophet Muhammad’s uncle, Amir Hamza, the
narrative attracted legends of greater and lesser heroes, considered as
an Odyssey of the medieval Persian World, it became a compendium of
exploits of the fictional character Amir Hamza and his companions. It
was commissioned by the Mughal Emperor Akbar in about 1652, a part
of Akbarnama.)
Q: When did you begin performing in the stages? In how many
Indian cities and towns have you performed so far? Have you gone
abroad for further accomplishment?
A: From 1995 I began performing in Bengal stages and gradually
did it in other cities and towns in India. From around 2000-2001 I was
invited to famous world stages (like Internal Music Festivals) and by
now I have performed in most of the famous cities of the world.
Q: Would you mind telling us something about your personal life,
what was your full name before coming into this life? How are you
enjoying life with the practices and performances? Are you wife and
mother both? Or are you so engrossed in this life living like a yogini
that you have no time or idea of leading a family life?
A: My original name was Mousumi Padiyal. Sent out during early
childhood, I do not recollect my relationship with my father. I stayed
with my mother. Her name was Sandhya. She was a devotee of Saint
Ramakrishna. She encouraged me in following my Baul way. I fully enjoy

life through my performing arts. I am wife, as I said but not a mother.
Though married I do sadhana appropriate to a Baul but I am not a
Sannyasini.
Q: Tell us something about your partner or colleagues? How do
things move about you and what may be the future prospect?
A: My husband Ravi Gopalan Nair is an adept in performing arts
of differing varieties, with its base on traditional body language. He has
the ability of helping presentation of Indian performing arts to foreign
audience without creating complexity. An adept in wood carving, he
has been trainer to some performers, presenting some performing art
form for the first time. He has been accompanying the artists to different
countries of the world for quite some years, sometimes as Director or
otherwise. He is always supportive and usually stays with me. I do solo
performance but all my colleagues work in cooperation. I am in touch
with the fellow travellers in performing arts in my and other countries.
Time: The Crazy Clock

Itishri Sarangi
Time is flying in the form of a crazy clock
In a world of speculation, we stand in the midst of conjecture
Trying to conceptualize the philosophy of life.
The reminiscence, the nostalgia
The longing for people, places and past
Make the heart pensive and sad for things earned and lost
The formative years went trusting the world and human nature
Enduring the years of wars for lasting peace.
Aah! Dear time, how can you inflict such cruelty on mankind?
The long term anguish in the eyes of memory.
One, two, three, four . . . the time elapses and the pulses beat
Losing our grip on the slippery feet
Oh time! Put the clock back
For adding value to time
For adding meaning to life
SHORT STORY
Relationship
Pronab Kumar Majumder
Krittika was sitting on the fence having no option for any side.
One side she wanted to leave to get another side. But ultimately she
lost one side neither got the other. She felt standing before a crossroad
not knowing what way to take, whether any of the ways will lead to her
destinations or whether she had any imagined destination at all. But
ultimately she took one way that clicked.
Krittika was working for a multinational company as a financial
professional drawing hefty sum of money with other perks. Her nature
of job demanded her touring metro cities and was quite unsure when
she will be available at home. This type of way of life cannot build a
relationship, her husband Shamik, a college teacher, realised after a long
wait. His life was methodical, job not stressful and demanding. He had
a quite a different mindscape. All these possibilities did not come to
the fore when their marriage was arranged. Yes, their was an arranged
marriage on the insistence of the father of Krittika who was close to
the father of Shamik because of their being in the same service of
government for long years, “Shamik is a sober, intelligent and well
educated boy. He will quite match Krittika. I know their family since
long,” argued father of Krittika. Her mother did not have anything in
particular to disagree. Krittika was also agreeable to have such a soft
husband. Shamik could not imagine the nature of job and life style of
Krittika at that point of time. Things unveiled afterwards rather too fast.
Both of them realised they were never made for each other. Their journey
course of life can never meet which they realised when quite precious
time of life already slipped through their fingers.
Kaustav was immediate superior of Krittika in the same company.
Handsome, fair, sharp and perfectionist were what Kaustav was. Krittika
was immediately drawn by such a personality. A sort of trance about
him was created in the consciousness of Krittika which kept her
unmindful about her husband Shamik. Initially he could not understand

her behaviour. Soon he realised that some outside force was working
on her. She turned quite irregular in being back home. Added to this
was her periodical absence from home on the plea of the office tours.
Shamik could understand that she was going way-ward but kept silent
on the matter for the present. Kaustav was a clever bachelor who knew
tricks of game. His projected intimacy and nearness made Krittika crazy
more and more everyday. Even she started thinking of making another
life with Kaustav. Quite a number of times they had sex in outstation
hotels where they stayed for a day or two everytime on the plea of going
on tour. The suspicion of Shamik was confirmed when he found cell
phone of Krittika was switched off right from the evening whenever she
was away on the pretext of official tour. But she was desperate when
Shamik asked him why her cell phone was switched off from the evening
whenever she was away from home. “I am not prepared to give you
every detail of my touring schedule. Are you too worried about me in
such situations? Am I to believe it? You have so many colleagues and
students, pretty beautiful,” Krittika stopped. “Rubbish, intolerable,” were
the reactions of Shamik.
Parents of Kaustav were arranging marriage for him with quite
beautiful Surupa who belonged to the extended family of Kaustav’s
mother. Beauty was the prime consideration for Surupa. She was
moderately educated but doing no job. Kaustav consented to the
arrangement made by his parents as he preferred this kind of bride who
was quite beautiful but had no tag of doing job. He was familiar with
women doing some job who were good enough for hobnobbing but
not always good for marriage. Anyway he was to wait for two months
for the auspicious day of marriage. He kept the matter exclusively with
himself for which when once Krittika joked, “What about you? Are your
parents looking for a bride for you, my good boy?” he just kept smiling.
“No, you are for none else, I won’t allow it to happen,” Krittika
pretended her right of possession. “I must have you in any case,” she
declared.
It was already three years that Krittika and Shamik were married.
It was quite ripe for them to have a new member in their family which
Krittika vehemently opposed. Shamik could not imagine what she
wanted, why always she turned down the proposal of having a child.
Was she incapable of bearing a child, was she a barren beauty, even in
that case how could she realise all these? Shamik brooded over such
thoughts and got frustrated. He already realised that their incompatible

marriage cannot have a long life. On his part he was in no mood of
breaking it. But Krittika seemed living outside marriage bonding though
dragging a married life. Shamik could neither resolve the piquant situation
nor could get out of it.
There was another spell when Krittika was away from home for
two days. They stayed in a posh hotel of a metropolis and enjoyed the
time when Krittika dropped her words. “You see, I must get you in my
life. It is you who are compatible with me.” “But you are a married
woman. How do you say like this,” Kaustav smiled. “I shall leave him,
for that matter I can leave anything to accommodate you in my life,”
She asserted. Kaustav only smiled to add “We had nice time in this
hotel. Do you agree?” “Yes, I do. I want to have it many more times. I
hope I shall I get such opportunity even more in times to come.”
This time Shamik was more than disgusted, “Where do you go
so frequently on the plea of official tour? Are you that important for
your company? I am a college teach, indeed, but I have my eyes and
ears open. Why do you lead such a life? You are a part of our
relationship. Without one part it is never a complete life. If the life is
not complete how can we enjoy joy of life,” Shamik stopped for her
reaction.” “What do you suppose should I do.” “You should discipline
your life to be compatible one for both of us. Nothing more nothing
less,” were the replies of Shamik. “I can’t change my of lifestyle. I don’t
bother you ever. Our domestic help Upasana does every thing for you
in my absence. You should have nothing to grudge,” Krittika went on
in a fit of rage. “No I don’t accept it unless you amend your self”. “Then
what would you do? Reject me? Before that I reject you. I shall leave
you.” Krittika left with her bag hanging onto her shoulder.
Krittika called Kaustav in a restaurant for some urgent talk.
Kaustav made appearance only to say “Why you look beaten? Are you
unwell anyway?” Without making any preface she said, “you see I have
left him only to get you in my life. I can leave everything on earth to
get you. Please accept me. I have nowhere to go.” “What have you
done, I never told you I would accept you in my life. It is impossible.
For your information I am going to marry next week. I think I would
invite you,” Kaustav declared calmly. “What do you say, you are a
betrayer, you spoilt my life, recklessly you used my body and mind,
now throwing me away like used up napkins. I won’t spare you. I would
make your life hell. I have nothing to lose,” she stopped for breaths
looking direct into his eyes half-smiling. “Whatever happened you were
a party to it on choice, nobody forced you. I am not prepared to hear
useless words anymore. I am leaving. Wish you luck,” Kaustav
concluded and left smiling as always.
Krittika kept standing on the roadside not knowing where to go.
Unmindfully she called a cab and asked the driver to move for her
destination which was her father’s house. Father was no more, mother
living alone. She was surprised to find Krittika in a wretched condition
but only uttered, “what happened to you, anything upsetting?” “I shall
tell you everything later. Would you permit me to stay with you for the
present.” “You stay as long as you need, that’s no problem, problem is
what made you upset.” Such was there brief conversation. She was
feeling absence of his father. He was her forte in life, she recalled.
It was a moony evening. Krittika was sitting before a window to
watch the smiling moon. It was a reassuring moment. She pressed the
buttons of her cell phone. “Yes, how are you, where are you at the
moment,” voice of Shamik on the other side. Krittika took moments to
respond. “At the moment I am staying with my mother. I have lost
everything of mine. I followed a wrong route. I was a mistaken person.
Quite unjustifiably I left you. It was a sin on my part for seeking
something after leaving you. I got nothing on earth except my aloneness.
I know I am a person not to be trusted. Even then would you please
accept me?” Krittika laid her everything bare. There was silence on the
other side for quite sometime. Krittika got restless to hear the familiar
voice again. Yes the voice spoke. “Never did I reject you. I asked you
only to amend yourself. I understand you realised you were taking a
wrong track. I want a life compatible, peaceful, caring and sharing.” “You
see I shall follow everything you suggest, I shall atone my committed
wrongs. Only accept me, please accept me,” She concluded. “Well, good
enough, doors here are wide open for you. We shall begin from where
it apparently ended. Come next morning, next day is another day. We
shall have a fresh lease of life. Now sleep, have a good sleep. Good
night.”
Silent Voices and Liberated Women:

Bhandaru Acchamamba and
Savitribai Phule
Sujatha Rao
The status of women in Indian society varies from ancient times

to the recent past. There is an evidence in the records to show that
women have participated in people’s movements, struggles, and in the
country’s reconstruction programs. With the advent of feminism,
rewriting women’s history has started around the world. This happened
in many parts of India especially in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.
This paper compares the views and ideologies expressed by two women
of the nineteenth century from two different states of India and it also
tries to focus the importance of freedom of expression and education
as a tool for liberation of women as expressed by Bhandaru Acchamamba
and Savitiribai Phule in their writings. Bhandaru Acchamamba and
Savitribai Phule fought for women’s emancipation through education.
Their writings give a clear insight into their own struggle against
patriarchal norms that prevailed during the time.
Bhandaru Acchamamba was one of the pioneers in the early stages
of women’s movement. She is regarded as one of the foremost feminist
historians in India. She was Telugu woman born in 1874 in a small village
called Penuganchiprolu in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh. Her father,
who was a diwan (minister in the state government), died when she was
six years old. She was married at the age of ten and was widowed early
in life. She had no formal education but with the support and
encouragement her younger brother, Komarraju Venkata Lakshmana
Rao, she learned to read Telugu, Hindi, English and Marathi. When he
left for Nagpur to continue his studies, Acchamamba worked on her own,
learning Bengali and Gujarati as well as a little Sanskrit. The early deaths
of her son and daughter were an inconsolable personal loss. Since then
Acchamamba had adopted five orphans providing them with basic
necessities and education showing no gender discrimination.
Bhandaru Acchamamba wrote stories on women’s issues which

reflect the social conditions of her times. In an article, “Vidyaavantulagu
Yuvatulakoka Vinnapamu” [“An appeal to the educated women”], she
described the importance of education for Women and what the parents
should do to educate their daughters. Her most popular writing is a
volume of biographies of 34 women, known as Abaala Saccharitra
Ratnamala [Biographies of women]. This book recorded the biographies
of women, who were famous in history. Acchamamba worked hard for
four years and put together the stories of women from Punjab, Kashmir,
Rajasthan, Gujarat, Bengal, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh. When
we read the mainstream history, it is obvious that it recorded only the
men’s perceptions of women’s issues but not the women’s perceptions
and the changes in their mode of thinking. Acchamamba’s Abaala then
becomes an important tool where women’s voices were heard in
patriarchal dominated society.
She understood the value of education even at that early age. She
pointed out this aspect several times in her writing. In the preface to
her book, Abala saccharitra ratnamala, she stated her purpose for
writing the book. Firstly, she felt that men often commented that women
are weak, dull-witted, and senseless and is the very epitome of all evil
qualities. And her aim in writing this book is to prove how these charges
are baseless and to show that there were women in the past who were
courageous and possessed unparalleled scholarship. She also
condemned the views of some men who felt that women would take to
evil ways, ruin the family unit, humiliate their husbands, if they were
educated and given freedom. She wanted to prove with examples that
those accusations are unfounded, and that education only helps to build
one’s character and not the other way round. Acchamamba wanted to
convey the message that India will be benefited if the women were to
receive education which is the need of the hour.
In most of her writings, Acchamamba emphasized the importance
of women’s education, and pointed out the damage caused by the lack
of education. She was constantly worried about the way women were
ignored or dismissed by family members in their homes. In her book,
she wrote that Thoru Dutt’s father raised her as son, and sent her to
school as if she was a son. In this regard, Acchamamba wrote, ‘The
sastras state that a daughter must be treated as a son. Have we not
seen that, at the time of giving his daughter away in marriage, the father
says, ‘this girl has been raised by me as a son?’ (Kodavati). In the same
essay, she commented about the families discriminating against girls even
from the day they were born. She wrote, ‘It is extremely painful to watch
the amount of humiliation girls are subjected to and in contrast to the
way boys are raised. Parents lead a life of misery from the day a girl
was born. As the girl grows, they raise her not on par with a boy but as
an unwelcome responsibility. There is no doubt that 99 percent of the
girls in this country are being raised the way I have mentioned’
(Kodavati). In another article, “vidyaavantulagu yuvatulakoka
vinnapamu” [“An appeal to the educated women”], she described the
importance of education for women, and what the parents should do to
educate their daughters. She also stated that women should have respect
for themselves. She believed that the reason for women’s lack of
education was male teachers. Therefore there should be more female
teachers in schools. As a solution for encouraging women to learn to
read and write, she wrote that women should form a group, open a school
in one of their homes, and run the school. If the woman running the
school has a problem, others should take turns and help her out. That
is the only way to contribute towards improving women’s education
and have a purpose for their own lives. Acchamamba urged that the
educated women should establish schools in villages and share their
education. The entire essay is charged with her deep concern for the
lack of education in women.
In her article, “strividyaa prabhaavam,” [“the strength of women’s
education”], she wrote about an imaginary but powerful country called
Iceland where all men and women receive education equally. They all
have equal rights in politics. A woman is in charge of the department of
education. Since the security is supervised by women only, there are
no prisons and no police officers, and no courthouses. Is it not all due
to women’s education?
In her story “Strividya” [“Education for women”], she uses
dialogue as a narrative technique, a style deviant from the traditional
narration. The story takes place on the eve of husband’s departure to
jail as a political prisoner. He suggests she should learn how to write in
order to communicate with him while he is prison. Wife is reluctant at
first, giving all sorts of excuses; and thinks that there is no need for
learning since she is not going to office. At the end she is convinced
of the importance of education and decides to learn to read and write.
Thus, Acchamamba depicted women as strong characters possessing
plausible qualities such as self-respect and individualistic views.
Acchamamba revolutionized the concept of ‘modern woman’ centuries

ago.
Acchamamba was also deeply troubled by the humiliation meted
out to girls from parents from the day they were born. In her essay on
Khana, a woman of excellence in Astrology, Acchamamba once again
pointed out how women are inherently intelligent, and how the parents
ignore them only because of their bias towards male children. She argued
that women are not born as unintelligent but become so because of the
way they are raised. She contends that even if a son was stupid and
had no interest in studies was forced to school by his parents. They
made him study several subjects to improve his knowledge. On the other
hand, the daughter was not given the same treatment even if she was a
bright and intelligent. Thus a huge fissure has been created in
discriminating in parenting girls as different from boys.
Acchamamba, who was highly vocal in expressing her views on
the suppression of female children at home, repeatedly insisted on the
need for women’s education each and every time she had an opportunity
to do so. In her writings, Acchamamba frankly expressed her views on
conjugal relationships between a man and a woman and how men shut
women up in closed rooms. In one of her stories she mentions how men
give women metal ornaments instead of giving them the most valuable
piece of jewelry that is education. Instead of treating them as equal
partners at home, they were treated like maids.
Acchamamba states that men were responsible for degrading
women’s status she quotes from a Sanskrit verse at the beginning of
her book:
arakshitaa gruhe ruddhah purushai raaptakaarikaaribhih
aatmaana maatmanaa yaastu raksheyustaas surakshitaah
[Women who are confined in homes by male well-wishers are not
safe
Only those who protect themselves are safe].
Here, ‘male well-wishers’ means father, brothers, husband and
such. They are all well-wishers, no doubt. But they all are anxious to
confine women to the home front. They think that they are protecting
women while confining them to the four walls, hindering their progress,
and subjecting them to oppression. Acchamamba pointed out that such
behavior on the part of men is not protection but suppression and
emphasized that women must protect themselves.
In her dampathula prathama kalahamu [The first dispute a Wife

{sic}], she brings out the emancipated voice of a woman questioning
the equal rights of a wife and the meaning of aradhangini.
Similar kind of anguish and concern for the status of women were
expressed by the life and works of Savitribai Phule from Maharastra.
Savitribai Jotiba Phule, a social reformer was born on 3 January 1831.
She along with her husband, Mahatma Jotiba Phule played an important
role in improving women’s rights in India during the British Raj. Savitribai
was the first female teacher of the first woman’s school in India and
also considered as the pioneer of modern Marathi poetry. In 1852, she
opened a school for untouchable girls and considered women’s
education and their liberation from the cultural patterns of the male-
dominated society as mission of her life. She worked towards tackling
some of the then major social problems including women’s liberation,
widow remarriages and removal of untouchability. She emerges as the
only woman leader among all social movements in nineteenth century
India who linked patriarchy with caste. She encouraged a reversal of
traditional subservient roles of women and depressed castes.
Savitribai’s greatest literary contribution is her collection of poems
titled Kavya Phule (Poetry’s Blossoms) as it covers subjects as varied
as education, nature and, most importantly, the caste system, where the
poet exhorts the subjugated to throw off the shackles of the caste
system. Savitribai followed this up with another anthology titled Bavan
Kashi Subodh Ratnakar (The Ocean of Gems), which reiterates her
critique of the brahmanical constructs of the times, and the decadence
and exploitative nature of the Peshwas. Again, this is in complete
contrast to the way the Peshwas are glorified in most history books.
In her poem “Rise to learn and act,” she exhorts the down trodden
people of the society to rise up against the oppressive norms of cultural
and historical beliefs, and religious traditions and liberate themselves
through education. This is clearly evident in these lines of the poem:
Rise to learn and Act
Weak and oppressed! Rise my brother
Come out of living in slavery. (Mani and Sardar 66)
She also implores the oppressed people of her times to educate
their children to gain knowledge and become wise, ‘We’ll teach our
children and ourselves to learn / Receive knowledge, become wise to
discern’ (Mani and Sardar 66). These lines show that she believed in
equality of caste and gender and felt that it is through education that
one would be liberated. In an age where women and Dalits had no

access to education, Savitribai defied the tyrannical Bhramanical
opposition of the time. In spite of all the oppositions meted to her she
openly penned her views on women, education and importance of
knowledge.
Similar kind of view can also be seen in another poem from Kavya
Phule which stresses the importance of education:
If You have no knowledge, have no education
And you yearn not for the same
You possess intellect but work not for the same
How then can you be called a human being?
Birds, animals, monkeys, human beings too
All go through life and death
But if you gain no knowledge about this
How can you be called a human being? (Sundararaman)
She mentions that if one does not have education one is unfit
to be a human being. She also points out that if knowledge acquired
is not utilized for the betterment of society, regardless of caste, class
and gender, that knowledge is a waste.
Savitribai’s remarkable influence through her teaching and writings
is evident in an essay by her 11-year-old student Muktabai’s essay
which was published in the book Mang Maharachya Dukh visayi, (Grief
of the Mangs and Mahars). Mangs and Mahars were the two dalit caste
groups that were exploited in the Maharashtra of those times. In this
essay Muktabai voiced her observation of the atrocities committed
against them.
Even though these women writers were silenced by the patriarchal
society, they stood up against time and struggled for women’s
education and empowerment. Both Acchmamba and Savitribai led their
lives through examples. They became the role models for many women
and paved the way for them. In them one gets a glimpse of the mind of
a woman completely dedicated to education of the downtrodden. Despite
being marginalized and opposed by the patriarchal society these two
women social reformers fought against them and assertively voiced their
views on women’s empowerment through education.
Works Cited
Mani and Sardar, ed. A Forgotten Liberator: The life and Struggles of
Savthribai Phule. New Delhi: Mountain Peak, 2008. Print.
Sundararaman, T. “Savitribai Phule: First Memorial Lecture.” NCERT
Memorial Lecture Series, 2009. Print.
George Lamming’s Silent-Violent Voice

in Water with Berries
Sajitha M. A.
The coloniser has set up targets of hidden exploitations by

infusing the feeling of inferiority into the mind of the native. These
exploitations are the outstanding features of postcolonial writings which
emerged in different colonies and found expressions through writings
of Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao, Bhabhani Bhattacharya, Wole Soyinka,
Sembene Ousmane, Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Peter
Abrahams, George Lamming and many others. Ngugi states that the
biggest weapon wielded and actually unleashed daily by imperialism
against that collective defiance is the cultural bomb:
The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people’s belief in
their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their
heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately
in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of
non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves
from that wasteland. It makes them want to identify with that which
is furthest removed from themselves; for instance, with other
peoples’ languages rather than their own. (3)
Writers like Achebe, Ngugi and Lamming try to present their
colonies as fruitful lands, instead of considering it “wasteland of non-
achievement.” Lamming has stated that for him there are just three
important events in British Caribbean history, the first is discovery, the
second, the arrival of China and India in the Caribbean and the abolition
of slavery, and the third is the discovery of the novel by West Indians
as a mode of cultural investigation (Lamming, Pleasures of Exile 37).
The terms Caribbean and West Indies are interchangeably used.
The Caribbean is a region consisting of the Caribbean Sea, its islands,
and the surrounding coasts. These islands are called the West Indies
because when Christopher Columbus landed here in 1492 he believed
that he had reached the Indies in Asia. A clear demarcation between
the terms Caribbean and West Indies is found in Key Concepts in Post-
Colonial Studies. It is stated that the terms Caribbean and West Indian
are often used interchangeably to refer to the island nations of the
Caribbean Sea and territories on the surrounding south and Central
American mainland like Guyana and Belize. While Caribbean refers to
all the island nations located in the area, West Indian refers to those
nations that were formerly British colonies e.g. Jamaica, Trinidad,
Barbados, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Antigua, Dominica, and Guyana
(Ashcroft 31).
The West Indian is a shattered group who cannot even say where
their home is and how it looks like. “Caribbean cultures like most
diasporic cultures by definition are cultures usually of forced (or if not
forced, largely forced) migration. They are born of travelling, rupture,
appropriation, loss, exile. A kind of spiritual homelessness lies at the
centre of diasporic experience” (Hall 27). As pointed out by R. K.
Dhawan in the introduction to The West Indian Fiction, “A noteworthy
function of the West Indian novel is that it aims primarily at investigating
and projecting the inner consciousness of the West Indian community”
(9). Water with Berries portrays “inner consciousness” of three expatriate
artists—Teeton, Derek and Roger—who face failure in personal
relationships due to which they undergo a period of creative sterility.
They also find it difficult to come to terms with their historical past and
connection with England. The title Water with Berries echoes the words
of Caliban to Prospero in the Tempest:
When thou cam’st first
Thou strok’st me and made much of me, wouldst give me
Water with berries in’t, and teach me how
To name the bigger light, and how the less,
That burn by day and night, and then I loved thee
And showed thee all the qualities o’ th’ isle
The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place, and fertile.
Cursed be I that did so! – all the charms
Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!
For I am all the subjects that you have,
Which first was mine own king; and here you sty me
In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me
The rest o’ th’ island. (Act 1 Scene 2)
Prospero claims that he has taught Caliban everything that is

elegant and refined. But the anguish of Caliban is hidden in his words
which can be inferred as the words of colonised all over the world. The
protagonist of the novel, Teeton is a painter, whose wife involves in
extra marital relation with the American Ambassador to save the life of
Teeton. She commits suicide because Teeton does not forgive her
infidelity. Teeton’s friend, Roger, is a musician of East Indian descent.
Roger’s wife, Nicole, is an American lady. When she becomes pregnant,
Roger repudiates her because he cannot face the child’s racial impurity.
Nicole cannot bear this repudiation and she commits suicide. Another
friend of Teeton, Derek, is an actor who rapes his white co-actress on
stage.
Lamming announces that he has attempted to reverse the journeys,
“In Shakespeare’s Tempest, it was Prospero in the role of the visitor to
Caliban’s island. In Water with Berries, it’s reversed. The three
characters really present three aspects of Caliban making his journey to
Prospero’s ancestral home – a journey which was at the beginning, a
logical kind of development because of the relationship to Prospero’s
language. Then they discovered the reality of Prospero’s home—not
from a distance, not filtered through Prospero’s explanation or record
of his home, but through their own immediate and direct experience”
(Goddard 89). The situation existing in West Indies is at the extremity
as pointed out by Ian Munroe, “The West Indies in Lamming’s poetry
is a spiritually sterile prison for the creative spirit: islands cramped with
disease no enemy can cure” (126). Lamming faces alienation and lack of
creative freedom, in the unfriendly city of England. His feelings are
similar to a black American character named Marian Anderson in his
poem “Song for Marian.” Lamming tries to define himself both as an
artist and a West Indian. In an interview conducted by Aminu Abdullahi,
Ngugi comments:
The West Indies is a mixed community, and also the literature is
just emerging, and there would be interesting parallels and
contrasts and comparisons between this emergent West Indian
literature and the new literature from Africa.” He further states, “I
was overwhelmed by George Lamming. I read him uncritically –
almost everything he wrote, uncritically- from cover to cover. He
really overwhelmed me. (qtd. in Duerden 128-129)
In Water with Berries, Teeton depicts a strong will to return to
San Cristobal – Lamming’s symbolic West Indian island. With great
spirit, Teeton points to the map and tells the Old Dowager, “That’s where
I was born. Cattlewash we call it” (Water with Berries 28). Teeton attends
regularly the meetings where the plans for return are executed. The blind
affection and overprotective care of the Old Dowager creates a kind of
fear in Teeton’s mind to disclose the matter of his return. It is the fear
of the tenant towards the landlord, the fear of the colonised towards
the coloniser. Teeton falls under the spell of affection and finally breaks
that cage of dependency and affection.
The novel portrays the trauma of exile, emigrations and
expatriation. San Cristobal is similar to Naipaul’s Isabella. It is stated
about Teeton’s return, “He had to return to San Cristobal: had to free
himself from any obstacles of nature or the law in order to accomplish
his return. The highest point of danger, in this moment – and, perhaps,
for all time – would be his failure to do so” (Water with Berries 196).
He is subjected to acculturative stress which refers to the psychological,
somatic, and social difficulties that may accompany acculturation
processes. This finally results in the violence in which he seeks refuge.
Teeton is caught between the two—trapped by the essentially privatised
artistic life in contemporary England—yet unable to return what he
clearly sees as his proper public role in San Cristobal. Teeton is found
waiting for trial along with his two friends, Roger and Derek in the last
chapter of the novel. Teeton wants to break the bond of affection which
the Old Dowager provides as an overprotective mother. He has a
revolutionary past. His desire to return to San Cristobal forces him to
sell his painting which he considers the ‘fruits of exile.’ The isolation
and alienation one suffers in the foreign land is made the subject of
art—painting, music, drama. Teeton, Roger and Derek are representatives
of these art forms.
Teeton fulfils his aspiration to return by resorting to violence. He
gets the inspiration for this from Fernando and his daughter, Myra.
Fernando admits his love towards the Old Dowager, his brother’s wife
which has resulted in the murder of his own brother. Roger who used
to write and perform before large and appreciative audience in the West
Indies, gets disappointed when he does not even get enough money to
survive. He develops shades of paranoia and makes his American wife
abort every time she conceives as he cannot face the racial impurity.
Derek’s performance is limited to the role of a corpse. He protests by
raping the white actress on the stage. Teeton has given up painting.
He recollects:
He had once deserted his comrades in San Cristobal. It was

desertion. There was no other name for his escape from the island.
After seven years the word had lost none of its terror. It seemed
to drag its echoes up from the deepest root of his being. Seven
years ago he had been arrested after a minor revolt in the San Souci
plains. The island was never to be same. But he had got away,
leaving some of his own cellmates behind. Two were now dead.
And the charge had pursued him ever since. How was it possible
for him to get away? And when did he decide to go? After seven
years he could still hear that martyrdom screaming in his ears. It
was desertion. In the notorious plains of San Souci they couldn’t
have found any other name for his escape. (Water with Berries18)
This “desertion” haunts Teeton greatly. Teeton feels prick of
conscience, when he considers his desertion in not having braved
imprisonment and probable death with his fellow revolutionaries in San
Cristobal. Teeton appears very reserved and master of a very few words.
“He had a way of keeping himself apart. Even in friendship he seemed
to make that distance a condition. Unlike Derek who could convert any
feeling into some form of partnership” (Water with Berries 59). Roger
of East Indian descent rejects San Cristobal. He thinks this accidental
birth is responsible for the humiliation he suffers. He feels everyone
around him takes a mad delight in celebrating the impure. He rejects his
father, Judge Capildeo, the archetypal hollow man. He and his wife have
separate lodgings. There is no room even for his wife in his private
compartment of music. Racial and cultural hybridity becomes a
permanent torture and Roger refuses to acknowledge Nicole’s child as
his. Like any woman she considers pregnancy as the affirmation of their
relationship. But Roger protests and finds solace in burning all the
places which shelters West Indian emigrants; by doing so he tries to
burn all colonial relationship. He burns the rooming house Mona and
plans to set fire on the Old Dowager’s house. Derek is an orphan who
turns out to be an actor. “He was born in the theatre, had grown up
there, could not imagine an ambition that could take him elsewhere”
(Water with Berries 239). Roger and Nicole were a great support to him.
But when they break up partly due to his instigation, Derek becomes
totally fragmented. The Caliban revolt is reflected once again when
Derek rapes the heroine of the play A Summer’s Error in Albion.
The fragile balance which remains between the coloniser and the
colonised, the Prospero and Caliban, shatters in the case of the three
artists in Water with Berries. The three artists are “three versions of
Caliban” (Paquet 84) who are trapped by ties of affection and promise
for which they have sacrificed their birthright. The violence which they
resort to establishes Fanon’s idea that both colonisation and
decolonisation result in violence (Fanon 74). It is through affection, the
coloniser tries to trap the natives. The greatness of the novel Water
with Berries lies in the realisation of Fernando, the coloniser, that the
coloniser has committed mistakes to the colonised which cannot be
cured. Fernando admits he has learnt, “That experiment in ruling over
your kind. It was a curse. The wealth it fetched was a curse. The power
it brought was a curse. That’s why my brother found it to his liking. He
knew it could deform whatever creature it touched. A curse I tell you.
A curse! And it will come back to plague my race until one of us dies.
That curse will always come back. Like how you have come here” (Water
with Berries 228). It is stated in The West Indian Novel that the three
artists adopt a “revolutionary violence” to smash the “Prospero’s
reality” to reach a “psychic reality” within themselves:
At the end of the novel the three artists are awaiting trial for rape,
arson, and murder though there is a clear suggestion that the
spiralling violence, in which they have involved is unavoidable
backfire of the violence suffered by the colonised and the only
conceivable means of freeing themselves from their ambiguous
relation with Britain. (Jelinek 159)
Works Cited
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareths Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. Key Concepts in Post-
Colonial Studies. London: Routledge, 2004. Print.
Duerden, Dennis and Cosmo Pieterse, eds. African Writers Talking: A
Collection of Interviews. London: Heinemann, 1972. Print.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington.
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967. Print.
Goddard, Horace L. “Interview with George Lamming. (Interview).” Kola.
Black Writers’ Guild. 2008. HighBeam Research. 10 Feb. 2010
<http://www.highbeam.com>.
Hall, Stuart. “Art, Caribbean Culture: Future, Trends.” Caribbean
Quarterly 43.1-2 (1996): 25-33. Print.
Jelinek, Hena Maes and Benedicte Ledent. “The Novel since 1970.”A
History of Caribbean Literature. Vol.2. Ed. Albert James Bond.
Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2000. 149-198. Print.
Dhawan, R. K., ed. Introduction. The West Indian Fiction. By Dhawan.
New Delhi: Prestige, 2000. Print.
Lamming, George. The Pleasures of Exile. London: Michael, 1960. Print.
---. Water with Berries. 1971. Trinidad: Longman, 1973. Print.
Munroe, Ian. “George Lamming.” Bruce King, ed. West Indian Literature.
Delhi: Macmillan, 1979. Print.
Paquet, Sandra Pouchet. The Novels of George Lamming. London:
Heinemann, 1982. Print.
Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.
W. J. Craig, ed. Magpie: n.p, 1992. Print.
Thiong’o, Ngugi wa. Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language
in African Literature. 1981. Oxford: Currey, 2005. Print.
Fraternal Publication
LABYRINTH: LITERARY JOURNAL OF POST MODERNISM
ISSN 0976 - 0814
(An International Refereed Quarterly published in
Jan, Apr, Jul & Oct)
Editor: Dr. Lata Mishra
Address for communication: Lata Mishra, 204, Motiramani Complex,
Naya Bazar, Lashkar, Gwalior – 474 009, M.P., India.
Email: dr.latamishra@gmail.com
Socio-Historical Documentation in Select

Novels of Amitav Ghosh and
Rohinton Mistry
Chikkala Swathi
Indian Diaspora, a magical wor‘l’d that has contributed immensely

to Indian Writing in English, is characterized by multifarious concerns
such as displacement, identity crisis, hybridity, and cross-cultural
interactions. Many eminent writers have been categorized under the title
‘Diaspora’ and they have been a major influence on the Literature
produced on homeland. Amitav Ghosh and Rohinton Mistry are such
writers who are part of the Indian Diaspora who live abroad and yet
homeland forms the crux of their writings. Ghosh is based in New York;
Mistry writes from Ontario and both have emerged as strong voices of
the diaspora. The urge to write about one’s native land on the basis of
memory forms an essential part of the diaspora writer’s expression and
the writers in question tend to get nostalgic as they constantly attempt
at refashioning their country’s past. As Diaspora writers, covering the
distance between the ‘homeland’ and the host country is continuous.
Yet the writers in question do not seem to have any problem with their
identity as Indians. This has been claimed by them in various instances.
For instance, Mistry’s choice of place to let his characters come to life
remains mainly India as he chooses to revisit his ‘old’ home rather than
detail the immigrant experience. In an interview with Shiakh, he discusses
his uncomfortable encounter with the new world:
Going to Canada, faced with the reality of earning a living and realizing
that although I had, up to that point in my life, read books and
listened to music that came from the West, there was a lot more
involved in living in the West. I felt very comfortable with the books
and the music, but actually living in the West made that same music
seem much less relevant. It suddenly brought home to me very clearly
the fact that I was imitating something that was not mine, that made
no sense in terms of my own life, my own reality. (Bhautoo 2-3)
In a similar way Ghosh had clarified his identity declaring that he
is not in conflict with his Indianness. Though he travels wide and lives
abroad he carries his home in mind wherever he goes.
The view of these writers towards their homeland tends to be
different as Mistry’s novels are mainly centered in Bombay around Parsi
middle class, while Ghosh attempts to understand the lives of people in
lands as diverse as India, Bangladesh, Egypt, England etc. Beyond such
differences, however, it is necessary to focus on certain similarities in
their style of dealing with several contemporary issues. And one of the
concerns that has been crucial in germination of this paper is the
tendency of the writers to collapse the distinctions between pub-lic and
private worlds in their works.
The main thematic fiber of the four select novels—Ghosh’s The
Shadow Lines, The Glass Palace, and Mistry’s Such a Long Journey,
A Fine Balance—is similar in the sense of the treatment of homeland
and reconstruction of its past. Other than this the novels certainly have
more interesting parallels. The social and historical documentation of
India, the violence of Partition, and other diasporic issues find place in
both. History forms an essential backdrop in their novels as they project
the effect of historical events on individual lives. Hence it can be stated
that the novels are politically motivated as they describe Parti-tion, India-
Pakistan Wars, and communal riots which are a part of ‘collective
consciousness’ of Indians. The writers’ ability to evoke the feelings of
oneness by targeting the shared experiences brings them together even
more.
It is a known fact that the social world of their novels is composed,
for the most part, of middle-class to lower-middle-class citizens as well
as subalterns—the homeless poor, the working class and the rural
migrants. For instance, the migrant labourers, Rajkumar, Dolly, Olongo
in Ghosh’s The Glass Palace, and the Parsi characters in the novels of
Mistry. It seems an apt choice to focus on the lower end of the social
scale as the true history is supported by the skeletal structure of the
figures marginalised by society and the writers’ attempt at voicing the
significant role played by these powerless destitutes in Indian history
is marvelous. It is through the life experiences of these characters that
major historical-political events of a nation are understood. In his e-
mail corresponding with Dipesh Chakrabarty, Ghosh writes:
Two of my novels (The Shadow Lines and my most recent The

Glass Palace) are centred on families. I know that for myself this
is a way of displacing the ‘nation’- I am sure that this is the case
also with many Indian writers other than myself. In other words,
‘I’d like to suggest that writing about families is one way of not
writing about the nation (or other restrictively imagined
collectivities). I think there is a long tradition of this, going back
at least to Proust - and it’s something that Jameson, Anderson
(and even Bhabha) never seem to take into account. (qtd. in
Mansing 43-44)
The concept of ‘otherness’ comes out lucidly in the novels of
both the writers. The ‘othering’ is depicted through various characters
introduced in Mistry’s A Fine Balance. The novel demonstrates how
the rise of Hindu fundamentalists resulted in peripheralisation of the
Parsis and other minorities. One of the protagonists Dina Dalal, a Parsi
woman, is seen fighting for her identity and space which are deprived
to the powerless. Through the story of Ishvar and Om the horrendous
conditions of the subalterns is clearly brought out. The conditions under
which lower class communities drag their lives is clearly depicted in
the words of Dukhi. Mistry writes:
During his [Dukhi’s] childhood years he mastered a full catalogue of
the real and imaginary crimes a low-caste person could commit, and
the correspond-ing punishments were engraved upon his memory.
By the time he entered his teens, he had acquired all the knowledge
he would need to perceive that invis-ible line of caste he could never
cross.... ( A Fine Balance 97)
In Ghosh’s novels too the central characters are drawn from the
margins of society. RajKumar, Dolly, Olongo and others in The Glass
Palace, Ila as an outsider in a white-dominated society in The Shadow
Lines are a picture of misery and they represent the marginalized section
of the power-infested society. And the sad reality is that though they
attempt at assimilation into the mainstream culture they remain outsiders.
The ‘other’ thus occupies center-stage in the novels of both writers.
By narrating the stories from marginal perspective Mistry and Ghosh
are enabling the ‘others’ to voice their concerns and their understanding
of history. This subversion and refashioning of history is very crucial
in documenting authentic facts that influenced our lives. It is a proof of
active decolonization where the mainstream histories as provided by the
West or the Postcolonial Elite are challenged and the ‘other’ versions
are provided. This is an attempt at blurring the lines between the political
and personal, a favourite theme of many postcolonial writers and Mistry
and Ghosh have constantly indulged in such re-visions. Hence it goes
without saying that whether it is Mistry’s such a long journey or A
Fine Balance or Ghoshs’s The Glass Palace or The Shadow Lines,
history forms the backdrop against which lives of ordinary people are
narrated. And the history that is uttered in their novels is narrated from a
subaltern perspective. Mistry, for instance, rejects the dominant version of
historical events related to Indira Gandhi’s political tenure and presents his
own version in his novels, especially in A Fine Balance. And Ghosh’s
narratives too are from a peripheral point of view thus compelling one to
question the authenticity of history as it is handed down. This helps in
surfacing of the underlying facts which in turn helps in better
comprehension of the reality.
Partition, an event inscribed in the consciousness of the people
on both sides of the border, is problematised by Ghosh and Mistry.
Though it does not occur as a major historical event it nevertheless is
a major historical backdrop against which the characters face certain
other challenges which again are fallout of this disastrous event. The
definition of Partition comes out explicitly in the following words: “A
foreigner drew a magic line on a map and called it the new border; it
became a river of blood upon the earth. And the orchards, fields,
factories, businesses, all on the wrong side of that line, vanished with
a wave of the pale conjuror’s wand” (A Fine Balance 205). The
communal frenzy that followed the Partition and other communal riots
account in the novels of both writers. Other communal riots and their
effect on the commoners is explicitly submitted. Ghosh’s The Shadow
Lines documents the events of 1964 where as Mistry’s A Fine Balance
refers to the 1984 riots and anti-Sikh riots and this is a point in case
where both deal with major historical events. However the difference
between a historian presenting the details is completely different as
when they are presented by literary writers--the difference being the
focus of attention. Where a historian narrates the history objectively
with no specific point of view, the writers present the same details from
an individual point of view, and it is not about the public domain but
the private lives.
The words displacement, uprootedness, nostalgia, identity crisis,
usually related with Diasporic experience, find place in the novels of
Mistry and Ghosh. Mistry’s protagonists, usually Parsis, are portrayed
as feeling left out of the mainstream thus experiencing displacement and

consistently searching for a new identity. Similarly, in Ghosh journey
acts as a motif as various characters undertake both physical and
psychological journeys to refashion their identities. For instance major
characters of The Glass Palace like Alu, Rajkumar, Dolly, and Uma
undertake journeys in search of identity that has been displaced in the
upheaval of historical events. The journey or quest motif is a recurrent
one in third world immigrant fiction, wherein the journey metaphorically
entails the transition from one state of inner experience to another (Kirpal
71). And without any doubt journey as a leitmotif counts large in the
works of both writers. One can find their characters undertaking journey
in order to understand or come to terms with or refashion their identity.
The problem of identity crisis is a result of sweep of historical events
that altered individual’s lives drastically. And in order to escape this
characters try to resolve the conflict by undertaking journey. For
instance in Mistry’s A Fine Balance, Gustad undertakes several
journeys, both physical and psychological, in order to cope with the
altered situations. At one point in the novel he wonders: “Would this
long journey be worth it? Was any journey ever worth the trouble? . . .
And what a long journey for Dinshawji too. But certainly worth it” (Such
a Long Journey 259-260). And he ultimately understands that this is
one way of reasoning the chaos around. Similarly, Ghosh’s characters
travel wide and far to understand themselves in the context of the past,
present and future events.
There are various manifestations of power and in the four novels.
The shift in power relations can be studied closely by using the concept
of power defined by French philosopher Michel Foucault. According
to Foucault, power is something that a group of people or an institution
possesses and it is concerned with oppression and constrainment. He
states that power is often conceptualised as the capacity of powerful
agents to realise their will over the will of powerless people, and the
ability to force them to do things which they do not wish to do. Power
is also often seen as a possession, something which is held onto by
those in power and which those who are powerless try to wrest from
their control (Mills 33-35). For instance, in Ghosh’s novel The Glass
Palace, the issue of power is introduced mainly through the story of
the royal family’s encounter with the British. The Royal family is
rendered powerless and exiled to a remote place far off their home
country and thus pushed to the periphery from center, from power to
powerlessness. Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1977) discusses how

the exercise of power and domination has been conceptualised within
society as a constructive feature of social life. Discipline, according to
him, is a way of controlling the movement and operations of the body
in a constant way. It is a type of power that coerces the body by
regulating and dividing up its movement and the space and time in which
it moves. It is a technique of power which provides procedures for
training individuals where its practice is shifted from the body to the
psyche as the primary target of punishment, such as deprival of wealth
and rights or liberation (Foucault 138). Foucault’s work illustrates that
when a group of people are separated from society it is not a random
affair. They are discerningly divided off from the population, through
discursive and exclusionary exercises of sovereign power, and subjected
to disciplinary ways that control them through strategic power relations.
This is evident in the case of the royal family as they are exiled into a
distant place from their homeland and their life is monitored closely by
the British. The abandoned royal couple lead a life of deprivation hidden
in an unknown territory. Through this pathetic situation, Ghosh projects
the peak of suppression, domination and working of power. Almost
similar instance of power is evident in Mistry’s novel A Fine Balance.
Here the power lies not with the empire but the landlords of a village
who rule over the meek and submissive. The story of Dukhi and his
family is a stark reality that depicts the plight of the powerless whose
lives are at the disposal of the powerful landlords.
To sum up the above mentioned points, engagement with their
country’s political his-tory seems to be a major preoccupation with these
two writers, as India forms the crux of their novels. Both portray the
horrid realities and their implications on the common people across
communities and nations suggesting the universality of certain issues.
And to quote Meenakshi Mukherjee, “Human lives spill over national
boundaries, refusing to stay contained in neat compartments” (qtd. in
Mansing 37). This blurring of borders between public and private
domains is central to the works of these great writers.
Works Cited
Bhautoo-Dewnarain, Nandini. Rohinton Mistry: An introduction.

Contemporary Indian Writers in English. New Delhi: Cambridge
University Press, 2007. Print.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans.
Alan Sheridan. London: Penguin, 1977. Print.
Kirpal, Viney. The Postmodern Indian English Novel: Interrogating the
1980s and 1990s. Bombay: Allied Publishers Ltd., 1996. Print.
Mansing, Kadam G. “Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace: A Postcolonial
Novel.” Littcrit 30.2 (December 2004): 34-49. Print.
Mills, Sara. Michel Foucault. London: Routledge, 2003. Print.
Mistry, Rohinton. A Fine Balance. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. Print.
Multiculturalism
K. V. Dominic
Dear my fellow beings,
you boast of your culture,
you boast of your language.
Is there any culture
which is not hybrid?
Is there any language
which is not mixed?
How many millions have been killed
in the name of culture?
How much Indian is an Indian?
None can give any answer.
Same who boasts of any nationality.
Dear my fellow beings,

break away all fences and walls:
fences of your petty minds,
compound walls of your houses,
walls of your religions and castes,
boundaries of your native States,
and ultimately borders of your nations.
Let there be no India, Pakistan or China,
America, Africa, Europe or Australia,
but only one nation THE WORLD,

where every being lives in perfect harmony
as one entity in multicultural world.
India, Number One!
K. V. Dominic
Sixty percent of my countrymen

defecate in open place.
Six hundred and twenty six million!
My country is number one in the world!
Dear my brothers and sisters abroad,
don’t you see my country’s growth?
Ninety seven percent of my country men
have no access to clean drinking water.
Yet the government claims
the country is fast growing!
True, growth is there
in number of multi-millionaires
who are even less than two percent.
Longing and Alienation in Diasporas

Bishun Kumar
Diaspora as a post-colonial discourse originates from the

theoretical innovations of Edward Said, Homi K. Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak,
Stuart Hall, Paul Gilory, James Clifford, Chinua Achebe and others.
Diaspora as a theory studies ‘the effects’ of trans-cultural and trans-
national migration over the emigrants falling victim of displacement,
fragmentation, marginalization and discontinuity in the alien countries.
Avtar Brah describes the status of diasporas in the dominant culture
as; “differentiated, heterogeneous, contests space, even as they are
implicated in the constructions of common ‘We’” (184). Their identities
are hyphenated, considering the epistemological implications of the term
“Indo-countrian.” This hyphen between India and the country they have
migrated is major symbol of the dilemma- the dilemma between past and
present , the dilemma between loss and gain, the dilemma between native
culture and adopted culture, the dilemma between archetypal existence
and stereotypal existence, the dilemma between acceptance and
resistance. The hyphen also symbolizes amplitude- the gap, the vacuum
between two extreme ends of a pendulum (the metaphor for diasporas).
For the minds of the diasporas attain the identity of a pendulum that is
forced to ‘vibrate’ between the two extremes, the country of their origin
and the country settle. By the term ‘ vibrate’ here, we mean the endless
journey between the imaginary homeland and the land where they
presently inhabit. The hyphen also denotes a place that exists
geographically nowhere but in-between. The inhabitants, the diasporas,
therefore, attain the ‘enfluxed identity’ and an existence of a ‘Nowhere
Man’ which keeps perpetuating their ‘alienation.’ The questions which
always pinch them up are ‘Who are they? Where are they from?’
The Diaspora theory in context of British imperialism may create a
state of ambivalence--the difference between ‘Imperial’ or ‘Trade
Diaspora’ and ‘Victim’ or ‘Labour Diaspora’ or for convenience call
‘Gunny Sack Diaspora.’ This difference is caused by their status—the
one to rule and become a ruler while the other to be ruled and to become
a subject. The rulers enforce their own culture, thus, maintain their actual
existence while the subjects are enforced to adopt the culture of the
ruler, therefore, suffer from the loss of their archetypal existence which
they inherit in their memory. The inheritance of loss leaves them in state
of dilemma and melancholia. The only similarity between them is that
they both face strong ‘longing’ for their homeland and thus, may be
called together Homeland Diasporas. The novels of Rahi Masoom Raja
(in Hindi) narrate woeful tale of partition, the foul play of politicians,
the devastated form of nation and its people after partition and longing
for the home that has been in there memory. The pain of ‘longing’ can
be realized in the following lines:
Jinse hum choot gaye Aab Vo jahan kaise hai
Shakh-e-gulkaise hai, Khushbu ke mahak kaise hai
Ay saba too to udhar se gujarti hai
Pattaron vale vo insane, vo behis dar-o-bam
Vo makee kaise hai, Sheeshe ke makan kaise hai.
Sheeshe Ke Maka Vale 173.
(To which we have been left adrift how those worlds are
How the branch of flower is, how the mansion of fragrance is.
O, wind! You do pass from there
How is my foot-prints in that lane.
Those stone people, those tedious houses
How are those residents and how are those glass houses.)
Kiran Desai portrays the consciousness of alienation in her novel
The Inheritance of Loss. The character Jemu, the Judge is maddened
with his granddaughter Sai’s westernized culture. When he listens of
celebration of Christmas party he shouts at her, “It is because of people
like you we never get anywhere” (The Inheritance of Loss 163). Diaspora
consciousness is an ‘inheritance of loss,’ an attempt of delineation of a
rich ‘sthal-puran,’ a legendry Indian history in which the past is mingled
with the present. Thus, Indian Diasporas assume themselves to be the
citizens of ‘utopia’ and even in their seclusion make their own culture
‘present in absence.’
Their existence at nowhere, the land between the present and the
past pushes them to move from one country to another and vice-versa,
retain a continuous journey. And Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long
Journey, the vacillation assists them in enabling The Fine Balance of
their human existence at least. In his novels, Mistry, has attempted to
‘deconstruct and repossess his past’ and evoke the India of 1960s and
1970s. Thus, the ‘journey’ in his novel is metaphor for Diaspora. In his
second issue The Fine Balance except Manick, all the major characters
like Dina Dalal, Ishwar, Om, Kohlah make a fine balance of their hope
and despair by outgrowing their suffering. In Family Matters, Mistry’s
prominent character Prof. Nariman Vakeel who is lying on the sick bed
is crushed between the question of life and death, decay and disease,
and intersection of multiculturalism and orthodox ethnic culture. In
Swimming Lessons, the narrator’s failure to learn swimming symbolizes
the diasporic feature of failure to adjust in Canadian culture.
The state of dilemma between cultural ideologies can well be
evidenced in Jhumpa Lahari’s The Namesake. The cross-cultural
oddities faced by the Ganguli’s family, finally bring the family to
reconciliate and take refuge in their own culture. Ashoke, with his wife
(an arranged marriage) Ashima emigrates to America. His son Gogol
finds himself itching to cast off the awkward name and re-christens
himself as Nikhil. The working of American ideology in the lives of Gogol,
Sonia and Maushumi makes them indifferent towards the moral values
as against to their parents who adhere to the culture of their origin.
Moreover, Gogol and Sonia have strong dislike for ‘Puja’, the worship.
This heightens Ashoke and his wife Ashima’s longing for their own
roots, their own country. Gayatri Spivak indicates nostalgia for Ashima’s
own family roots. The cravings for her country are reflected in her mind
when she is in hospital for her delivery:
Nothing seems normal to Ashima—It’s not so much the pain
which she knows, somehow she will survive. It’s the consequence:
motherhood in foreign land—that it was happening so far from
home unmonitored and unobserved by those she loved—she is
terrified to raise a child in a country where she knows so little,
where life seems so tentative and spare. (The Namesake 6)
The migration brings the emigrants to become marginal and inferior
beings. The emigrants lose their cultural and geographical belongingness
and are left at the island of ‘loneliness and alienation’ and the pain of
losing their cultural and geographical identity becomes intolerable when
they are alienated from their own blood, the children and the family
members. Their children adopt the culture of the subject country for
having been grown up in that atmosphere from their very birth and
childhood. Moreover, they start commenting on their own parents
labeling the charge of inferior and backward beings. As in the novel
The Namesake, Ashoke’s children Gogol and Sonia naturally adopt and
adapt the American accent and culture and emerge as the beings of
American ideology. This is evidenced in their dislike for ‘puja’ and eager
waiting for Christmas. Thus, we see that Ganguli family is cut into two
and the pain is inflicted on both the parts. About the working of these
colonial distinctions, Frantz Fanon, a Martiniquian critic states: “This
world cut into two, inhabited by two different species—when you
examine at close quarters of the colonial context, it is evident that what
parcels out the world is to begin with the fact of belonging or not
belonging to a given race, a given species” (The Wretched of the Earth
32). However, an adopted ideology remains varied as compared to a
natural ideology, and brings the emigrants face to face and divides them
between the Western and the eastern, the Occidental and the oriental,
the Native and the immigrant. This polarity confuses and dehumanizes
the Diasporas who then bear the hybrid identity and vacillate between
their past and the present identity. Neither adoption nor adaptation could
absorb the emigrants in the culture of the subject country. Diasporas,
thus, lose their archetypal identity and bear hybrid identity—the
multinational, multicultural and multilingual identity.
It seems that postcolonial and the diasporas are inevitably
frightened with the bloom and turmoil of insolvable and enduring
prejudices. Hence, Sell’s argument seductively suggests that in reaching
for the rhetorics of multiculturalism, the residual problems of the past
cheerfully vanish and cultural history can be rewritten. Under this new
rubric of selected writers once identified with both postcolonial and
diaspora representations (and the historical consciousness linked to
both) are now welcomed to the multicultural festivities having
undergone something of a conceptual refit: “Rushdie’s early novels are
already ridding themselves of colonial bug bears and prophesy
the future achievement of a seamless multiculturalism. It is novelist like
Smith who delivers Rushdie’s future in their realistic view of present
day multicultural ideology” (Sell 33).
Those postcolonial and diaspora writers who are less willing to
believe that the past is fully over in the present, remain locked outside
of the multicultural party. Determined like Caryl Phillips to peruse:
“lachrymose marginalia to the tragedies of histories defunct” (Sell 42).
Forget diaspora consciousness and embrace the multicultural
metaphysics of flux—so goes one recent critical trend.
Intra-national or intra-Indian migration like people’s migration from
one state to another or from a village to a city or a girl’s migration from

her parents’ home to her husband’s home is a matter of celebrity of
Indian culture and customs and to live in cultural harmony of India. It
is a mark of Indianness and its unity in variety. It’s a matter of national
integration. The theoretical innovations of the diaspora talk of cross-
country, trans-national and international migration and not of intra-
national migration. The problems arising out of intra-cultural migration
are the matter of social, political and racial disillusionment and not the
impact of diaspora. Diaspora literature is undertaking its journey from
alienation to globalization.
Works Cited
Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London:

Rutledge, 1997. Print
Desasi, Kiran. The Inheritance of Loss. New Delhi: Penguin Books India,
2006. Print.
Lahri, Jhumpa. The Namesake. London: Harper Collins, 2003. Print.
Mistry, Rohinton. Family Matters. London: Faber and Faber, 2002. Print.
---. A Fine Balance. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. Print.
---. Such a Long Journey. London: Faber & Faber, 1931. Print.
Raja, Dr. Rahi Masoom. Sheeshe ke Maka Vale. Ed. Kunvar Pal Singh.
Delhi: Vani Publisher, 2001. Print.
Sell, Jonathan P. A. “Chance and Gesture in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth
and the Autograph Man: A Model for Multicultural Identity.”
Journal of Commonwealth Literature 41.3 (2006): 27-44. Print.
The Pleasures and Principles of Culinary

Art: Shifting Paradigms in Cooking with
Stella and Mistress of Spices
Gigy J. Alex
“The belly rules the mind”--Spanish proverb
This paper is an attempt to look at the art of cooking and relevance

of spices and dishes in our life. The extent, to which the act of cooking,
the ingredients, the smell, taste and colour influence us, are considered
in this paper with reference to two movies Cooking with Stella and
The Mistress of Spices. Kitchen is quite often regarded as the privileged
area for women. With the changing social scenario, it is not just a
woman’s place, instead kitchen is a text that reflects the social and
political ramifications; and spices and other ingredients are discourses
which can be questioned and subverted. The kitchen remained largely
unaffected by architectural advances throughout the late middle ages.
With the advent of colonialism and technology, kitchen space has gained
more popularity. It’s the space where women and cooks spent major
share of their life. Women; who peel onions, cut vegetables, fry fish
and smoke meat, along with their selves, and cooks; who prepare
delicacies and cuisines for the guests, consider this place as their
workshop.
This space has been highly politicized in the recent times. Along
with the space, the ingredients, especially, the spices that we add into
the cuisines that give a label to the curry also have been politicized.
Cooking with Stella (2009) cannot be branded as a light comedy as it
carries with it elements of political resonances where the master chef
learns from the maid of the kitchenette, rules of ethnic cooking and
mixing. Stella’s art of cooking is a political act where she subverts the
rules of teacher/student while teaching the foreigner, chef-master,
Michael, ethnic Indian dishes. The second movie Mistress of Spices

(2007) looks at a little more sensitive and complex topic “spices”
(masalas). Here is Tilo who runs the “Spice Bazaar,” who is destined to
be in the shop with the spices, like a clairvoyant sees things in advance.
She encounters individuals from different social and cultural
background, has a special relationship with each of these characters
and spices, works as a catalyst. For a woman, kitchen is a library cum
laboratory. This is where a woman controls her emotions, worries and
its shades and concentrates on the selection of proper ingredients for
making dishes. Stella and Tilo expostulate various culinary philosophies
during the course of the movies.
Quite often kitchen is a place where women get oppressed. But in
these two movies instead of oppression, women express themselves
through cooking and spice mixing. Meredith E. Abarca is of the opinion
that culinary metaphor expresses how, “working-class women speak with
the seasoning of their food” (3). Kitchens and cooking symbolize a place
and an activity that most women engage in irrespective of their
educational level, ethnicity, class, status etc, to bridge the gap between
theory and praxis of female sensibilities. “Everyday cooking, food as
voice reveals the existence of a different field of epistemology. Food as
voice comes forth as a powerful, highly charged, and personalized voice”
(4). Cooking and spice mixing here becomes working class practices of
female agency. In these two movies, spices and cooking emerge as
channels of communication.
These women season their sense of self through these culinary
chats. Kitchen and the spice shop become a studio, where cooking and
spice-mixing are their artistic expressions. Tilo, in her spice shop and
Stella in her kitchen deals with various issues related to their own and
others’ life. Thus, kitchen and spice shop become sites of knowledge
and empowerment. Cooking, spice selection and spice mixing yield forms
of epistemologies that move beyond the art of cooking. They include
controlling the space (where kitchen and the spice shop are rooms of
one’s own). Taking its roots from the division of labour women’s roles
got narrowed down to that of a cook or an accomplice in the kitchenette.
Cooking and spice mixing are acts of survival strategies from the part
of women to make their presence feel against everything at odds.
In Cooking with Stella, the focus is on the glorious food that
Stella makes from her personal repertoire of traditional South Indian
dishes, and on how Michael is impressed by the culinary lessons she
gives him. Here, the white man is impressed by the third world women’s
culinary gifts and he wants to learn from her. It is through food and
cooking that Michael experiences and explores India. Food is what
Michael wants to learn about, and this is reflected in the prayer that
Stella invokes in the last scene of the movie, “Please God, make him a
top South Indian cook.” Here, we come across two types of food--
”master’s food” and “servant’s food”—in the words of Stella. Stella’s
experience with her previous master’s is totally different from that with
Michael’s. Whereas Michael prefers everything Indian and ethnic, her
previous masters prefer everything European. She used to serve her
diplomats more Westernized dishes, which she calls “master’s food,”
and has always made “servant’s food” for herself like dals, curries,
chutneys, and dosas that Michael avidly wants to master.
This is what Barthes says when he proposes “food signifies more
than physical compositions . . . . Foods in Indian culture are divided in
accordance with the medium (water and oil) in which they are cooked.
Pucca food (cooked in oil) can be accepted by the upper class from
middle class and not at all from the lower castes. Kutcha food (cooked
in water) is accepted from the castes which lie above one’s caste in the
social hierarchy. These rules are followed generally, though not
stringently, especially during social functions” (Meenakshi Singh 123).
Food serves as the central metaphor and a cultural unifier that bridges
the characters in the movie. It is all about cross cultural (and class)
misunderstandings, carnivalesque exercises and it is through the lively
exchange of recipes, food lore, trips to the market, arguments, mistakes,
and experiments, that Stella and Michael are able to realign the servant
employer dynamic, and to forge a true cooking guru-student
understanding. In the movie Stella’s teaching focuses on three specific
dishes; the Kerala Shrimp Curry, Masala Dosa and Kheer (creamy rice
pudding).
Maya and Michael (Lisa Ray and Don McKellar) arrive at New
Delhi on their first overseas posting, with their baby Zara. Maya is keen
to take up her job as a policy officer at the Canadian High Commission
and Michael is thrilled to be in India as he wants to learn everything
that he can about traditional Indian cooking. Back in Ottawa he worked
as a chef for the Governor General. Their house hold is controlled by
Stella and it is her lifelong goal to retire to a small house, by the sea, in
her beloved homeland of Kerala. Michael wants Stella to teach him how
to cook her signature dishes: Kerala shrimp curry, dosas, chutneys,
sambhars, kheer and much more. Along with him, the audience also
explores Delhi market and the shops there.
A woman, who is a house wife, cook or anyone who has close
association with the kitchen, reflects her identity through her
relationship with the kitchen utensils or the spices and ingredients that
she uses in the kitchen. In recent centuries, cooking and its relevance
has increased a lot. Nutritionists and dieticians thrust more on the need
of concentrating on good food. The TV channels, blogs, magazines and
newspapers dedicate a major chunk of space for discussing art of
cooking, dishes that should be included, types of food that we have to
concentrate upon, relevance of healthy food, etc. In the movies we see
how a woman’s space has been explored by men. In Cooking with
Stella, Stella who is the master of her kingdom, with the arrival of the
Canadian family, becomes cautious. Her attention has shifted from
cooking dishes to, cooking a scheme along with her assistant Tannu.
Her insecurity increases all the more due to the Canadian chef’s
encroachment into the kitchen.
Stella’s role as the master chef is revealed not only in her strategies
inside the kitchen. She is the undisclosed master of her kitchen whose
dining space is also within the kitchen, and she is very particular in
keeping the cleanliness of her kitchen. She even instructs the master of
the house to remove his slippers before entering into kitchen. Inside
the kitchen, the superabundance of colours and platters with beautifully
coloured vegetables, the vegetable cum fruit salad prepared by Michael,
which is garnished with pomegranate, and how Micheal enjoys his art
of cooking along with Stella gives a beautiful picture regarding Stella’s
workplace. Kitchenette becomes the meeting point where multiple socio-
cultural culinary expressions get intersected, and food serves as the
template for observing their expertise in the art of cooking.
There are lots of differences between the cooking of Stella and
Michael. Stella who is specializing in cooking food in oil and spices,
never concentrates much on ornamental cooking, whereas Michael is
specializing on ornamental cookery and salad making, which in the words
of Barthes “. . . a cuisine of advertisement, totally magical” (79). He
specializes in originality and presentability of food; fruits and vegetables,
which is definitely a feast to the eyes, due to its varied fusion of hues
and colour combinations. In the two movies, it is not only the food or
spices that matters but its presentation is also a matter of consideration.
The Mistress of Spices also uses the concept of colour to a greater

extent. Tilo is the mistress in the movie. She is the mistress of no man,
but of spices only. Here, spices work as agents that determine the fate
of human beings. Supernatural powers are attached to spices and other
ingredients that we use for cooking. It is the spices or masalas that
give an address to the curry. Tilo considers herself as a slave to the
spices. In her book of the same name Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni seeks
the help of spices for chapter division. Except the first and last chapter
each chapter is divided in the names of spices like Turmeric, Cinnamon,
Fenugreek, Asafoetida, Fennel, Ginger, Peppercorn, Kalo Jire, Neem, Red
Chilli, Makaradwaj, Lotus Root, and Sesame. Tilo who always remembers
the words of her first mother that she is not important, what is more
important is the store and the spices. “Ultimately the Mistresses are
without power, hollow reeds only for the wind’s singing. It is the spice
that decides, and the person to whom it is given” (Divakaruni 139). Tilo,
or Nayan Tara, the star seer, was once taken away by the pirates. This
is politically linked to the whites’ exploitation of the third world. Tilo’s
conviction based on the philosophy of spices controls the movie. There
is an inner room inside the Spice Bazaar where Tilo sits and meditates,
where she goes back to her memories of the island. The mistress of
spices thinks about herself only when she is in this room. It is during
one such day she meets the American Raven, whom Tilo later on
considers as “My American.”
Frank Chin’s concept of “food pornography,” speaks about the
relevance of food in the imaginative and discursive strategies of Asian
American writers. It is a form of cultural self-commodification through
which Asian Americans earn a living by capitalizing on the so called
exoticism embedded in food ways. This is what Sau-Ling Wong notes,
when speaking about food pornographers who superficially appear to
promote, rather than devalue one’s ethnic heritage, but, what they in
fact do is “wrench cultural practices out of their context and display
them for gain to gain curious gaze of outsiders” (56). Tilo, the Indian
American curandera, who runs the spice shop “Spice Bazaar,” while
telling her story, is presented as moving through rooms and corridors
filled with sacks of spices and the soft light of the camera depicts these
spices as not just food materials, but as godly beings, elements that
attracts not only the visuals but even the olfactory. Here is a fusion of
the exotic and fantastic. The softness, airiness, and the halo that
encircles the spices give a daintily appearance to the spices. Every time
she prescribes a spice to a person, she always remembers about its

history, and the role it plays in one’s life. And the most interesting thing
is the fact that whenever Raven arrives in her shop it is the red chilly
that reminds her, the hidden urge and hope in her mind to have a
relationship with a human being along with her spices.
Tilo is here in America to solve the psychic and racial traumas
and dispense spices to her customers to help them negotiate their
problems. Characters must chart their own journey towards a better life,
and they are ably assisted by a curandera, who dispenses spices that
aid the individual to find the strength from within, as if ingesting turmeric
or fennel in the correct doses can curb racism and sexism. The
voyeuristic gaze of mainstream cinema looks at the theme and the
continuity that follows spice –mixing and cooking. A woman’s culinary
epistemologies along with her poignant practical and emotional
articulations, express herself as a subject and an agent of her own self.
Quite often the food ways are deeply embedded in the formation of
nationhood and person hood. Here there is a subversion of the
preconceived ideological gender implications that define kitchen as a
woman’s “space” instead of a woman’s “place.”
A study of the etymology of the name “Tilo” will prove, how
Tilottama is named after til, the sesame seed, Tilottama, the most elegant
and chief dancer of Lord Indra’s court. Indian mythologies attach great
significance to til, sesame seeds. “Til which ground into paste with
sandalwood cures diseases of heart and liver, til which fried in its own
oil restores lusture when one has lost interest in life. I will be Tilottama,
the essence of til, life giver, restorer of health and hope” (Divakaruni
42). The very same Tilo forces us to look at spices and cuisines as
medicinal, divine and heavenly. The movie functions as a catalyst and
a cultural ambassador in a foreign land where it connects the past and
present, links people and their past and memories, where Tilo helps them
to reconcile with their fate and to live expecting a better world.
These two movies depict characters that enshrine the cooking
strategies and spice mixings for making the dishes that are ethnic as
well as savoury. They depict food as an expressive corpus of knowledge,
a system of knowledge regarding cultures as well as people. These two
texts to some extent decode the social and political realities of the past
as well as the present, native as well as expatriate realities. In accordance
with Barthes’ definition of food they reveal that food is not just “an
assemblage of products subjected to statistical or nutritional analyses.
It is at one and the same time a system of communication, a body of

imagery, a protocol of systems, of situations, of behaviours” (Phyllis 2).
The food items are artifacts of indices of culture, and cuisines have a
language of their own. “Food presents a complex grammar; a rich
symbolic alphabet through its diversity of colour, texture, smell and taste;
its ability to be elaborated and combined in infinite ways; and its
immersion in norms of manners and cuisine” (Barthes 20-27). Montari
explains that a cuisine, like language contains a “vocabulary (the
products and ingredients) that is organized according to grammatical
rules (recipes that give meaning to the ingredients and transforms them
in dishes), a syntax (the menus, that is the order of dishes) and rhetoric
(social protocols)” (11). Stella and Tilo, while cooking and spice-mixing
follow these protocols. This is yet another politics that control them, or
else they would like to follow.
These two texts are not verbal expressions but they are actions,
practices and silences. They are embodied as well as inscribed. In these
two texts while women speak of specific histories, what gets expressed
moves beyond the four walls of kitchen and the spice shop per se. They
evoke memories, emotions, histories and even stories. Food and cooking
challenge the notions of objectivity because of their continuously
varying nature. Food and cooking habits vary constantly within cultures,
regions, and families. The responsibility for preparing most has been the
work of women, slaves or labour workers. These two movies offer a
different way to understand our most intimate environment, as a text into
which personal and social meanings are ingrained. At the same time it
shows us a new way to order and design domestic space.
The four walls of the kitchen and spice shop are quite often
regarded as a confinement for the woman. But for Stella and Tilo their
influence over others’ life extend beyond the four walls. Spice shop and
Kitchen are the places where they write their lives, and their spiritual
advancements begin from this place. They are the places where every
marvelous thing happens; it is a place where stories mingle. The food
they prepare and their combinations are always linked to cultural and
ethnic identity. The language of consumption and culinary practices are
reflected in these two movies. These practices of preparation and
consumption are not worldly but have striking political, social and
cultural consequences. That is why one find striking similarity between
the arguments made by Confucius who says “The way you cut your
meat reflects the way you live,” and that of the French gastronome,
Jean Brillat Svarin, “Tell me what you eat, I will tell you what you are.”
Works Cited
Abarca, Meredith. E. Voices in the Kitchen: Views of food and the world
from working class.USA: Texas A & M University Press, 2006.
Print.
Barthes, Roland. “Towards a Sociopsychology of Contemporary Food
Consumption.” Food and Culture: A Reader. Ed. Carole Counihan
and Penny Van Esterick. London: Routledge, 1997. 28-35. Print.
Berges, Paul Mayeda. Director. The Mistress of Spices. 2005. Web. 13
Feb. 2012.
Bober, Phyllis Pray. Art, Culture and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval
Gastronomy. London: Chicago University Press, 1999. Print.
Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee. The Mistress of Spices. Britain: Black Swan,
1997. Print.
Mehta, Deepa and Dilip Mehta, directors. Cooking with Stella. 2008.
Web. 13 Feb. 2012.
Montari, Massimo, ed. El Mundo en la Cocina: Historia, Identidad,
Intercambios. Trans. Yolanda Daffunchio. Buenos Aires: Paidos,
2003. Print.
Peterson, T. Sarah. Acquired Taste: The French Origins of Modern
Cooking. USA: Cornell UP, 1994. Print.
Savarin, Brillat. The Physiology of Taste. Kessinger Publishing, 2004.
Web. 13 Feb. 2012.
Scully, Terence. The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge:
The Boydell Press, 1995. Print.
Singh, Meenakshi. “Theory and Social Structure: Perspective from a
Village Study.” History of Science, Philosophy, and Culture in
Indian Civilization. Social Sciences: Communication,
Anthropology and Sociology. Ed. Yogendra Singh. Volume 14, Part
2. Delhi. Pearson Education India, 2010. 89-132. Print.
Wong, Sau-Ling Cynthia. Reading Asian American Literature: From
Necessity to Extravagance. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1993. Print.
SHORT STORY
An Unrealized Dream
Ketaki Datta
“You know dear, our battalion is going back to Binnaguri next

week. I’m returning with them- unscathed, happy with a sense of pride,
managing a hair-breadth escape in the last encounter.
How’s Suman? I have bought two beautiful dolls for her, as she
desired. Mr. Saxena of the 26th Battalion suggested me to buy these from
the corner-shop, displaying exquisite toys and gift items . . .”
Mama pursed her lips to suppress a sob that badly wanted to
break forth. Suman sat beside her toying with the end of her housecoat.
She cast a longing look at Ankita’s door downstairs on the opposite
pavement. Ankita was a good friend of hers. In fact, Ankita came with
her Mama yesterday to show her a doll, her Papa brought from
Singapore, a week ago. She told Ankita, “I have asked Papa to bring a
blinking-doll for me, next time.”
After a long wait, Papa was coming. How happy Suman had been!
She sought Mama’s permission to run to Ruchi’s flat and break the
tidings. But as Suman cast her glance outside the window, she saw two
giant clouds sprawling across the horizon. She went to the corner-room
where the window overlooked a long, verdant stretch, where cuckoo at
night used to sing serenades for her. In a jiffy, Suman banished the
thought of going to Ruchi’s place and lay open her treasure-trove
instead. It comprised three rag-dolls, two plastic sauce-pans, one iron
cauldron, one small wicker-basket and few other essential items for her
doll-family.
“When’s he coming back?” Ankita’s mother’s voice was wafted
from the drawing room.
“In the first week of August, I mean, next week. He rang me up
in the morning and confirmed,” Suman’s mother’s rejoinder came dryly.
“Straight from Delhi?” sputtered Ankita’s mother.
“N-no, he’ll come from Delhi to Allahabad, to say ‘hello’ to his
mother. Only mother-in-law stays there with my elder brother-in-law.
Then, he’ll be back,” Mama made her point elaborate and clear.
“Okay Bhabiji, if you feel lonely, please come down to my place.

Where’s Suman?” Ankita’s mother expressed her concern.
“She is perhaps in her room . . . okay thanks, I’ll come”, Mama
accompanied her to the door, and a few minutes scarcely passed by
before Suman heard her weeping stealthily, her wail muffled under
deliberate blowing of nose.
Suman saw the clouds thickening near the horizon. Her doll-family
needed immediate attention. If she didn’t go to cook for them, they would
surely die of starvation. Could she put up with such a loss? After all,
she was the sole bread-winner of the family.
Mama was heard pacing up and down the drawing-room, quite
thoughtfully. But why? Papa had already informed them that he would
come by the first week of the next month, i.e. August. Why did Mama
look so sad then? Why did she always remain lost in a brown study
these days? Suman felt terribly alone.
That day, Mitra auntie of Block C came to invite Mama and Suman
to a get-together to celebrate her husband’s return from Kargil. Mama
instead of rejoicing at the news wore dour looks. Suman insisted her on
joining the party in the evening. During the afternoon, Mama sat with a
cup of tea and kept weeping silently. On being asked repeatedly, she
answered, “Sorry dear, I can’t attend the party today. They’ll be talking
about war on the front. I always apprehend your Papa’s well-being, till
his return.” “No Mama, let’s go for a change, Mama please . . .” pressed
Suman. Her Mama mutely declined.
These days, Mrs. Sharma hardly wanted to go anywhere.
Managing daily chores, frequenting the market in the dusk, moping away
on the sly, standing at the corner of the balcony as evening wore on,
keeping in touch with her husband through letters and phone-calls
rounded off her daily schedule. Suman really felt desolate. She hardly
could write. But last week, she wrote a couple of letters to Papa, Mama
scribbled a few lines too and ran downstairs to drop the letters in the
red Letter-box.
Suman was yet to take admission into a school. She was now only
three-and-a-half years old. But as Mama insisted her on reading and
writing, she had to scrape an acquaintance with alphabets and hold the
pen and write with trembling hands whatever she could. She remembered
writing to Papa, “Papa, how are yu? Papa, hou are yoo? Papa, I luv you.”
Mama scolded her and rectified her nonsensical spellings. Suman took
umbrage and being impressed by the interesting variations of spelling
of the same word, she continued her unflagging spirit of zigzagging luv’s,
yu’s and hou’s. In various nuances, the words appeared repeatedly in
her two short letters: “Papa, how are you? Papa, I love you!”
In the afternoon, when Suman curled up near her mother’s bosom,
a rap on the door woke her up. She thought, perhaps, their charwoman,
Basantididi, knocked. Suman nudged Mama and as she opened the door,
Shrutididi hopped in. She was looking pale, woebegone and disheveled.
Already high-strung, Mama went blanched with fear. “Yes Shruti, what’s
wrong with you?” She motioned her to be seated. Something seemed to
choke her voice. She blabbed out, “Auntie, just half-an-hour back,
Ruchi’s Mama received a phone-call from some relative in Delhi. Ruchi’s
Papa died yesterday in a shelling that continued for about fifteen minutes
in West Dras. She is crying bitterly. Ruchi has lost words.”
Mama ran upstairs anxiously. Perhaps to console Ruchi’s Mama.
Suman felt like crying. She wondered, whither had gone those days of
peace and happiness of yesteryears? Papa was here and each evening
seemed like a pageantry of nice dreams. Parties were a regular fare. Papa
and Mama used to strut the dance-floor with measured steps, the halls
at Officers’ Mess used to resound with the laughter of honoured guests.
Suman used to pirouette with Ruchi, Ankita and a horde of girls of her
age. Suman sensed something had, suddenly, gone awry. But, she could
not give vent to the pent-up tears that died for gushing forth.
Mama came back from upstairs with Ruchi at her heels. Ruchi
was visibly distraught. Mama said, “Come Ruchi, Suman’s waiting for
you. Nothing has gone wrong anywhere. Papa’ll surely come some day,
don’t worry,” Ruchi could hardly believe her ears, her eyes grew large,
her face lit up. “Yes, believe me, he’ll definitely come back some day,”
Mama assured her. Was it a simple ruse for not letting Ruchi’s spirit
slacken? Anyway, Suman welcomed Ruchi to her doll family and Ruchi
too began mothering the doll-siblings. Mama did not allow Ruchi to go
to her flat that evening. She stayed back with Suman, dined with her,
shared the bed with her. As sleep eluded her, Ruchi wanted to open the
door and run upstairs, but the bolt of the door was beyond her reach.
She cried profusely, Mama tried to soothe her, she ran her fingers
through Ruchi’s hair, lulled her to sleep with even, harmonious strokes
on her back. As Ruchi fell asleep, Mama tiptoed upstairs to sleep with
Ruchi’s mother. Shrutididi came down instead, bolted the door and lay
prostrate beside Suman. That night Suman dreamt of her Papa, Ruchi’s
father and the massive guns. The ear-splitting booms of shelling kept
her shivering in her nightmares.
Next morning, the phone rang and Mama toddled to answer the
call. Suman didn’t remember when Mama came to replace Shrutididi
beside her. Perhaps at the crack of dawn! Shrutididi took Ruchi upstairs,
in her lap, as she slept. Mama was heard saying, “When? Tomorrow? It
means day after tomorrow! Ah…fine! Please, as soon as you can!
Yeah…yeah…okay, I’ll take Suman. Take care…Bye!” Mama sounded
happy, quite happy. Suman shouted, “Was it Papa?” Mama was so glad
that she capered out of the drawing-room where the telephone was kept
and kissed her straight on her right cheek and exclaimed, “Your Papa’s
coming not in the first week but on the very first day of August from
Allahabad. He is having a whale of time at your Amma’s place there.
Oh Sumi, how relieved I feel!” Suman sprang up, flicked the toothbrush
from the tray and leaped into the bathroom with a cheerful air. She
hummed, “I love you, Papa.”
Mama and Suman ran helter-skelter to announce Mr. Sharma’s
unscathed return from the war-front shortly. Mama decorated the
drawing-room with fragrant, bright-hued flowers to shake off the smell
of solitude and anxiety. Suman helped her Mama in her “Operation Spick
and Span” –dusted the portrait of Papa, propped up on the brass-platter
on the window-ledge, freed Papa’s books and writing-table of the last
speck of unwelcome dust and was caught in a spree of spraying the
rooms with Jasmine Freshener. Mama scolded, “Are you planning to
squeeze out even the last drop of it, eh?” Suman’s gaiety knew no
bounds. She danced and danced and made faces at Mama and set all
her scolding at naught and donned her dolls in the new set of apparels,
“Papa’s coming with two new members of your family,” she whispered
in their ears, they blinked and cocked their heads in jovial response.
1st August, 1999: Suman’s Mama was busy arranging the room.
Basantididi mopped the tessellated floor after freeing it from dirt and
dust. Mama bought Glenary’s squidgy cream-cakes from the ‘Cakes and
Ale’ counter, at the corner of the road. Suman dressed herself in the
starched pink-frock and kept the blue dungarees aside for tomorrow to
welcome Papa. She could visualize the dolls being brought by her Papa.
2nd August, 1999: Mama got up at cock-crow. Sun was yet to set
out on its diurnal duty, an awning of dawn-dew hung from the tall
eucalyptus tree that peeped through the rear-window of the dining-hall.
Sunrays were yet to barge in through the fissures of the corridor that
led straight onto the drawing-room.
A fresh morning welcomed Papa, thought Suman. She, too, woke

up, cleaned her teeth, ran every now and then to strain her eyes to see
whether Tsering Daju’s car drew up the pitch-zone that threaded to their
Block. Ah yes, it was already there! Mama sipped a cup of scalding
coffee and Suman had her share of milk. Mama tried to contact “Railway
Enquiry” on phone, but as and when she asked, “Is Avadh-Assam
Express running on time?” the other end maintained mysterious silence.
Being desperate, Mama decided to rush to the station instead. Mr.
Sharma asked her to be present at NJP station in lieu of the sub-station
where Binnaguri passengers usually alight. NJP was hardly far from
Binnaguri.
The fresh, dewy, copper-silver sky had some message latent in its
bosom. The car revved up as they leaned back on the downy seats.
Tsering Daju’s lips broke into a smile as he said, “Looking just like the
Rasna baby! Papa aa raha hai aaj, isliye kya? [Is it because Papa coming
today?] Suman nodded in the affirmative, beaming. The colonnade of
tall trees, the sleek, sloping stretch of macadam, the lush green on both
sides of the thoroughfare that slipped by as soon as it popped up in
the range of vision, the trill and chirp of some unknown birds—
announced Suman’s Papa’s arrival only. Sitting by the window, Mrs.
Sharma seemed to be lost in a reverie.
The car reached NJP station at a breakneck speed. But, the unusual
stir, the anxious, tension-racked throng discussing something, the
inkling of which seemed ominous called Mrs. Sharma back to her senses.
She ran to the “Enquiry” window only to learn that Avadh-Assam
Express had a head-on collision with Brahmaputra Mail in the wee hours
of the morning. She felt giddy, words failed her, jaded nerves snapped
on their ends, her blood curdled, her veins pulsated near her temples.
Suman screamed from the car, “Is Papa’s train running late, Mama?”
Mrs. Sharma strove hard to pull herself together and trudged along
towards the Station Master’s Cabin. Not a soul could be seen there. A
passerby with a bewildered expression told her, “The two trains rammed
into each other at Gaisal, approximately 80kms from here. Just now we
had been informed thus.”The people, waiting for their relatives looked
dismal, perplexed. Mrs. Sharma ran hurriedly to Tsering Dorjee and
implored him to take them to Gaisal.
“Where’s it, ma’am?” He was completely unaware of its location.
“They say, only 80 kms from here. Please drive soon, we’ve to
get hold of your Sa’ab.” Mrs. Sharma said in a breath.
“But ma’am,” Tsering fumbled…

“Oh no, we don’t have a single minute to lose,” commanded
Suman’s Mama.
The car galloped at an amazing speed through the sunny, bright
morning which appeared drab to them, though the breeze tousled
Suman’s mane. Apprehension gnawed at Mrs. Sharma’s entrails. What
was there in store for her?
At last, the car pulled up at a small, nondescript, rural station
where people flocked at a short distance—a strange sight startled them.
Mangled coaches which bore the brunt of the collision stood one above
the other. Photographers’ and reporters’ cameras clicked away. The top
brass of the administration stood at their wits’ end, scattered in small
groups. Arrays of corpses covered with white palls caught her attention.
The rescuers pulling out mauled limbs from the iron-joints of the smashed
compartments shoved her to retch. The ghastly scene was enough to
stall the onrush of blood in her veins and arteries; she lost her senses.
Suman was already taken away by Tsering, who himself being unnerved,
tried to veer Suman’s attention. On seeing his mistress swoon, Tsering
flung out to hold her and help her get back to senses, by sprinkling
water on her face. Suman was asked to sit back in the car, shutting her
eyes; she obeyed.
But, the morning had started on a happy note.
Gashing lesions, breathless bodies, smashed limbs—all stared at
Mrs. Sharma’s face. But where was her husband? Caught in between
the crushed bogeys? Cooped up in some yet-to-be-opened compartment,
which had lost its contours even? Mrs. Sharma shuttled between
Kishangunj and Siliguri, Islampur and Raigunj, in search of her husband
in various hospitals. But, to no avail. Once again, she sprinted to have
a look at the palled corpses, but, to her utter dismay, none was Mr.
Sharma! Did he then simply melt into thin air? Tears clouded her eyes.
They were driven back to Binnaguri, with an assurance of being
informed whenever any news surfaced.
Ankita’s mother, Ruchi’s mother and other neighbours came to
console her. Like Ruchi’s mother, Mrs. Sharma also thought about
leaving for her native place: Bareilly. Basantididi came to stay with them
in those hours of distress.
Next morning, photographs in The Statesman stared on the face
of Mrs. Sharma. How could she disbelieve her eyes? Two lifelike dolls
lay in the litters, one ‘Sena Medal’ of an Army officer, obliterated limbs
by its side, and the same VIP suitcase with a ‘T’ embossed on it that
her husband used to tote along during his long stays on the borders!
What more clue did she need? Why wait for any news to surface? Suman
sobbed as she looked at the picture of the two dolls: “Won’t you be
back, Papa, with these dolls?” Mrs. Sharma clutched her to her bosom
and caressed her fondly. “Mama, you said Ruchi’s father would be back
someday, what about mine? Won’t he?” Suman was keen to get a
rejoinder.
“Yes, Sumi, your Papa will also come back some day,” Mrs Sharma
uttered feebly, sitting dejected, leaning on the bed-post, with a
befuddled gaze stretched far beyond the turret of the Municipality water-
reservoir, which raised its head like a hydra-headed monster.
Glossary
Bhabiji: Elder brother’s wife

Amma: Father’s mother [affectionately addressed].
Rasna baby: A chubby-cheeked lovely baby shown in the
advertisement of a soft home-made squash, named ‘Rasna.’
Sa’ab: Abbreviation of ‘Saheb,’ meaning ‘Master.’
The Statesman: A national daily of repute.
Fraternal Publication
Writers Editors Critics

ISSN 2231-198X
GIEWEC’s Biannual Refereed International Journal on English
Language and Literature Published in March and September
Editors: Prof.Rajkamal Shiromani,
Dr. K. V. Dominic (Editor-in Chief),
Dr. Lata Mishra, Dr. Jaydeep Sarangi
Address for Communication: Dr. K. V. Dominic, Secretary cum Editor,
GIEWEC, Kannappilly House, Thodupuzha East, Kerala, India –
685585, Phone: 91+9947949159, Email: prof.kvdominic@gmail.com,
Web Site: www.profkvdominic.com
Triumph of Evil in
Rohinton Mistry’s Novels
Ezzeldin Abdelgadir Ahmed Elmadda
& Nagya Naik B. H.
Introduction
Mistry expresses the socio-political aspects of Indian life by
employing history as a background for his literary works. He largely
explores certain criteria of ordinary people’s experiences and their
interactions in the society as well as the impact of social and political
forces on them. He depicts vividly the diversity of Indian society;
however, conflicts take place when people of different social
backgrounds and ethnicities come together. To promote or defend their
rights, people have to struggle hard to achieve their goals. But what is
seen in Mistry’s novels is that his characters who stand up and fight
for their rights achieve nothing and eventually they lose their lives. This
paper explores the portrayal of such characters with reference to Such
A long Journey, A Fine Balance and Family Matters.
Such A long Journey
This novel is set in Bombay in 1971, it is about Gustad Noble a
Parsi who works for a bank and struggles hard to provide good life to
his family which consists of his wife Dilnavaz, his daughter Roshan,
his young son Darius and Sorab the eldest son who frustrates his father
by refusing to accept an admission at the Indian Institute of Technology.
This is the major cause of quarrel between the father and the son. The
main conflict in the novel which involves Gustad and Dinshawji his
colleague at the bank is to deposit a large amount of cash in a secret
account as a favour for his friend Bilimoria. Bilimoria works for the
intelligence service. After depositing the money the government puts
the blame on Bilimoria and he is being accused of stealing the money.
Although, he is working for the Prime Minister he has been betrayed
and pushed into jail. His heath deteriorates very soon probably, because
of the injection prescribed for him and he dies in police custody. It is
the journey of Gustad to learn to accept life as it is and embrace it with

all the shortcomings in it. At the end of the novel Gustand conciliates
with his son by hugging him and removing the dark papers that cover
the windows in his house for more than nine years—a symbolic act to
show that he is no more isolated from the realities of the world.
The worst thing is accusing an innocent man of treason and
stealing money when in reality the money is used by the Prime Minister
to pack Bangladesh war or other purposes and she finds in Mr. Bilimoria
the scapegoat to shoulder her corruption and criminal act on him. Here
again, the Evil surfaces and the good is drowned. Mr. Bilimoria dies
without even being able to defend himself. Strange enough Mistry offers
no solution for the sustainable political corruption and the victim retreats
from life by death.
A Fine Balance
The novel is probably set in 1975 Bombay like most of Mistry’s
novels although this time he left the city unnamed, but it can easily be
figured out by the reader. It revolves around four characters with rich
sad past which is gradually disclosed by the course of the events in
the novel. Dina Dilal is a Parsi widow who attempts to be totally
independent from her bullying brother. She remains in her husband’s
apartment after his death, however, her financial situation is regressing
and tailoring provides less income to meet all the demands of her
livelihood. So, she accepts her Parsi friend’s son Maneck as paying guest
to support herself with the rent. Even she hires two tailors, Ishvar Darji
and his teen age nephew, Omprakash. That way she is able to take orders
from an export company. Days pass and the four create affinity between
each other like one family. We learn from the two tailors they actually
belong to chamaar caste and it is Dukhi’s (Ishvar’s father) idea to raise
his children and grandchildren to learn a new trade to liberate them from
the upper-caste landlord , Thakur Premji who treats them worse than
animals. Thus, Ishvar and Narayan (Omprakash’s father) have been
trained as tailors against the caste system which allows no upper
movement. This enrages the landlord and it is hard for him to stomach
it. He begins disturbing Narayan who opens a tailor’s shop in his house
and starts his business. When elections take place Narayan and another
man want to cast their votes. This act is against the landlord wish. The
two are murdered and the corpses are left naked hanging down from a
tree after burning their testicles and stuffing burning charcoal in their
mouths. Moreover, the landlord’s men have urinated in their mouths
while they are hung upside down from the tree before their last breath.
Later the rest of Narayan’s family are burned alive in their hut and no
traces of their corpses are discovered. Only Ishvar and Omprakash
escape the tragedy because they have been doing tailoring in the city
during the massacre. A strange act of revenge against people who
demand their right for vote and the right to live a decent life. This is the
point this paper discusses. Thankur the landlord is the embodiment of
evil and he always wins and always emerges victorious from any battle
against the untouchable people and none is able to stop him. Even after
years of this tragic incident he remains powerful and is backed by the
government. During Mrs. Ghandi’s government, sterilization was forceful
for married or unmarried people to stop the increase of the Indian
population and of course it was highly practiced in rural and poor areas.
In the novel people are hunt from the market place like animals and
packed in trucks to be taking to the sterilization camp. Both Ishvar and
Omprakash are sterilized. Thakur takes revenge on Omprakash who
happens to spit in his way by ordering the doctor responsible of the
compulsory sterilization to remove his testicles. A shocking step it is
not enough for him to murder the whole family, but to erase any possible
future seed of this family to see light. As if the upper caste landlord
owns the world and he is free to do whatever he wants and the corrupt
law of the country is supporting him against the trodden low caste
members.
Ishvar is sterilized in an unhygienic condition that his blood is
poisoned and his legs are amputated. All their hopes dashed to the air.
No wife for Omprakash no son to bear the family name and no hope to
live a decent life. It is a shocking reality for low caste people to remain
subservient all their life and their off springs have to follow them in a
caste system which permits no improvement of their social status.
Avinash, Maneck’s friend is found dead apparently killed and his body
is thrown on the railway tracks to give the impression that he has fallen
off the train. Avinash is assassinated for the sole reason that he
advocates for fair politicians and better public conditions. However,
Mistry does not mention his assassination overtly. By the end of the
novel the two tailors are reduced to beggars. Dina is kicked out of the
fat by the owner and she returns to her brother. Maneck throws himself
in front of a fast train ending his life for he is unable to bear the harsh
realities of life. The main characters try to find balance in order to cope
with the situation in hand except Maneck who finds refuge in committing
suicide. Although, Valmik in this novel says, “there is always hope- hope
to balance our despair, or we would be lost’’ (563). This novel is in fact
the gloomiest novel in all Mistry’s works. From the beginning many
deaths have taken place as the novelist warns the reader in the prologue
about such sad realities. I have never experienced the death of too many
characters in a literary work except this one. Jayadipsinh Dodiya
comments about the portrayal of the novel and says, “He [Mistry]
portrays the bleak realities and horrifying implications of anarchy and
exploitation that could go on in the name of discipline, beautification
and progress in a democratic country (7).”
In fact, after the independence and till mid 80s Indians suffer much
under the policies of the government and the politicians in general. In
this novel Valmik who acts as a lawyer says, “From my seat here on the
bench, there is much that I observe every day. And most of it makes me
despair. But what else to expect, when judgment has fled to brutish
beasts, and the country’s leaders have exchanged wisdom and good
governance for cowardice and self aggrandizement? Our society is
decaying from the top downwards” (561). Mistry depicts the
corruption of the government by faking the elections results through
his character Valmik addressing Dina Dilal: “What are we to say, madam,
what are we to think about the state of this nation? When the highest
court in the land turns the Prime Minister’s guilt into innocence, then
all this” (562). It is the harsh realities of a postcolonial third world
country. A country is in turmoil which is caused by its own people not
by the colonizers.
Family Matters
The events of the novel take place in 1990s Bombay. It is about
the aging Nariman Vakeel, a retired college professor in his late 70s,
who suffers from Parkinson’s Disease. Vakeel lives with his stepson Jal
and stepdaughter Coomy in Chateau Felicity, but when Nariman falls
and breaks his ankle Coomy sends him off to his biological daughter
Roxana who lives with her husband Yezad and two sons Murad and
Jehangir in Pleasant Villa. This brings devastating change in Yezad’s
house. He is not happy with this new situation imposed on him. There
is no room for his father in law in this small flat and his meagre salary
is hardly enough for the family. With the new payments demands for
medicine and doctor Yezad becomes moody and forbids his children
from taking part in caring for their grandfather who depends totally on
others for everything because he is unable to move from bed. Nariman
talks loudly in his sleep and this gives the flash back of the events when
he was a young man and in love with Lucy a Christian girl whom he
was not allowed to marry, but till this age his love for her and memory
taunt him. Yezad secretly gambles in the illegal Matka, but eventually
he has lost all the money. He then thinks to push Mr. Kapur his employer
at Bombay Sporting Goods Emporium to go for politics in order to
replace him as a manager and gets salary raise, but his attempts have
been in vain. Mr. Kapur is killed and Yezad has lost his job. When
Coomy dies Jal exhorts them to move in with him and to sell their small
flat and renovate the big house. In the end the problem is solved and
Yezad becomes kind to his father in law even helping in taking care of
him till his death. Yezad by the end of the novel turns to religion to
give him solace and peace of mind.
In this novel, Mistry explores issues such as old age, arranged
marriage, both tolerance and intolerance. However, this paper focuses
on the issue of arranged marriage and intolerance as forms of evil in the
Indian society. Though, some arranged marriages turn to be successful
however certain cases are doomed like in the novel how Nariman is forced
by the elders to renounce his love to Lucy and he accepts to marry a
widow from his own community who has already two children from her
first marriage. Nariman marries against his wish and his marriage seems
a failure for it is hard for him and for Lucy to forget their true love. Lucy
starts to come and stands in front of his house regularly and waits for
him to look and wave to her through the window. Yasmin, Nariman’s
wife notices this and their life together becomes impossible with daily
quarrels. To be near her lover Lucy goes to the extent of working as a
maid in the same building to be able to see Nariman whenever he goes
or comes back from his work. Nariman shows kindness to her because
her life is ruined when he has married and she remains single and taunted
with her love to him. He even assists her in carrying the bags of her
employer’s children while taking them to school which is located on
the way of Nariman’s college. His wife turns furious when seeing him
accompany Lucy and carrying the children’s bags. Yasmin attempts to
stop him by telling him that it does not look nice for a professor to be
seen by the neighbours accompanying and helping a maid. Nariman fails
to convince his wife that Lucy is not a maid and she is desperately doing
this work for the sole reason that she wants to live in the building where
her lover lives.
Many times Lucy goes to the roof of the building as if she intends
to commit suicide and people would ask Nariman to bring her down.
Yasmin is fed up with this behaviour and once Lucy does the same thing,
but she prevents Nariman from going to her. Yasmin goes to the roof
and asks Lucy to stop her madness and to behave logically. Eventually,
Yasmin climbs the parapet where Lucy is standing and both lose balance
and fall down dead few seconds before Nariman arrives to rescue them.
Both women experience a miserable life because of this arranged
marriage. They both die defending their rights. Lucy defends her love
to Nariman and Yasmin defends her right to keep her husband away
from this woman. Here again in this novel the victims die and the evil
persists to exist.
The other instance in this novel about the triumph of evil is seen
in how Mr. Kapur, the true lover of the city of Bombay has lost his life
for refusing to change his shop signboard from ‘Bombay Sporting
Goods Emporium’ to ‘Mumbai Sporting Goods Emporium’ when he is
ordered by two members from Shiv Sena. He wants to retain the name
of the city that fascinated him if not for the city itself which he has no
hands in it, at least to retain the name for the shop he thinks he has full
authority on it by the virtue of ownership. It is an act of intolerance
which is also manifested in the Hindu- Muslim clashes following the
demolition of Babri Mosque in 1992.
Conclusion
No doubt there are good sides and advantages in India. But the
novelist has addressed the disadvantages and dark sides of India for
the sake of highlighting them in order to set things right for India to
emerge as a leading nation and heavenly place to live in. Mistry is not
pessimist; however he portrays the realities of Indian society. Years pass
and with them no harbinger of drastic change is seen in the air. May be
there is little change here or there, but still the overall picture of the
society is gloomy. Cases of atrocities committed against the untouchable
are still registered. Corruption still takes place as Mistry puts it in Family
Matters by saying, “Corruption is in the air we breathe. This nation
specializes in turning honest people into crooks” (31). Dowry related
harassments and atrocities against women are still scenes of daily events
in India. Such A long Journey was published more than 20 years ago
and it was dropped from the syllabus of Mumbai University in 2010
following a complaint from the grandson of Bal Thackeray, the founder
of Shiv Sena he claims that the novel contains direct insult to his
grandfather. It is this behaviour that Mistry condemns and reacting to

this action he says, “He [Aditya the grandson] should lead, instead of
following the old regime.” It shows even after nearly two decades of it
is publication there is no change.
It is in this way Mistry’s novels are operating showing the
surfacing and the victorious nature of evil and good stepping back. As
it is mentioned in this paper the characters in the novels try to defend
their rights and bring the desired changes, however they have been
unsuccessful in their endeavours and their lives end with sudden death
or murder. This asserts the difficulty of changing the existing situation.
Works Cited
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.

Print.
Dodyia, Jaydipsinh. Perspectives on the Novels of Rohinton Mistry. New
Delhi: Sarup and Sons, 2006. Print.
Mistry, Rohinton. Family Matters. London: Faber and Faber, 2002. Print.
---. A Fine Balance. London: Faber and Faber, 1995.Print.
---. Such A long Journey. London: Faber and Faber, 1991. Print.
Between Two Worlds: A Study of

Bharati Mukherjee’s The Tiger’s Daughter
S. Bhuvaneswari
Bharati Mukherjee, an American writer of Indian origin, is a

distinctive voice of the Indian expatriate-immigrant writing. Being an
immigrant, she was caught between the conflicting cultures in her
attempt to find an identity of her own. In her novels, she reflects her
immigrant experiences through different female characters and
situations. She effectively depicts the immigrant themes like pangs of
alienation, racial discrimination, identity crisis and the sense of belonging
to nowhere. Though she is an assimilated immigrant, rejoicing the joys
of immigration, she does not fail to articulate the trauma of “becoming
an American.” She recommends assimilation to the third-world people
as a trajectory to realise their diasporal dreams. She herself admits that
the process of “acculturation” is a not a painless one. Her first novel
The Tiger’s Daughter, published in 1972, belongs to the expatriate phase
of her literary career. This paper intends to explore the cultural intricacies
of Tara Banerjee, an immigrant who is sandwiched between two
cultures—the one inherited and the other adopted.
Bharati Mukherjee’s literary career can be divided into three phases
– expatriation, transition and immigration, based on the psychological
transformation wrought in her to become a successful immigrant. Like
all other immigrants who enter the host land with lots of dreams, hopes
and expectations, she too conceived immigration as an opportunity to
reshape her identity. But the early stage of her life in the host land was
not a pleasant one. As an Indian expatriate, she witnessed cultural
shock, racial discrimination and plunged into nostalgia. Nagendra Kumar
in “The Shaping of Creative Sensibility” brings out the difference
between an expatriate and an immigrant thus: “While the main thrust of
expatriation is on the native country and traditions left behind,
immigration lays all emphasis on the cultural life of the host country.
The expatriate dwells on his “ex” status of the past, while the immigrant
celebrates his present in the new country” (17).
It was only later Bharati Mukherjee observed the conditions of
her new milieu and understood the necessity to change her mindset so
as to become an ‘immigrant’ to its truest sense. She advocates her fellow
immigrants to merge with the new environment and to perceive
immigration as a gain and not a loss. Instead of cherishing the memories
of the past and carrying one’s own traditional values of the homeland
in the host land, it would be wise to realise the present and transform
accordingly. Since her writings correspond with the various phases of
her life, her protagonists can be considered as the depiction of her self.
In most of the writings of the diasporic writers, Somdatta Mandal finds:
“. . . the “trishanku” image of being suspended between two worlds
and belonging to none; the insider-outsider or “desh-pardesh”
syndrome; the role of memory, nostalgia and assimilation in their works
are often discovered with striking similarities” (21). Tara Banerjee is an
Indian immigrant who undergoes the painful process of “acculturation.”
Though she tries to adjust herself to the new culture, she is aware of
the fact that her reminisces of the shards of memories of her past will in
no way help her belong to the culture of her homeland. Rootlessness
and nostalgia form the central core of the novel. In an interview, Bharati
Mukherjee emphasises the importance of this novel as: “It is the wisest
of my novels in the sense that I was between both worlds. I was
detached enough from India so that I could look back with affection
and irony, but I didn’t know America enough to feel any conflict. I was
like a bridge poised between two worlds” (46-47).
Tara Banerjee is an upper class Bengali Brahmin of Calcutta and
the daughter of an industrialist named Bengal Tiger. She assumes her
identity as the tiger’s daughter. At the age of sixteen, she is sent to
Poughkeepsie, in America to pursue her higher studies. In America, she
is not easily accepted by her classmates. Ethnic discriminations reach
its peak when her friends refuse to share her mango chutney. At the
end of May, when her classmates leave for their place, she feels horrified
to stay alone and envisages frightful hallucinations. Obsessed by the
feeling of homesickness, she always speaks in support of her country
and its treasured values. Whenever she felt alienated, she communicates
her sense of alienation and homesickness to her mother, who in turn
prays to goddess Kali, to give her daughter the power to face life.
Tara was seized by a vision of terror. She saw herself sleeping in
a large carton on a sidewalk while hated men made impious remarks to
her. Headless monsters winked at her from eyes embedded in pudgy

shoulders. The sounds of classrooms and dorms were cut off by the
cardboard sides of her carton . . . . She suffered fainting spells,
headaches and nightmares. Her face took on the pinched and almost
beautiful look of tragic heroines in Bengali dramas. She complained of
homesickness in letters to her mother, who promptly prayed to Kali to
save Tara’s conscience, chastity and complexion (13). Thoughts and
objects related to her home land offers her comfort and solace. To feel
at home, she hangs the silk scarves which she had carried from India.
“On days when she had thought she could not possibly survive, she
had shaken out all her silk scarves, ironed them and hung them to make
the apartment more Indian” (34). The tremendous difference between
her traditional way of life and that of the modern one in America, leads
her to hopelessness and frustration. Thus, she becomes a victim to
cultural shock.
Shedding off her predetermined identity and traditional values,
she tries to adopt a new self. Her efforts end in cross-cultural
complexities. This leads to a conflict between the fact and fantasy. Her
condition becomes more worsened when she loves and marries David
Cartwright, an American. In America, marriage seems to be an agreement
made between man and woman, whereas in Indian context, marriage is
an unbreakable bond which has to be decided and governed by the
socio-cultural factors. As against her parents wish, she marries a
Westerner. The transitory nature of the marriage system of the alien
culture is presented through the marriage of Tara Banerjee with David
Cartwright. Hastily, they fall in love with each other and get married
without proper mutual understanding. “Within fifteen minutes of her
arrival at the Greyhound bus station there, in her anxiety to find a cab,
she almost knocked down a young man. She did not know then that
she eventually would marry that young man” (14). It becomes unfeasible
for her to make her husband understand the values behind family,
relationships and the finer nuances behind the life in Calcutta. Unable
to communicate the feelings regarding her homeland to her husband,
who is unaware of its tradition and customs, she finds pleasure in
cherishing the nostalgic memories of it. In America, she views life with
the eyes and psyche of an Indian. She recreates her homeland in her
imagination that affords comfort and escape from the harsh reality of
the host land. Salman Rushdie opines about the immigrants’ looking
back to their homeland as:
It may be that writers in my position, exiles or emigrants or

expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to
reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into pillars
of salt. But if we do look back, we must also do so in the knowledge
– which gives rise to profound uncertainties – that our physical
alienation from India almost inevitably means that we will not be
capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we
will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but
invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind. (10)
Seven years later, Tara takes a trip to India to quench her desire
to relive the days of her childhood. She wishes to see Calcutta as she
had seen exaggerated in her dreams. Fact and fantasy collide. In Calcutta,
violence and terror become the order of the day. The locales she had
been used to in her childhood days, become disgusting ones. She
notices many changes in the city and its people: “Seven years earlier
on her way to Vassar, she had admired the house on Marine Drive, had
thought them fashionable, but now their shabbiness appalled her” (18).
It’s not that the city has changed but the psyche of the Americanized
Tara has changed. She sees Calcutta with the eyes of an American. She
tries to be happy in her ancestral home, but couldn’t. The railway station
appeared “more like a hospital” (19). Once again, she feels uprooted and
now longs for her ‘home’ in America. Seven years American life has
changed her and hence feels allergic towards the diseases, relatives
surrounding her, vendors ringing bells, beggars pulling at sleeves and
the age-old rituals practiced by her family. Though she is with her
friends and relatives in her place, she feels alienated and insecure as
she had felt when she landed in America for the first time. Cultural chaos
overtakes her and she is found straddling between two cultures. Totally
confused, she does not know where she belongs to. She shuttles
between two worlds and develops a sense of belonging to nowhere.
Commenting on the nature of Tara Banerjee becoming a prey to the cross-
cultural confrontation, Ram Sharma in “Quest for Self and Immigrant
Psyche in Bharati Mukherjee’s The Tiger’s Daughter” opines as: “The
protagonist’s habit of retaining her maiden surname after marriage
symbolically reflects her subconscious mind which is still deeply rooted
in her native land and she actually has not been able to forget it in spite
of the changed identity of a European, adopted by her. There is a
strange fusion of the Americanness and Indianness in the psyche of
Tara and they are always at a note of confrontation with each other”
(67).
In America, unable to learn the assimilationistic tactics, she felt
rootless and alienated. The “foreignness of her spirit” prevented her
from amalgamating into the new cultural milieu. But when she visits India,
once again her psyche changes and assumes the role of an Americanized
alienated Indian in India. Her alienated spirit hinders her from
establishing kinship with her relatives. She says: “How does the
foreignness of the spirit begin? Tara wondered. Does it begin right in
the center of Calcutta, with forty ruddy Bengali women, fat foreheads
swelling under starched white headdresses, long black habits
intensifying the hostility of the Indian sun?” (37). She senses an
estrangement with the friends who were very close to her heart once
and now “she feared their tone, their omissions, their aristocratic
oneness” (43). The culturally confused spirit in Tara augmented when
Tara’s friends made her feel culpable for marrying an American. Her
Americanized way of living, made her relatives notice a perceptible
change in the mindset of Tara. To Indians, she is an American who has
left India to settle in an alien culture and for Americans, she is an Indian
immigrant who has come to their country to survive. “In India she felt
she was not married to a person but a foreigner, and this foreignness
was a burden” (62). Jasbir Jain remarking the bi-cultural intricacies of
Tara, states: “Tara’s consciousness of the present is rooted in her life
in the States and when she looks at India anew it is not through her
childhood associations or her past memories but through the eyes of
her foreign husband David. Her reactions are those of a tourist, of a
foreigner” (13). In her father’s house, when Tara forgets the next step
of a well-known ritual, performed so many times in her childhood makes
her realise how ‘foreign’ she had become. To her, this transition “was
not a simple loss . . . this forgetting of prescribed actions; it was a little
death, a hardening of the heart, a cracking of axis and center” (51). In
the end of the novel, she is seduced by Tuntunwala. She considers
herself as a misfit to live and the Indianness in her shuns her from
revealing the unpleasant experiences with Tuntunwala.
Inherited cultural values will certainly cast its allurement on the
life of any immigrant. At the same time, the cultural values of the adopted
land will definitely influence the immigrant. Tara is found sandwiched
between the two cultures—Indian and American. Her psyche always
reminds her that she has come from a community having larger
proportions of people adhering to strict ancient traditions formulated

by the ancestors. It also strikes a chord that she has to survive in an
alien society which represents the society having modern approaches
to life. She cannot wither either of the two. Thus, “foreignness” creeps
into her self which suspends her between two contrasting worlds
dissimilar in culture and attitude, and places her in a traumatic condition
of belonging to nowhere.
Works Cited
Jain, Jasbir. “Foreignness of Spirit: The World of Bharati Mukherjee’s

Novels.” The Journal of Indian Writing in English, 13.2 (Jul 1985):
12-19. Print.
Kumar, Nagendra. “The Shaping of Creative Sensibility.” The Fiction
of Bharati Mukherjee: A Cultural Perspective. Ed. Nagendra
Kumar. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2001. 14-
27. Print.
Mandal, Somdatta. “Of Defining and Re-Defining the Asian-American
Diaspora: A Case Study of Jhumpa Lahiri.” Jhumpa Lahiri: The
Master Storyteller: A Critical Response to Interpreter of
Maladies. Ed. Suman Bala. New Delhi: Khosla Publishing House,
2002. 19-23. Print.
Mukherjee, Bharati. The Tiger’s Daughter. New Delhi: Penguin Books
(India) Ltd, 1971. Print.
Rushdie, Salman. “Imaginary Homelands.” Imaginary Homelands:
Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991. Ed. Rushdie. London: Granta
Books, 1991. 9-21. Print.
Sharma, Ram. “Quest for Self and Immigrant Psyche in Bharati
Mukherjee’s The Tiger’s Daughter.” English Literature: Voices
of Indian Diaspora. Ed. Malti Agarwal. New Delhi: Atlantic
Publishers, 2009. 66-71. Print.
Steinberg, Sybil. “Bharati Mukherjee.” Publishers Weekly 25 (August
1989): 46-47. Print.
Redefining the Individuality in the

Autobiographies of
Indira Goswami and Binodini Dasi
Dhanusha Vyas
The mainstream literature written by men has represented women

as meek, self-sacrificing, and chaste all the time. In spite of this situation,
women expressed their minds freely through poetry, short stories and
autobiographies. A Number of autobiographies written by women were
published in the nineteenth century. This paper focuses on some of
the questions and endeavours to trace various mechanisms adopted
by women autobiographers like Binodini Dasi and Indira Goswami to
redefine their individuality. This paper attempts a comparative analysis
of the autobiographies of both Indira Goswami and Binodini Dasi.
Indira Goswami is a celebrated Assamese writer of contemporary
Indian literature. She belongs to the upper caste family. Her
autobiography, The Unfinished Autobiography, describes the problems
faced by an upper caste woman who is expected to behave according
to the norms set by the patriarchal society. She demonstrates her
resistance towards unjust religious customs and practices in India. She
shares her experience as a young widow and questions the patriarchal
Hindu society for its cruel behaviour towards widows. She went against
the society to find her own independent existence.
Goswami in her The Unfinished Autobiography does not hesitate
in talking about her sexual passion, her experiences as a teenage girl
and her reaction to the physical changes. When she married outside
her community, she did not hesitate to talk about her yearnings for
physical pleasures that she had suppressed after her husband’s sudden
death. She could not come to terms with the shock of an abrupt end to
eighteen months of happy conjugal life. In an impulsive outburst of
emotions she spends a night with her husband’s friend, Kaikos
Satarawala. She later questions herself, ‘it was a time for self-assessment
. . . . Then why this sense of self-reproach?’(178) She frankly describes
her state of mind after this incident and boldly accepts that it was an
impulsive act.
Goswami also refused to acquiesce with the advices of her well-
wishers who believed that faith alone can bring her solace. She lost faith
in religion and customs and sort refuge in her father’s diaries and letters
that she had long preserved. In her anxieties to search for peace she
visited a number of sadhus and sanyasis but of no avail. She mentions
‘the sight of the holy saint could not bring any change to my heart. I
[have] no desire left to go . . . and ask for his guidance’ (122). By
questioning the beliefs and customs she confesses that these social
customs do not provide solace to an agonizing heart.
Worthlessness of certain rituals is clearly represented in
Goswami’s autobiography. In pursuit of finding a suitable spouse for
Goswami her mother accepted the advice of an astrologer to sacrifice a
goat as an offering to godess Vagala. Despite the sacrificing of an
innocent animal and putting ‘a blob of thick blood’ on her forehead,
she did not succeed in her pursuit but grew desperate all the more (16).
Goswami has contested and expressed her resistance towards such
practices in her works. When her husband died and she was to immerse
her husband’s ashes into the holy waters of Yamuna she refused to
part with the ashes, ‘No, I won’t by the Hindu rite of depositing the
asthi in the holy waters. Wasn’t it my only physical link with Madhu?’
(122)
Resistance towards widowhood is also strongly expressed by
Goswami in her autobiography. She shows contempt towards society’s
attitude against widows. She describes how widows in Vrindhavan,
known as ‘Radheshyamis,’ were poor and survived on a meager wages
that they earned from singing bhajans in temples. There was no one to
provide them a shelter. There were no private or government facilities
of medication and sanitation provided to them. She also mentions that
when these Radheshyamis did not have money for their last rites no
one took the responsibility for their cremation. Goswami, a widow herself,
also faced such aversions in the society. In one such instance she was
made to sit separately from others for a lunch in some occasion, but
she showed her aversion by immediately getting out of that place. Such
resistance towards prevalent practices of the time shows that Goswami
led an independent life without bothering much about customs in
patriarchal society. By defying certain practices prevalent in her times

and reaffirming her own beliefs and faith, she valued her individuality.
Women autobiographers have subverted the importance of the
concept of marriage. Goswami was never interested in getting married
and in binding herself within the confinement of domesticities. She
never paid heed to marriage proposals that her mother showed. It is
her love for travel that she was interested in Madhu, an engineer by
profession, that she got married to him. She felt that she could
accompany him get a chance to meet and record the life of the laborers.
After Madhu’s sudden death in a road accident she came across a well-
to do person who wanted to give her a new lease of life. But she never
showed any inclinations towards him and decided to remain Madhu’s
widow all her life.
Goswami consents the importance of love and faith in a
relationship where two people stay with each other on the basis of love
and trust rather than struggling to compromise within the marriage.
During her stay at Vrindhavan she cites an incident where she came
across a Radheshyami who cooked food and managed the household
chores for a priest of a temple who in returned shared his house with
her. They stayed together without being formally married. Goswami
expresses her consent for such kind of an arrangement and says that
‘there is nothing improper for a woman like [Radheshyami] to live with
a man’ (111). Thus Goswami subverts the norms and conventions which
society expects them to follow and in doing so they once again she
affirms her sense of individuality as it is evident in her autobiography.
Similarly another autobiography written by a famous Bengali
actress Binodini Dasi shows subversion and resistance to the norms
and conventions of patriarchal society. Binodini Dasi is a marginalized
woman both by class, gender and profession. She is a legendry name
in Bengali theatre. Her autobiography My Story and My Life as an
Actress portrays the life of a woman and pursues the expedition of
redefining her individuality. It is a major document of the Bengali theatre
and portrays a life of a woman who showed resistance towards the
prevailing attitude of Bhadralok against actresses. She questions the
very beliefs of society and adopts an individual existence in portraying
her story which she values as her own individuality.
Binodini encountered many hurdles and had to face criticism from
people during her career as a theatre artist. She refused to succumb to
it as a critic Eugenia Delamotte rightly mentions ‘Binodini fought to
participate in the career she [passionately] loved and refused to accept

her culture’s reductive definition of her character’ (168). It is evident
from her autobiography that she is highly self-respective. She gives
importance to herself and her career as she is the sole earner of her
family. She is not at all hesitant in expressing her contempt for society
that was responsible for making her prostitute and says, ‘A prostitute’s
life is certainly tainted and despicable, but where does the pollution come
from? Surely they were not despicable from the time that they were in
the mother’s womb?’ (105)
Like Goswami, Binodini asserts her individuality time and again
in her book. Despite the fact that she was very young as an artist, she
very confidently presented herself in front of her senior actors. Though
she was loved by them, especially by her mentor Girish Chandra Ghosh,
she behaved very professionally with them. In twelve years of her career
in theatre, she never tolerated any unjust and insulting behavior from
anyone. In an incident which she mentions in her autobiography, the
owner of a theatre named Pratapbabu refused to pay her due wages for
a that period of time when she was on leave. She protested against him
and threatened to leave his theatre. When Girish babu tried to placate
her, her professional attitude is clearly evident when she demands, ‘I
want a higher salary, and whatever money is due to me ha to be put
down in a contract; otherwise I shan’t work’ (83). Thus she asserts her
individuality as an independent actress.
Binodini uses many strategies to gain position in her career. She
never hesitates to change her protectors and shift from one theatre to
another. In fact she takes it as an opportunity to move upwards in her
career. Thus when she gets an opportunity to start up her own theatre
she readily accepts to become a mistress of Gurumukh Rai, the owner
of the Star Theatre. She confidently mentions about this event in her
autobiography: “I decided to set up a theatre. Why should I not? The
people I had lived with all my life, together as brothers and sisters, those
who still had such powers over me… I were to build a theatre we would
all live under one roof…when my mind was…made up, I got Gurumukh
Rai to support my scheme” (Tharu 292). But after few years Gurumukh
Rai had to sell the theatre because of his family pressures and Binodini
was deprived of a share in the new ownership by her colleagues whom
she trusted. It was at this point that Binodini decided to be independent
and survive on her own earnings. From then on she refused to become
mistress of any man and kept herself active in theatre.
After renouncing theatre, Binodini stayed with a man whom she

addresses as Hridhoydebta in the autobiography. She fearlessly displays
her emotions and love for him without bothering about people’s
cynicism. She also question’s people that while playing various
mythological characters on the stage, does anyone from the enthralled
audience have ever tried to see her ‘inner self?’ She thus interrogates
‘When I had the opportunity to pronounce Krishna’s name, with what
absolute yearning had I called out to him; was the viewer ever able to
perceive this?’ (57). She also says that even if they submit themselves
to men they do not sell their love, ‘money cannot buy anyone’s love.
We too cannot sell our love for money’ (Tharu 293). She despised
untruthful and pretentious people and therefore she left her protector
who broke his promise and got married to someone else.
She also mentions in her autobiography about what a woman like
herself have to go through in a society where she has no social
recognition and has been forced to take up prostitution. More so, she
is trying to point out that even if prostitutes like her wish to come out
of their profession and make her career in theatre, they have to face
resistance and criticism of people and where social customs and beliefs
are of no comfort.
For Binodini writing was an important means to express her
emotions. After taking leave from theatre she sorts a refuge in writing.
As a critic Bhattacharya mentions that after being ‘stripped of from
everything that she considered precious-the theatre, her last protector,
her daughter—she can only live in her writing’ (Dasi 236). It seems in
her writing she is reliving a life as an actress. She transmutes her acting
skills into her writing. She lays bare the reason for writing this
autobiography: “I have written for my own consolation, perhaps for some
unfortunate women who taken in by deception has stumbled on the path
to hell” (107). She thus questions and shows her resistance to the
prevailing beliefs of her times and asserts her own set of beliefs. And
in doing so she redefines her individuality. She shows great courage in
making up a successful career in theatre during nineteenth century in
Bengal. In questioning and resisting the beliefs of society, in adopting
an individual existence, and in writing her story, she thus values her
own individuality.
Works Cited
Dasi, Binodini. My Story and My Life as an Actress. Ed. & Trans. Rimli
Bhatacharya. New Delhi: Kali, 1998. Print.
Delamotte, Eugenia. “Binodini Dasi: My Story.” Women Imagine
Change: A Global Anthology of Women’s Resistance from 600
B.C.E to Present. Ed. Meeker Delamotte and O’Bare. New York:
Routeledge, 1997. 167-171. Print.
Goswami, Indra. The Unfinished Autobiography. New Delhi: Sterling,
1990. Print.
Tharu, Susie and Lalitha K., ed. Women Writing in India. Vol.1. New
Delhi: OUP, 1991. Print.
The Riddle
O. P. Arora
A strange game
that is life…
It must be all fun
for those
who always get it green…
But why
after garnering all the hopes and dreams
propitiating my mind with all the positives
grounded by the great gurus
so much in vogue these days—
their bestsellers fetching them millions—
whenever I turn at a crossing
it is always red…
Portraiture of Colonial and Post-colonial

India in Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s
Heat and Dust
S. Lavanya
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is a Booker prize-winning novelist, short

story writer, and Academy Award- winning screen writer. Ruth Jhabvala
was born in Cologne, Germany and became British citizen in 1948. She
married Cyrus H. Jhabvala, an Indian architect and moved to Delhi,
India, in 1951. In 1975, Jhabvala moved to New York and divided her
time between India and the United States. In 1986, she became a
naturalized citizen of the United States.
Ruth Jhabvala’s uniqueness as a writer lies in the fact that she
juxtaposes colonial and post- independence India. The novel portrays
India during the British Raj and the peregrinations and experiences of
the Narrator in post-independence India. Heat and Dust offers
comparisons - similarities and offers a perspective on the evolutions of
the Indian society:
In Heat and Dust, the experience of Olivia junior during her course
of peregrination in India to put the record straight in her grand-
mother Olivia’s strange story constitutes an image of new India.
Such an India is vast and varied, harmonious and discordant, noble
and profane . . . almost inexhaustible in its range and inscrutable
in its depth. (Shahane 23)
The novel relates the life of British officials in colonial India and
the princely life during 1930’s. The colonial India is revealed through
the letters and diary of Olivia. The Narrator comes to India in 1970’s
out of curiosity to unearth the mysterious life of Olivia during 1930’s.
The fifty years gap between the two plots has not initiated any
development in the social scenario in India and this forms the crux of
the story.
Douglas was the assistant collector, who takes charge of Satipur.

Douglas Rivers and Olivia belong to the same culture and complementary
to each other but their marital life ends in a dissonance. Douglas was
too busy to spare time for his wife, while Olivia was tormented by
loneliness. This caused a chasm between husband and wife, though
their love had not withered. A wife can be happy with status, comforts
and money, but those things have no meaning if she doesn’t get the
congenial love of her husband.
Mr. Crawford was the collector of Satipur who was very sincere
and upright. Major Minnies was the political agent appointed to advice
the Nawab on matters of policy. Crawford and other British officials
were very much dedicated to their profession. Their position and
prestige, their burdens and predicaments, their joys and sorrows, their
strength and weakness, their inability to understand the native
character, their obsessive race- consciousness and their faith in the
British rule are mirrored in the novel.
Loneliness and solitary life style affect Olivia psychologically.
After the party thrown by the Nawab, Olivia was completely flattered
by the princely outlook and the royalty of the Nawab and the palace.
She mentioned the luxury as follows:
All it had was dry soil and impoverished villages. But his palace,
which had been built in 1820s, was rather grand. Olivia’s eye lit
up as she was led into the dining room and saw beneath the
chandeliers the long, long table laid with a Sevres dinner service,
silver, crystal, flowers, candelabras, pomegranates . . . . She felt
she had, at last in India, come to the right place. (Heat and Dust
15)
The Nawab’s increasing attention and hospitality won him a place
in the heart of Olivia. Though she was very much interested in the
Nawab, her love for Douglas remained unabated. The momentary
weakness during the secret visit to Baba Firdaous shrine with the Nawab
made her pregnant. But for the sake of reputation of her husband she
aborted the child. The Nawab views Olivia’s pregnancy largely in terms
of a revenge on a race which believed that the secret of leadership lay
in the English blood and the onus of keeping that blood pure was on
the English race. When Olivia informed him of her pregnancy, the Nawab
uttered the following: “Wait till my son is born, he said; then they’ll
laugh from the other side of their mouths” (Heat and Dust 161).
The officials at the top of the hierarchy in Satipur were the

representatives of the imperial obligations and by virtue of their
rectitude, consistency and faith kept the system alive. Dr. Saunders,
Major Minnies, Mr. Crawford and Douglas Rivers strived hard each in
their own way to preserve British rule in the district and by implications
all over India. They shared an unexpressed confidence that it was by
the efforts of men like them that the empire was built and was being
extended and preserved. Dr. Saunders ran the British hospital in Satipur
with high standards of strictness and cleanliness that marks the British
administration in India. Major Minnies had also set the moral tone of
Satipur and guarded it closely. He suppressed his innate power as an
administrator and struggled against the Nawab’s unpatriotic feeling
towards the British administration. Mr. Crawford, the collector and his
wife Beth were the accepted models in their community for all English
men and women in India.
The princely state of India is represented through the character
of Nawab and his mother Begum. The long chandeliers, the golden and
silver bowls, were the representation of the richness and princely life
of the Raj’s and the Nawabs. The Nawab was a spend thrift and later
he joined hands with the group of dacoits in order to meet the increasing
needs. The living conditions of the Indian people were so pathetic when
compared to the Nawab and the other British officials:
The town huddled in the shadow of the palace walls in a tight
knot of dirty alleys with ramshackle houses leaning over them.
There were open gutters flowing through the streets. They often
over- flowed, especially during the rains were probably the cause,
or one of them, of the frequent epidemics that broke out in Khatm.
It is rained rather more heavily some of the older houses would
collapse and bury the people inside them. This happened regularly
every year (Heat and Dust 166).
The author gives insights into the superstitious beliefs and social
evils. The most predominant evil that prevailed in colonial India was
sati. During the colonial period Britishers worked hard to abolish sati.
Douglas was once appreciated by the other British officials as he
arrested some Indians as they forced a woman to commit sati:
“Its savagery”, Dr. Saunders declared “Like everything else in this
country, plain savagery and barbarism. I’ve seen some sights in
my hospital I wouldn’t like to tell you about not with ladies present
I wouldn’t. Most gruesome and horrible mutilations and all, mind
you, in the name of religion.” (Heat and Dust 59)
Thus the image of colonial India is stereotypical. The image is

presented in two fold. The first is envisioned by Olivia, who perceives
a glamorous and enchanting image of the princely India. It is an image
of luxury and opulence, of courtesy and rhetoric as also of mystery and
exorcism. The other side is that of decadence, cruelty and venality.
Colonial India was obsessed with social injustice, social evils like sati
and communal riots.
The central image of India as a land of heat and dust is prevailed
in Ruth Jhubvala’s recreation of the new dominion called India. When
the Narrator goes to visit the Nawab’s palace at Khatm, her response
to the landscape is not much unlike that of her step- grandmother Olivia.
Once the town is left behind, “there is nothing till the next one except
flat land, broiling sky, distances and dust. Especially dust: the sides of
the bus are open with only bars across them so that the hot winds blow
in freely bearing desert sands to choke up ears and nostrils and set
one’s teeth on edge with grit” (Heat and Dust 15). The title of the novel
Heat and Dust embodies the central vision of Ruth Jhabvala’s experience
in India, the country of her adoption. The metaphor of heat and dust
represents the most characteristic physical features of this country, but
beyond the weather conditions it also represents spiritual aridity.
Ruth Jhabvala depicted the inefficiency of the new government
of India through instances of poverty, social injustice, lack of hospitality
and lack of social conscience. The politicians, leaders in the early post
-independence period worked for the welfare of the people. But in the
1970’s, the inefficiency of the government lead the poor and the middle
class people to the verge of poverty. In total, it creates an image of
India as a land of disease, hunger, destitution and nothing more. On
many occasions Ruth Jhabvala draws our attention towards suffering
of the people in Indian society. The decayed and the decaying scene
are presented in such lines as quoted below:
There are also in town’s cripples, idiots and resident beggars. They
move around the streets and whenever anything of interest is
going on, they rush up and form part of the crowd . . . . One of
the beggars is a cured leper, a burnt out case whose nose, fingers
and toes have dropped off. (Heat and Dust 79)
It is indeed very pathetic to see people suffering at Satipur or for
that matter, anywhere else in India. But this is what can be expected in
the existential situations prevailing in India even after the quarter century
of Independence. The most horrible scene is about the death of a poor,
old beggar woman named Leelavathi at Satipur. One day, the Narrator
noticed a beggar woman Leelavathi lying on the outskirts of a mound
of refuse. “Nobody in the lane seemed concerned. Even the animals,
snuffling around in the refuse . . . paid no attention to her. Only the
flies hovered above her in a cone” (Heat and Dust 109).The Narrator
makes frantic effort to take her to hospital. Even the hospital would
not admit her “the old woman was dispensable” (Heat and Dust 113).
The other horrible scene is the unhygienic condition of the hospital.
The Narrator goes to the hospital every day to visit a young English
man who came to India in search of salvation and re- christened his
name as Chidanand alias Chid who has been admitted there. It is a fact
that in India the government hospitals are places more suitable to die
in, than to recover. The Narrator comments about the food served to
the patients:
The patients sit in rows holding out bowls into which are thrown
lumps of cold rice and lentils and sometimes some vegetables all
mixed up together. Only people who are completely destitute will
accept this food, and it is indeed served up with the contempt
reserved for those who have nothing and no one. (Heat and Dust
156-57)
There is a poor man lying with a broken legs and ribs. He cannot
get up. So he depends on the hospital sweepers for his natural functions.
But as he cannot even pay the humble sum that the sweepers demand
for pushing in and removing the bed pan, so they are not very punctual
in attending to him. The Narrator tells us: “Once I came and found him
in great distress because he had been left there for several hours. I
removed it from under him and went to empty it in a bathroom. The
state of the latrines has to be seen to be believed and when I came out
I did feel a little sick” (Heat and Dust 157).
Pankaj Bhan says, “Ruth Jhabvala’s social canvas in modern India
is restricted to urban areas and almost exclusively concerned with the
middle class” (200). Inder Lal, in this novel Heat and Dust comes from
a lower middle class family and he is the representative of modern India.
The majority of the Indian middle classes are living in abysmal
conditions. Inder Lal is dissatisfied with his job, his wife, his family,
and many other things in a society mixed with complex social and
economic problems. He prefers to live in self-pity rather think of rational
alternatives. After her first visit to Inder Lal’s house, the Narrator
wonders: “I don’t know whether I caught them at a moment of unusual
confusion or whether this is the way they always live but the place was
certainly very untidy. Of course, the rooms are poky and the children
still at the messy stage” (Heat and Dust 8).
The western fascination for Indian spiritualism is an important
aspect of Indo- British encounter in modern India. There are number of
Europeans who visits India drawn by the spiritual chimera. Only a
handful of seekers find some form of spiritualism and the majority are
disillusioned. Some of them even turn derelict and get stranded in India
for long, leading miserable lives. A complex response to Indian
spiritualism is embodied in the character of Chid alias Chidananda. Chid
had been attracted by Hindu scriptures and when he arrived in India in
search of the spiritual experiences, “he had not been disappointed. It
seemed to him that the spirit of these scriptures was still manifest in the
great temples of south. For months he had lived there like an Indian
pilgrim, purifying himself and often rapt in contemplation that the world
around him had faded away completely” (Heat and Dust 63). Chid’s
experiences in India is not smooth and he crossed many hardships but
he calmly bears them in the hope of attaining the state of salvation.
Chid’s dalliance with Indian spirituality is finally over; the catalyst in
this case is the long pilgrimage he undertakes.
The condition of the middle class women in the modern India is
pictured through Ritu, Inder Lal’s wife who suffers from some psychiatric
ailment. In the name of ‘treatment’ they applied hot iron to various parts
of the body. Though Inder Lal is educated he rejects scientific medical
aid and justifies that the beliefs cannot be avoided. In modern India,
even educated people have an ambivalent attitude towards science and
rationality. Though they are aware of so many advances in medical field
in real practice they fall back on superstitions and irrational attitudes.
Ruth Jhabvala uses the technique of juxtaposing past with the
present through flashback in this novel. Both the plots are alternatively
interwoven throughout the novel. The Narrator moves from the present
into the past from the past in to the present quite easily and naturally
and the author thus succeeds in showing us that what is called ‘real
India.’ Heat and Dust is a criticism of Indian society, but the intention
is to draw attention of the people to the various afflictions of the society
so that people may make efforts to rid the society of these ailments. In
this connection Srinivasa Iyengar writes that Jhabvala makes a deep
study of Indian society, “but there is no malice or even deliberate
distortion in the portraiture and there is touch of compassion that
humanizes even the most ironic situations or the most satiric portraits”
(207).
Ruth Jhabvala harshly exclaimed not only about the wretched
poverty but also about the lack of social conscience both among the
public and the government. The novel was written before a quarter
century. But still the same condition is prevailing in the modern India.
The novelist mentions that the Indians are dehumanized and the
examples are beggars and the have-nots. Jhabvala’s efforts seem to
have made no effect on the people or the government of India as
nothing seems to have been done to ameliorate the condition of the
underdog. Jhabvala has received the critical attention, but her writings
have failed to persuade the guardians and leaders of Indian society to
work in the right earnest to change the face of the society. Ruth Jhabvala
concludes that the development of a country lies in the hands of the
people and the government.
Works Cited
Bhan, Pankaj. Ruth Jhabvala’s India: Image of India in the Fiction of

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Delhi: B. R. Publishers, 2005. Print.
Iyengar, K. R. Srinivasa. Indian Writing in English. New Delhi: Sterling,
1975. Print.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. Heat and Dust. London: Penguin, 1994. Print.
SHORT STORY
Cracked Legs
Jayanti M. Dalal
(Trans. Pramesh Lakhia)
The moment Lalita entered the house the little baby Sangita started
weeping sobbingly. Showing the pus coming out from her knees, she
said with tearful eyes.
“Mom, our neighbour Girdhar Kaka’s son fatty Gatu forcefully
hit his bat on me, so my boil got bursted. I came home with a limping
leg.”
“Good, you deserve it. I told you that till the time I come back
from the bonesetter after putting the bandage to your father, you don’t
go out of the house” Lalita said frowningly. She so it to Fogutlal “Are
you listening? You ventured by breaking your leg and so your daughter
should inherit the same. Just now I have come home after putting a
bandage on your leg, and your darling daughter came limping. Oh God!
Instead of all these problems, please liberate me.”
Lalita while closing the door, thumbing her legs on the ground
and confounded with anger told.
“I am taking Sangita to Dr. Parikh’s Clinic. I will come back soon,
Till that time you please take rest.”
“Okay! Okay! While going please close the door.”
She started walking along with Sangita.
Fatty Gatu was deeply engrossed in playing cricket with his
friends.
Ball was slow so he hit the bat with force. Ball flying straight hit
on the forehead of Lalita. Pressing the forehead with both the hands
she sat down on the ground profusely abusing him.
“You silly idiot, don’t you feel ashamed for hitting the ball like
this?”
Little while ago you hit the bat on my daughter Sangita and now
you hit the ball on my forehead. You scoundrel, do these and hit the
ball and the bat on your mother’s and sister’s head. Why? You for no
reasons make us unhappy?”
Saying this Lalita impulsively pulled out the stumps and screamed.
“Today only I will complain to your mother. Can’t you see? My
forehead has got swollen like a bindi. How many times you have been
told ‘Do not play cricket here’?. Hence now onwards if you play cricket
here, I will create havoc in your house. Do you understand?” saying
this she threw all the three stumps on the ground.
“Just now I am in hurry to go to the dispensary; otherwise I would
have broken the legs of each one of you.”
The moment Lalita left the place, Gatu spoke.
“Friends, now pay attention to the game. She is an over smart
aunty. To go on speaking is her habit. We should not get afraid of her.”
Once again the game started.
After getting Sangita’s dressing, Lalita came home. At that time it
was twilight. Dr. Parikh had gone on a visit so it took time to come back
from the dispensary. While putting the light on in the house she spoke.
“Oh! If you cannot get up and put on even one light, then why
you jumped in someone else’s affairs? Have ever you remained in the
house for long? What would have been robbed of your father if the
chain would have been snatched from that fair lady’s neck? Why you
jumped in the fray and got the beating by hand and foot blows? Even
at this age will you understand anything? Or just like that you came
out for benevolence? No! No! I am asking which of your well-wishers
sitting in heaven were taking a note of your ventures and will give you
the golden keys of heaven? I am telling you that, now at this age you
cannot do anything, then why don’t you sit in the house and meditate.
When Sangita comes from the school, look after her home work. But
who will listen? You wanted to live as per your own will then who can
stop you?”
While lying, Fogatlal kept on listening uncontrollable language of
his quarrelsome wife. Having a fractured leg, doctor advised him to take
bed rest. From the moment he entered the house, he had a shooting
pain as he came walking all the way. But whom to tell?
After thirty years of married life he had understood his wife
thoroughly. There was no sense in annoying Lalita anymore. Before he
could think of taking the medicine, Sangita came in the house weeping
profusely. He wanted to take medicine, he was feeling hungry also. But
he could not dare to tell anything to Lalita, as even otherwise Lalita
had lost all the decency and fairness.
“Be on guard! Beware! Tomorrow onwards if you will go out to

play I will take a rod and break your leg”. Saying this Lalita made Sangita
to sleep on the bed and she went to the kitchen. Even in kitchen she
kept on grumbling.
“After beating you so severely, where those bloody rogues flee
away? That fine lady did not do anything to save you?”
“In the beginning she also thought me to be a thief. But when the
bus stopped and as the three robbers started running away, she realised
the factual position. On the next stop she got down. I also got down.
She made me sit in a taxi and went away saying sorry.”
“What else she can do?”
“Oh Ya! Ya! What else she can do ?” While copying him she got
wild.
“That bitch even did not think to drop you at home when you
have been almost half dead due to beating. Alas! To save his chain
worth Rs. Five Thousand you just jumped in fray and those three rogues
made your condition so miserable. She is a mean and ignoble woman.”
“The whole event happened in a spur of a moment. She felt dejected
and was about to cry.”
“You felt pity on her but did she show pity on you? Why that
scoundrel did not come to drop you at home?
“Now please do not bother me anymore. Please let me rest in peace.
Please give me a glass or water so that I can take medicine.”
While making the dough, Lalita got up. She washed her hands
and gave Fogatlal a glass of water. Fogatlal put the tablet in his mouth
at that time Lalita was red with anger and was looking at Fogatlal with
sharp looks.
After some time she again got busy in cooking. Fogatlal went to
sleep no sooner Lalita left the place. Behind the closed eyes the whole
episode of that afternoon came in front of his eyes.
He took the bus from Andheri to go to Fountain. The bus got
packed to capacity no sooner the bus reached Bandra. By the time the
bus reached Mahim, one lady entered the bus. She was looking pretty
and beautiful in bright red colour silk saree. In the neck she wore a gold
necklace. It was looking as if she is returning from a marriage. On bus
getting in motion she looked backward and forward, but there was no
place to sit. She kept standing. Three people standing behind her were
staring at her beautiful necklace.
They winked at each other, suddenly Fogatlal saw them. He

understood their intention. He immediately got up from his seat and
stood by three strong men. The moment bus crossed Prabhadevi, one
fat man with black moustache suddenly put his hand on the gold
necklace worn by that fair lady. Immediately Fogatlal forcefully tried to
pull the hand of that fat man. The lady giving a sharp turn moved her
neck. The lady saw that Fogatlal’s hand was touching her gold necklace
on her neck. That fat man vigorously hold Fogatlal’s hand.
“Catch this pocketmar. See his hand is snatching the necklace.”
Hearing this, two other companions of that fat man started beating
Fogatlal on his hands, on his back and all other parts of his body.
All this happened in a spur of a moment. Making Fogatlal to fall
on the ground of the bus and all the three started beating mercilessly.
Having the scuffle in the bus, the bus stopped. By that time
Fogatlal was almost half dead. Blood was coming out from his mouth.
Moreover two more passengers joined those three people and started
beating him, Fogatlal was praying for mercy with folded hands, but
nobody was listening to him. Suddenly one strong man’s foot heavily
pressed on Fogatlal’s right foot. He sighed in pain.
Almost half dead Fogatlal slowly got up and sat, with red and
frowning eyes he was staring at those three robbers. Before he could
speak anything bus stopped on Worli bus stand three men got down
from the bus. “Hold them, catch them, just see they do not to flee away”
Fogatlal shouted. By that time bus started.
Someone showed pity on Fogatlal and give him a seat. Fogatlal
sat there comfortably. After some time he recovered from the shock and
he spoke to that lady.
“Sister, I saw their movement to snatch the chain. I left my seat
and put myself at a risk. You all can see the reward.”
On next bus stop the bus stopped. It was the stop where the lady
was to alight. Fogatlal also got down. He had lot of pain in his right
leg. He was not in a position to walk. One gentleman hold his hand and
helped him in getting down.
“Uncle! Where do you stay?”
“Dear friend I am staying at Andheri please arrange a taxi for me”
That gentleman was looking here and there for a taxi. In the
meantime that lady arrived. She said “Sorry uncle, you have been badly
beaten. At the outset, seeing your hand on my neck, I also took you as
a thief.”
“While taking his hand away, he caught my hand and kept it on

your neck and started shouting”.
As the taxi arrived, Fogatlal took a seat in it.
“Sorry, good bye.” She smiled and the taxi started. Six months
passed away. Most of the time, Fogatlal was whiling away his time in
doing nothing. Lalita’s father gave her some shares on her wedding day.
Fogatlal’s all the time was keeping busy in buying and selling of shares.
Truly Speaking Fogatlal was good for nothing. So Lalita was not poking
her nose in Fogatlal’s affairs. Yes at times Lalita was helping him in case
Fogatlal was getting confused, she was giving him guidance. Today
when she gave unsolicited advice he accepted willingly. Only last week
he bought Reliance Shares at two hundred rupees and sold at two
hundred thirty rupees Five as per Lalita’s advice. Today those shares
have come down to one hundred eighty rupees only. After seeing
today’s share market, Fogatlal started towards his home. One of his
friends suddenly met him and while congratulating him he said.
“Fogatlal you are really lucky. All of us were thinking that Reliance
shares will move upwards and will be Rupees Three Hundred. I told
you not to sell still being firm you sold the shares. Today I feel you
were right.”
Fogatlal kept on smiling. It was 4 p.m. when he got down at
Andheri station. He wanted to make Lalita his partner in sharing his
joy. For Lalita’s acumen “Bravo, Bravo Lalita” to say this to her he was
highly enchanted. He earned Rs. Thirty Four Thousand. He was over
joyed to share this information with Lalita. He was speedily walking and
while reaching home he was slightly breathless.
He was getting breathless when he was walking fast. But today
he was eager to meet Lalita. He started taking two steps together on
the staircase. On reaching at first floor he stopped.
He heard the bitter voice of Lalita. He slowed down his speed. On
no earlier occasion Lalita was shouting like this. This was the first
instance of its kind. Generally she was not coming out of the house.
She had good relations with neighbors but was hardly talking with them
without work.
Fogatlal climbed to second floor. Furious Lalita was incessantly
fighting with neighbours. No sooner she saw Fogatlal she got more
violent and started screaming.
“No! No! How one can tolerate to see that you people just kept
on watching at such a time” Instead of that, you all wear bangles and
remain inside the house only. Why are you watching the scene keeping
your flat’s doors open and see the drama ? It was good that the glass
jug which I was holding struck on the robber’s head.
Blood started flowing and all the three ran away” Lalita while
speaking started breathing heavily.
Neighbour Dharmdas said, “Bahenji, I and Shantilal came out
rushing with sticks in our hands. But the robbers standing on your gate
intimidate us. Due to fear, we just kept away.”
“Did you see, how I alone got over all the robbers. Not only that,
but made them flee away. It is a matter of shame on you for not helping
a lady.”
Dharamdas and Shantilal’s faces were full of shame. Fogatlal
putting her hand slowly on Lalita’s shoulders said. “Now come inside
and get cool.”
Giving a contemptuous look, Lalita entered in her flat. But oh God!
What is this? Her right leg was paining heavily and she could not lift
her leg.
She took the support of Fogatlal who was standing near her and
while slowly entering the flat she said.
“That bloody rogue by beating me on my leg wanted to take our
cupboard keys.”
She sighed while talking. She was facing great difficulty in walking.
Fogatlal looked around and had an overview of the flat. The drawing
room, bed room and the kitchen were just like a battlefield.
Steel plates and bowls, glass cups and soccer’s and glass jug were
all spread over in broken condition. Fogatlal leaving Lalita went to the
bed room. He cleared the articles lying on the bed, made the bed sheet
properly and made Lalita to lie down.
“Oh! It’s paining too much. Call the bonesetter immediately. I can’t
bear the pain in my leg.”
While gently moving the hand on Lalita Fogatlal said. “Sangita
must be coming back home from school. I am just now going to the
bonesetter to bring him here.”
Before Fogatlal stoped speaking, Sangita entered the house and
said “Mummy, Mummy I got the prize in my school.” She saw the
atmosphere in the house and became quiet. Fogatlal said “Sangita please
keep your school bag in the bed room and sit with your mummy. I am
going to call the bonesetter,” and Fogatlal went out.
Bonesetter came. After putting the bandage he went away. Fogutlal

asked, “How all this happened?”
Lalita started narrating the incident. “Exactly at 4 p.m. the door
bell rang and I opened the door thinking that it will be you. But when
I saw the rogue with a big open knife and entering in our house and
threatened me. He asked the cupboard keys. God knows how I got the
courage. First of all I snatched away the knife from his hand, so he got
wilder. He took the stick lying on the side and started beating me.
Speedily I went to the bed room and climbed on the double bed. In the
meantime his other accomplice came to help him. I started throwing
whatever came in my hand at them, sometimes in main hall, sometimes
in kitchen and sometimes in bed room. At the cost of my life, I
courageously went on matching them. In between I kept on shouting
and screaming for help. In all this scramble two robbers fled away. But
while going on of them bet me with the stick on my hands and legs”
while stopping for a while she continued speaking “I ran out of the
house.”
“Nobody came at my rescue. So I lost my wrath. I started shouting
with all that loudly and you arrived.”
Fogatlal spoke – “Lalita please cool down. Have you ever been
bothered about others? Why other people should run to rescue you
and put their life at risk?”
Lalita while spitting said, “When I was fighting courageously at
that time they should have come to help me. They should have beaten
the thieves. But the neighbours are cowards and fools.”
“Then how would you have got the inheritance of a fractured
leg.”
And even in pain Lalita bursted in laughter.
Class, Culture, and Language: A Study on

Mahesh Dattani’s Plays
Madhur Kumar
The correlated analysis of class, culture and language in Mahesh

Dattani’s plays offers a beautiful insight into the understanding of his
plays in postcolonial decolonised perspective. Class, culture and
language are the forces that integrate our country. Dattani has used
parallelism with the unification of the country and the artistic beauty of
his plays by exploiting the same key words—class, culture, and
language. He reveals various aspects of class and culture without giving
direct discussion to them. This diehard playwright sees beyond the
narrow prism of his vision and this is the reason he occupies a unique
position in the galaxy of the contemporary Indian English dramatists.
Dattani is a socially committed artist. All his plays are about the
different social concerns. To fulfil his requirement he gives due attention
to the revelation of the multiple layers of class structures and culture
prevailing in our society. Further the innovative use of language gives
Indian touch to his plays.
Dattani has written many plays, important among which are Where
There’s a Will (1988), Dance Like a Man (1989), Tara (1990), Bravely
Fought the Queen (1991), Final Solutions (1993), Do the Needful (1997),
On a Muggy Night in Mumbai (1998), Seven Steps Around the Fire
(1999) and Thirty Days in September (2001). In almost all his plays he
has tried to bring on the forefront the different aspects of Indian culture
and class conflict.
A culture means ideological aspects of the social life we live,
experience and observe. It includes artistic, philosophical, inherited
artefacts, ideas, habits and values, knowledge and belief, law, morals,
customs, and all other capabilities and habits. It also embraces
languages, taboos, codes, institutions, rituals, ceremonies, symbols and
images. Thus, culture is a complex whole which includes knowledge,
belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits
acquired by man as a member of society.
India is a land of plurality whether it is the question of culture or
language. It has diverse cultures, religions, customs, classes, and
languages having a golden heritage and universal appeal. Culture in
India is a beautiful blend of diverse ethnicities, customs, traditions, and
religions (all are the parts of culture) which all together portray an
inimitable image of the nation having unity in diversity.
Dattani has realistically dramatised the Indian social concern and
culture. The cult that Dattani has followed in his plays has been fully
Indian, which is the secret of his success. In Dattani’s plays human
relationships and family value play important roles. What is important
in them is that they preserve Indian values. In Where There’s a Will,
Dance Like a Man, Tara, Bravely Fought the Queen, Final Solutions,
Do the Needful, and Thirty Days in September, Dattani takes the family
unit as the locale. The plot of Where There’s a Will revolves around the
life of a rich businessman, Hasmukh Mehta and his family. Though, it
begins with the patriarchal attitude of Hasmukh for which he “forgoes
an opportunity to improve his interpersonal relationships “ (Chaudhuri
67) but ends with the beginning of a new era in which there will be no
patriarchal dominance and which will lead ultimately to the improvement
of interpersonal relationships. On the other hand, Kiran Jhaveri, a
mistress of Hasmukh being nominated as the Trustee of Hasmukh’s
property after his death forges a good understanding and interpersonal
relationships with Hasmukh’s wife, son and daughter. The fact gives
basis to the Indian traditional belief that a woman can be a real caretaker
of home for the establishment of harmony. Dance Like a Man reflects
the thrust of ambition for himself or herself and their children within the
boundary of family unit. Tara is the most beautiful family play. Though
“Tara is a play about the gendered self, about coming to terms with the
feminine side of oneself in a world that always favours what is male,”
(Dattani 319) but Chandan’s love and emotion for his sister Tara
preserves the core of Indian spirit. Dan who is nobody but Chandan
himself writes that Tara’s tragedy is that of Chandan himself when he
says, “Forgive me, Tara. Forgive me for making it my tragedy” (Dattani
380).
Bravely Fought the Queen is a multi-layered story of an Indian
joint family and “Dattani like a skilful surgeon peels off, layer by layer,
the sham that covers patriarchy to expose the dysfunctionality of
traditional gender roles” (Mandal 39-40).
In Do the Needful, Dattani deals with the traditional theme of

marriage. The marriage negotiation of Alpesh and Lata indicates the
changing trend of Indian society in which marriages across castes are
permissive and sometimes preferred. The dominance of modernity,
rationalism in socio-cultural realm of life and milieu gives birth to the
inter-caste marriage. In spite of these realities, Dattani, for all the time,
is worried about the deterioration of Indian culture. Though the play
has been written for the British audience weaving a multicultural society,
he chooses the Indian setting and the Indian system of arranged
marriage, which bears wider and universal significance. Further this play
deals with cultural conflict, doubt and bias as well as unification of two
families—one Gujarati (Patel’s family) and another Kannadiga’s (The
Gowda’s family).
Dattani’s plays are, however, not only concerned with the
traditional values of Indian culture. In fact he is more conscious towards
the changing socio-cultural, socio-economic, and socio-political changes
and development which have a very worse impact on our society.
According to Dattani gender identity ultimately makes way for national
identity. The portrayal of Indian culture which comprises the role and
status of women, Indian traditions and their importance, Hindu, Islamic
and other religions’ cultural ethos and heritage etc. play a significant
role in fostering national identity.
Dattani is aware of the fact that class difference and gender
difference are prevalent in Indian society. Violence against women in
form of patriarchy and matriarchy, gender discrimination, and child sexual
abuse (paedophilia) are rampant throughout the society. In Indian
society and home domestic violence against women and gender
discrimination are highly prevalent irrespective of caste and colour.
Physical violence as well as explicit forms of aggression is used by the
more powerful in the household as methods to ensure obedience of the
less powerful and therefore related to power dynamics in a household.
At every stage in the life-cycle, the female body is both the objects of
desire and of control.
Dattani, through his plays such as Where There’s a Will, Dance
Like a Man, Bravely Fought the Queen, Tara and Seven Steps Around
the Fire hints and makes the readers and audience aware that patriarchal
culture and gender discrimination are against rational civilisation. He
objects to such a culture which gives suffering to individual and
ultimately eats up the progress and harmony of the nation. This
underlines the fact that the dramatic canvas of Dattani is coloured with
real life situations and the livid experiences related with middle class
Indians. Most of the issues taken up by Dattani in his plays are radical,
unconventional and contemporary.
The structure of an Indian family is patriarchal. Be it a daughter,
wife, daughter-in-law or mistress all are dependent on man for financial
and physical security. Women have been looked down upon by men as
objects to meet their needs. They should be there to cook their food,
smile cordially, run around attending to their needs and sexually satisfy
them whenever they have the urge. If the wife is unable to satisfy the
husband, there is always a mistress to do that. Further he finds gender
connectivity with class in India, which is a destructive force for national
integration. Due to such malice class division between men and women
and the postcolonial culture, women have been raising voice against
their exploitation. There is much noise of women reservation and separate
space for them. This is really destructive for Indian society where women
are considered as the ‘ardhangini’ of men. Dattani’s plays serve as a
damage-control for Indian society as they deal with patriarchy
dominance and gender discrimination end with a symbolical note, which
is indicative and suggestive of liberation from patriarchal authority.
Dattani’s plays have heralded an awakening in women for their
rights and brought up a feministic look in Bravely Fought the Queen.
He perhaps bothers about the deterioration of the status of women in
our society, which has dampened the spirit of Indian society.
Again culture plays an important role in Final Solutions. India is
known for unity in diversity. There was no distinction between the
Hindus and the Muslims till the British came to India to divide and rule
on the religious grounds. The disgruntled voice heard in the Indian life
is an offshoot of dirty politics which relies on communal difference and
caste vote issue. Dattani maintains the truth, love, and beauty of the
Indian culture to achieve the goal of making a real and ideal world. Final
Solutions highlights communal hatred caused by lack of understanding.
It addresses an issue of utmost concern to our society i.e. the issue of
communalism. However, the play comprises the issues of class and
communities, identity, terrible human suffering, loss of faith, perpetual
hatred, aggressiveness and nothingness within the larger socio-political
context. Dattani gives the message that the final solutions comprise in
the words like tolerance, generosity and respect for other human beings,
which are the strength of Indian culture.
Dattani strongly believes that the degeneration of values in society

culminates into degradation of quality of life which leads to misery and
unrest. India, with its diverse and rich cultural heritage upholds the
tradition of moral values. Culture is the way of thinking. Dattani has
presented the mind-set of his generation without affecting Indian
cultural ethos. He has explored the vital areas of individual
consciousness and projected the fascinating images of cultural changes.
He strongly believes that sex is meant for the attainment of inner
harmony. Homosexuality is not our culture but a Western and South-
Asian gay culture. Same sex is abhorrent in our culture. However
everyone’s experience of sexuality is unique, one chooses it in one’s
own way to find happiness and harmony in life. So Dattani hints to fulfil
the desire behind the curtain so as to maintain the sanctity of our culture.
On the stage also in On A Muggy Night in Mumbai he has dramatised
the discussion of homosexual characters in the dark and back chamber
to present it as a secret and private episode. In Do the Needful, Lata is
engaged to a Muslim boy, who is a terrorist while Alpesh has same-sex
love relationship with Trilok. Both these relationships are prohibited
according to Indian socio-cultural norms. The play ends with the trend
of contemporary changing Indian society in which old prejudices as well
as values are making way for new adjustments.
As said above Dattani writes about human relationships, he does
not ignore the most neglected and marginalized communities like women,
eunuchs and homosexuals. Dattani takes them as the weakest class of
the society. He has unfolded the saga of Indian culture through the
portrayal of these ever neglected class and community. The words of
Beena Agrawal are worth to be quoted here:
Theatre is not a mute and mechanical representation of social
dynamics but it is a lively representation of the voices resounding
in context of totality of human experiences that consciously or
unconsciously affect the existing dynamics of human sensibility.
Dattani, in the process of engineering the current of Indian drama
by bringing it closer to the real life experiences, tried to articulate
the voice of the oppressed sections of society whose identity is
shrouded in the cover of myths and social prejudices. They have
been dragged in darkness, doomed to survive in perpetual silence
bearing the oppressive burden of hegemony of the elitist class.
Dattani within the framework of dramatic structure tries to
investigate the identities of those who occupy no space in social

order. (34) (Emphasis mine)
Dattani deserves lots of accolades for a full-length study on their
lives. This is a radical effort and with it, he contributes to the matrix of
the process that Erin Mee refers to as “a way of decolonizing of theatre”
(14).
In India classical Indian music, dance and drama are closely linked
together. Dattani gives proper place to dance and music in his plays as
a representation of Indian culture. Dance is the issue that has been
raised in the plays like Dance Like a Man and Bravely Fought the
Queen. Dance Like a Man is a highly acclaimed play, intelligently crafted
and powerful providing an insight into the contemporary Indian social
scene. “. . . the universality of its theme and the quality of Dattani’s
script (in English) has made it something of a cultural flagship for
contemporary Indian theatre” (Antares).
In the play, the male protagonist, Jairaj and his wife, Ratna are
taking training in classical dance, Bharatanatyam which is intolerable to
Amritlal, the father of Jairaj. Dattani is well-aware of the Indian middle-
class society which considers dance is for women and he exploits it fully
to his advantage in the portrayal of patriarchal culture. Beena Agrawal
gives her over-all impression about Dance Like a Man in the following
manner: “The play Dance Like a Man begins with a socio-cultural
spectrum, passes through psycho-cultural dynamics and culminates in
psycho-philosophical suggestiveness and here lies the distinction of
Dattani’s art” (104). In Bravely Fought the Queen, the interest of Dolly
and Alka in Thumri by Naina Devi and its audition by them gives a blow
to patriarchy. However, Thumri is an integral part of Indian culture.
We confront a number of issues in Dattani’s plays, with particular
interest in the condition of those who are positioned at different levels
in the class-structure. Dattani does not lace his plays with a lofty theme
like that of Aurobindo or with a strong portrayal of protagonist like that
of Shakespeare. Class concept is important in Dattani’s plays. In India,
it is the middle class family that often visits to see plays. Then it is the
middle class who face the kind of utter physical, mental, and economic
torture in the society. The lives of the middle class people are close to
the characters of his plays. The social panorama of Indian society
cannot be expected neglecting the middle class people. To exploit this
fact he writes about the contemporary problems of middle class society
in almost all his plays and probably this is the secret of the success of
Though the middle and upper-middle class, English-speaking,

educationally privileged urban elite in India professes an allegiance to
the secular, Westernised and trendy aspects of a global culture, the
women find themselves constricted by traditional role expectations.
Dattani wastes no time in confronting this double standard at play that
pays a mere lip-service to the idea of woman as an active social agent.
In Bravely Fought the Queen, one finds that Dolly and Alka are the
victims of this double standard which although emphasizes participation
of women in public life, at its heart it prefers to preserve the structures
of female subordination. Thus, the play exposes the hypocritical modern
urban society. To quote Asha Kuthari Chaudhuri, “The fissure between
conventional and current cultures having thrown up a new landscape,
the play races towards a brave culmination, laying bare the gruesome
truths that lie behind the pretence of conservative Indian morality” (32).
Coming to language, Dattani can be called a great delineator of
both verbal and non-verbal language. He is deeply rooted in Indian
linguistic culture in post-modern sense. He loves his culture vehemently.
So he has brought innovation by using natural language which
comprises code switching and code mixing in abundance. Critics may
praise for his discovery of the language which is very close to the middle
and upper-middle class, English-speaking, educationally urban elite in
India. Indian natives may well praise for the use of natural language - a
language which is comfortably spoken by maximum number of Indians.
But in the researcher’s view, Dattani would be an obscure figure if he
fails to enact his drama through numerous non-verbal means of
communication and innovative dramatic techniques. The use of natural
language only would have hampered the basic principles of poetry which
aims at instruction as well as delight. For the language he has used
proves to be a hindrance to the English native readers in understanding.
Dattani would not have got international acclaim if he had not used
various non-verbal medium artistically and displayed it on the stage.
Dattani’s plays transcend the cultural and linguistic barriers. They have
a universal appeal because of the tremendous stage presentation and
direction and therefore, they are as popular in India as abroad.
The element of continuity, versatility and destiny in the Indian
culture is best reflected in the plays of Mahesh Dattani in every aspect.
It is interesting to note Dattani writes about middle class Indian society
and milieu – its cultural and social practices. A good number of his plays
have been performed and staged abroad and have got international
recognition. He does this wonderful task by the use of innovative

language. Thus Dattani delineates decolonised Indian society through
the natural language—an inventory language, which is neither British
nor American but Indian and is spoken by a million of Indian. Such
manifestation is on one hand a revolt against colonialism and on the
other establishes a new paradigm in Indian English writing. Dattani with
the fusion of these three key-words in his plays marches ahead to save
Indian English writing from colonial hangover.
Works Cited
Agrawal, Beena. Mahesh Dattani’s Plays: A New Horizon in Indian

Theater. Jaipur: Book Enclave, 2008. Print.
Antares. “Bharatanatyam Blues: Review of Primetime Theatre’s Dance
Like a Man.” Web. 5 Aug. 2002. http://www. kakiseni. com.
Chaudhuri, Asha Kuthari. Mahesh Dattani. Delhi: Foundation Book,
2005. Print.
Dattani Mahesh. Collected Plays. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2000.
Print.
Mandal, Sagar Taranga. Studies in Mahesh Dattani’s Bravely Fought
the Queen. Kolkata: Books Way, 2009. Print.
Mee, Erin B. Drama Contemporary India. New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2002. Print.
Conflicts of Globalization,
Multiculturalism and Economic Inequity
in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss
K. Mangayarkarasi
This paper tries to initiate briefly the conflicts of Globalization and

Multiculturalism and Financial Inequity which find the thematic core in
Kiran Desai’s Second novel, The Inheritance of Loss. These inequalities
in economics, culture, quality of life and capability to sustain
relationships with one’s family and one’s people are perchance the most
excellent examples of the fact that globalization is not a new world
system that embraces optimistic deals such as multiculturalism, progress,
and modernity but is rather, an innovative description of the same form
of world domination upon which imperialism and colonialism were
founded.
The paper intends to take a close scrutiny at the text, examine its
thematic dimensions and comprehend the novelist’s arts and mind.
Nowadays, Multiculturalism is another distinctiveness feature of Indian
society. Desai herself inherited multiculturalism from her parents and
grandparents. Her maternal grandmother was a German; grandfather was
a refugee from Bangladesh. Her paternal grandparents came from
Gujarat, and her grandfather was educated in England. Although she
has not lived in India since she was 14, she returns to the family home
in Delhi every year. She maintains convivial attitude to all cultures and
exposes the vanity and hypocrisy imbibed on them. Her novel moves
between several worlds at an almost breathtaking speed-from the mist-
filled world of Kalimpong to the dingy basements of New York, where
she depicts the candour and sympathy the hidden work of stowaways
and illegal labour. Sai, Biju, Lola, Noni, Booty, Potty, Gyan, Mr. and Mrs.
Mistry belong to different cultural backgrounds. It includes several
periods as well while being set in the 1980s; it also tells a story of life
under the shadow of colonial rule. It is also about how people live in
the same milieu, bound by good relations and ill feeling; the book speaks
in the same breath of separation and togetherness. The novelist
illuminates the pain of deport and the ambiguities of post-colonialism
with a tapestry of colourful characters: Sai, his sixteen year old
granddaughter; a chatty cook; and the cook’s son Biju, who is hop-
scotching from one miserable New York restaurant to another.
The judge’s world is a lonely one, with his unsuccessful marriage
and his helplessness to belong anywhere, whether in England or later
as a colonial official, where his anglicized brownness sets him apart-
from his own countrymen and his fellow British officers. Born into a
middle class family, judge Jemubhai sails for England in 1939. Feeling
lost, and scorned for his skin, colour, smell, feeling totally secluded and
very foreign, he proceeds as an ICS officer serving the British. Yet on
his return to India, he finds himself despising his apparently backward
Indian wife. He found his wife too Indian and sent her back to her
parents, where six months later she produced a daughter. Full of self
hate for his family, community and anyone for not being British which
includes his wife, the judge settles in Kalimpong in crumbling old relics
of a mansion from the colonial era. The judge’s perfect mannerism and
demeanor is very much British but he cannot get himself free from the
fetters of conventional Gujarati and Indian mentality. He feels guilty of
ill treating his wife Nimmi, of shoving away the ‘holy coconut throwing
in the water custom.’
Thus, the judge’s mind started to deform; he grew unfamiliar
person to himself than he was to those around him, found his own skin
odd-coloured, his own accent peculiar. He forgot how to laugh, could
barely manage to life his lips in a smile and if he ever did, he held his
hand over his mouth, because he couldn’t bear anyone to see his gums,
his teeth. They seemed too confidential. In fact he could barely let
any of himself peep out of his clothes for fear of giving offence. He
began to wash fanatically, to the end of his life, he would never be seen
without socks and shoes and would prefer shadow to light, faded days
to sunny, for he was apprehensive that sunlight would disclose his
factual nature very obviously.
With a keen eye for an important detail and profound wisdom Desai
weaves the weight of colonial history with its slow burn of
embarrassment and creates a rich tapestry of characters that live with
queries of individuality and alienation, exiles at home as well as in a
foreign country.
The main story is about the kinds of fatalities the character

endures. Sai, the orphaned granddaughter of the judge is returned to
his care from the convent school. Hiding from his own life and at a loss
to offer the love and warmth she yearns for, the judge turns her care
over to the cook. The cook witnesses India’s hierarchy being upturned
and discarded. Infected by the desire to leave home among the people
he sees around him, the cook, who has lost his wife, also sends his son
Biju off to work on a cruise ship which deposits him in New York. To
everyone he met, he proudly announced: “My son works in New York.
He is the Manager of a restaurant business . . . New York. Very big city.
The cars and buildings are nothing like here. In that country there is
enough food for everybody . . . one day soon, my son will take me”
(The Inheritance of Loss 84). All his hopes are on his son Biju, who had
the good fortune to get a tourist visa for the USA and left to make his
fortune. But the whole thing is shattered; instead he found only illegal,
underpaid work in the Kitchens of a succession of New York restaurants.
Biju struggles to buy into the American migrant dream and is perplexed
by the ‘made good’ Indian Hindu business men’s consumption of rare
steaks in one of the restaurants where he worked.
Back in Kalimpong, the judge hired two elderly ladies—Lola and
Noni--to his granddaughter. These old ladies clung to the old ways with
their M&S undies and pride in Pixie, Lola’s daughter who worked for
the BBC. They soon establish they couldn’t cope with Sai’s Maths and
Physics tutoring and drafted in the help of Nepali man, Gyan who became
gently but romantically implicated with Sai.
Soon Kalimpong becomes the hub of activities. The Nepali’s
struggle to get their own rights and land gradually creeps into the lives
of the characters, the cook, the judge, Sai, Noni, Lola and questions their
very being. The characters like father Booty and Uncle Potty who have
been living here for years and never concerned to consider upon their
rights to live in this land, are very much caught in the dark just like the
middle aged sister Lola and Noni, who refined with an education, books
and English literature get a rude shock when the GNLF leader molests
Lola with his vulgar words and mocks at her middle agedness. The
Nepalese’s insurgency threatens Sai’s new sprung romance with her
handsome tutor, their lives descend into chaos. Gyan is lost to her when
he is engrossed into the 1986 Gorkha insurgency. He joins the
movement not as much for the cause but as an outlet to vent his own
fury and hostility. The movement does not even spare Biju, the Cook’s
son in America who comes back only to be robbed of all his money and
possessions. But yet the reader finds an appealing contentment in the
union of father and son in the backdrop of a disturbed land of
Kalimpong. At least Biju feels safe and at peace compared to his lonely
life as a waiter thrown one restaurant Kitchen to another.
Other minor characters who teach in some way share the sense of
loss alluded to in the title include Father Booty (a Swiss priest who runs
an unlicensed dairy) and Uncle Potty. Everyone is in some way estranged
by their environments and experiences clinging on to aspects of the
colonial past whilst not belongings entirely to the old ways and not
appropriate with the new environment.
With great tenderness and humour, Desai has engaged her book
with exciting characters such as the anglophile sisters Lola and Noni,
the refugee Afghani princesses; the Swiss priest Father Potty who had
thought his home India, but is deported with dispatch when the Gorkha
separatist movement breaks out, the most memorable Saeed Saeed who
teaches Biju everything he knows. Nor the least are Mustafa the cat,
Mutt the judge’s purebred pet dog, who is lost, and various animals
alive and dead, who make command appearances in the story.
In both places, New York and Kalimpong Indians live analogous
lives conflicted by class and nationality. Untouched by globalization
and the prosperity it has brought into one class of Indians; people like
the cook and Gyan find the vestiges of colonialism in their unchanging
poverty, in the unpreachable power imbalance. With the narrative voice
that sparkles with compassion at this imbalance, Desai leads the reader
into the inner lives of the poor, and the shadow lives they live within
the country where they are born.
For a close realization of this blissful state the following clues to
a future stand point given by Sanjay Solanki in his essay “Past, Present
and the Future in The Inheritance of Loss” may help to understand:
The post colonial and multicultural perspectives entail a
subtle reconfiguring of attitudes: no extreme and facile stance can
overnight purge us of our colonial hangover and undo the material
intellectual and cultural destruction that came in its wake. Nor
formulaic posturing – like Jemu’s masochistic Anglophilism or
Biju’s Anglophobia-can do in a world changing fast. Nor does
the situation offer a luxury of glib solutions like the ones Lola,
Noni, and Mr. Sen would seem to approve of. To be well placed
in the feverish pace of the globalised world what is required is not
the poise, seclusion, nor is Maclonaldization of society the answer

especially for the Asian Countries in which poverty is much more
concentrated than in the European countries. (81)
To conclude, Kiran Desai in The Inheritance of Loss is perhaps,
prophetic in her depiction of the discriminatory attitude of the
Americans towards the people of the Third World Countries for one
cannot ignore today the growing sensitivity towards national
specificity as a mark of the future. Despite the general thrust on
multiculturalism and mutliethnicity in the world one cannot fall short
to observe the cultural distinction of each individual nation that defines
the view point of its people. The resolution of this multiculturalism
versus cultural distinction remains open ended and one has only to
mark the direction literary creativity takes in the future in terms of theme
and intention. Thus Desai skillfully demonstrates this through the
convergence of the tormented past and an indeterminately positioned
multicultural/multiethnic present.
Works Cited
Desai, Kiran. The Inheritance of Loss. London: Penguin Books, 2006.

Print.
Solanki, Sanjay. “Past, Present and the Future in the The Inheritance
of Loss.” The Atlantic Literary Review 8.2 (April-June 2007): 81.
Print.
The Legacy of Non-violence:

J M Coetzee’s Fiction in Context
Namrata Nistandra
Ideas usually travel across geographical and cultural boundaries

and are manifested in distinct ways in different socio-cultural
backgrounds. This paper points out striking similarities in the way the
doctrine of non-violence has been shaped by three important writers:
Tolstoy, Gandhi and Coetzee. The three writers responded to the times
of violence in their unique ways: Tolstoy wrote fiction as well as non-
fiction though he was happier writing the latter and tried hard to
implement what he wrote in the didactic mode. Gandhi was not a writer
in the narrow sense of the word but he wrote voluminously. His ideas
took shape out of his political activism and are gleaned from his
correspondence and lectures. Coetzee has written both fiction and non-
fiction and offered a critique of the unjust social and political structures.
Russia, India and South Africa had a lot in common. All the three
societies have witnessed power struggles in one form or the other.
Censorship and repressive czarist regime, British colonial rule and
apartheid are all manifestations of violence.
The legacy of non-violence travels from Leo Tolstoy to Mahatma
Gandhi and finds expression in the work of J M Coetzee. Non-violence
connotes a gamut of meanings. It is not just a refraining from physical
violence but from all forms of mental, psychological and emotional abuse
as well. This broad concept of ahimsa is at the core of Gandhism.
Mahatma Gandhi acknowledged the profound influence of Tolstoy’s
teachings and books on his career. Gandhi described himself as a humble
follower of the great thinker. In his autobiography, Gandhi listed
Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You and John Ruskin’s Unto
This Last as two most important books that shaped his sensibilities.
Tolstoy was a radical thinker of his times. He attacked the
hypocrisy of the institutions of society including the Church and this
made him quite unpopular initially among almost all classes of society.
But it could not shake his faith in the principles of non-violence. Tolstoy
was an ardent admirer of the teachings of Jesus, particularly the Sermon
on the Mount. Following the principles of Christianity, he envisioned a
society based on love and mutual tolerance. In such a society, there is
no place for violence and war.
Gandhi and Tolstoy shared a brief but memorable association. It
began when Tolstoy wrote Gandhi ‘A Letter to a Hindu’ and Gandhi
sought his permission to translate the letter in Gujarati. The idea that
non-violence could be employed as a potent weapon in India’s freedom
struggle against the British got planted in Gandhi’s consciousness. The
coming decades saw this materialize as Gandhi organized his country
men and women during nation-wide strikes and protests. Gandhi and
Tolstoy continued to respond until the latter’s death in 1910. Before he
died, Tolstoy’s last letter was to Gandhi.
Gandhi’s relationship with Tolstoy had a lasting impact in
moulding the destiny of India. The principles that guided India’s freedom
struggle took shape in South Africa. Gandhi’s ties with South Africa
acquire special significance as this country proved crucial in giving a
concrete shape to what Gandhi had intuitively believed in. He first went
to South Africa in 1893 on a professional visit. However, a series of
incidents involving racial humiliation jolted him badly and he began to
take an active interest in the plight of Indian emigrants. Gandhi’s book
Satyagraha in South Africa tells us that the first Indians arrived in South
Africa as indentured labourers. They had no idea that they would be
exploited in the alien land. Gandhi could not go on with his work as a
barrister-in-law and thus began the struggle for the Indian community,
which culminated in the doctrine of Satyagraha, a concept which proved
instrumental in changing the face of Indian politics.
There are strong kinship ties between India and South Africa.
South Africa proved a testing ground for the Mahatma’s principles. Not
only this, Truth and Reconciliation Commissions were set up on the
principles of non-violence and forgiveness in post-apartheid South
Africa. Prominent South African leaders like Nelson Mandela and
Desmond Tutu have been inspired by Gandhism in their fight against
racism. J M Coetzee’s fiction also absorbs the ideas of Tolstoy and
Gandhi and in its own way contributes to subverting the malaise of South
African society.
Literature, particularly the novel, does not function in isolation. It

is an integral component of any culture. It can actively construct the
dominant discourse prevalent in society. At the same time, it has the
power to challenge and subvert the existing social order. Postcolonial
novel is a political weapon that seeks to establish the manner in which
the subaltern are victimised. Coetzee is sometimes called a cerebral writer
who has not dwelt much on the material conditions of oppression in
South Africa. In fact, there is a blend of the aesthetic, the political and
the ethical in his work. As Coetzee can be situated in the tradition of
Tolstoy and Gandhi, his work acquires significant cultural and
philosophical dimensions.
Coetzee’s work unites the aesthetic, the political and the ethical.
His novels resonate with allusions from European literature and the
writers he is fond of. He writes dense allegories and metafictional texts.
His novels are deeply embedded in the South African milieu and also
transcend their immediate context. Coetzee has created a new literary
tradition: his work epitomises how a novel could be modern, postmodern,
avant-garde, metafictional and at the same time political and historical.
Coetzee’s training as a linguist enables him to detect the working of
power relations in society at all levels. His novels expose the
oppressiveness of social structures; though he is not very happy with
the role of a South African spokesman thrust on him. His work defies
categorization and belongs to an international tradition.
A prominent feature of Coetzee’s work is its ethical and
philosophical quality. In many of his novels, the figure of the white
writer struggling with guilt and complicity can be detected in various
forms. In his essay “The Novel Today,” Coetzee contends that literature
could either supplement history by reproducing those oppositions
related to class, race and gender conflict “out of which history and
historical disciplines erect themselves.” But it is also possible for
literature to move away from “the relations of contestation, domination
and subjugation to the vast and complex human world that lies beyond
them” (3). In his essay ‘Into the Dark Chamber: the Novelist and South
Africa’ included in Doubling the Point, he raises the issue of authority
and challenge faced by a writer. He describes the novelist as a person
who is camped before a closed door, facing an insufferable ban. He
creates, in place of the forbidden scene, a representation of that scene.
Coetzee warns that a writer should not replicate the forbidden, rather
his true challenge is “how not to play the game by the rules of the state,
how to establish one’s own authority, how to imagine torture and death
on one’s own terms” (364).
Coetzee’s novels have a philosophical dimension. Literature and
Philosophy have shared an uneasy relationship since the beginning of
western philosophy. Plato’s exclusion of artists from his Republic created
a distance between literature and philosophy as he considered
philosophy as a striving after pure knowledge. This might have set
philosophy and literature onto different paths but the two disciplines
have many converging areas. Anton Leist and Peter singer identify three
characteristics of Coetzee’s novels that make them philosophical: the
first is an unusual degree of reflectivity (6) that underscores the
complexity behind the sparseness of language. The allegorical nature
of these texts makes them reject conventional value reactions. Just as
philosophical texts raise questions, similarly Coetzee’s texts raise
questions but do not offer solutions. The second characteristic is a
paradoxical truth seeking (7). For Leist and Singer, truthfulness in Coetzee
“is the engagement in a never-ending spiral movement that at no point
leads to full truth” (7). The third feature of Coetzee’s novels is “an ethics
of social relationships” (8) that forms the essence of most stories.
Coetzee’s books raise deeply disturbing questions about ethical
and political demands. Derek Attridge considers a literary work as an
ethically charged event because it is capable of evoking intense
experiences that shape our lives as ethical beings; the “impulses and
acts of respect, of love, of trust, of generosity-cannot be adequately
represented in the discourses of philosophy, politics, or theology, but
are in their natural element in literature” (xi). Attridge further considers
the literary work as an event and it is the reader who brings the work
into existence. He considers the literary work not as a noun but a verb;
it is not something to be carried away after reading it but it happens as
we read it (9).
Coetzee’s concern with the ethical is reflected not only in his
choice of content but of form too. The use of minimalist style and lack
of ornamentation imparts sincerity to the texts. In an interview with David
Attwell, Coetzee testifies to the “contest of interpretations” between
the political and ethical that is “played out again and again in my novels”
(Doubling the Point 338). The political realm is associated with violence
and death and the ethical with the refusal of “retributive violence”
(Doubling the Point 337). Coetzee’s truth-seeking implies a number of
dimensions like individuals should be loved in spite of the difficulties
encountered in the task; one’s own sufferings must not obscure reality;
and the responsibility to the Other depends on one’s place in the social
order” (Vice 310). Coetzee’s texts have relevance beyond their immediate
context because a text is not a static and self-sufficient product of a
particular historical-political context but something that has “potential
for reinterpretation, for grafting into new contexts, for fission and fusion”
(Attridge 10). For Attridge, the singularity of a text is its inventiveness
“the new possibilities for thought and feeling it opens up in its creative
transformation of familiar norms and habits” (11).
Coetzee exhibits a keen sense of the social function of the
intellectual. The intellectual is ready to criticize and be criticized while
“imparting expertise or knowledge with the purpose of effecting change”
(Poyner 2). Edward Said raises questions about the role of public
intellectual in society. For Said, a public intellectual speaks the truth to
power. In his 1993 Reith Lectures titled Representations of the
Intellectual Said argues that the intellectual can be a social critic only
if they have freedom and distance from power. Said considers:
Whether there is or can be anything like an independent,
autonomously functioning intellectual, one who is not beholden
to, and therefore constrained, by his or her affiliations with
universities that pay salaries, political parties that demand loyalty
to a party line, think tanks that while they offer freedom to do
research perhaps more subtly compromise judgement and restrain
the critical voice . . . when worry about pleasing an audience or
an employer replaces dependence on other intellectuals for debate
and judgement-something in the intellectual’s vocation is, if not
abrogated, then certainly inhibited. (51)
This idea is also reflected in one of Coetzee’s responses in an
interview with Jane Poyner where he says: “It is hard for fiction to be
good fiction while it is in the service of something else” (21).The white
intellectual in South Africa had to write under politically fraught
conditions like apartheid, censorship, miscegenation and ubiquitous
violence. Writers like Coetzee, Andre Brink, Breten Breytenbach, Athol
Fugard and Nadine Gordimer have addressed questions like the
responsibility of a white writer and the difficulty of representing racial
alterity. The job of a writer who always strives for a balance between
complicity and truth-telling is a precarious one.
Truth-telling in writing has been one of Coetzee’s main
preoccupations in all his books. His books are an evidence of how
literature can delineate truth though it could be a slippery terrain for

the writer. Edward said focuses on the intellectual’s pursuit of truth and
he describes an intellectual as “an individual endowed with a faculty
for representing, embodying, articulating a message, a view, an attitude,
philosophy or opinion to, as well as for, a public” (9). However, Coetzee
does not believe that fiction must serve some didactic purpose. In “The
Novel Today,” he contends: “a story is not a message with a covering
. . . not a message plus a residue, the residue, the art with which the
message is coated . . . there is no addition in stories” (4).
Coetzee may not be the kind of public intellectual like Edward Said
or Arundhati Roy as he resists being drawn into the public sphere. But
he uses his writing to articulate the truth, though in an allegorical and
allusive manner. Of late, his books have shed their elusiveness and
become direct in raising ethical and philosophical questions. Coetzee
himself considers the role of public intellectual as damaging to the work
of the writer. In his memoir Summertime, he projects himself as an
academic and writer who needs the security of a monthly pay cheque
to focus on his work. The position Coetzee most admires is one that
entails “a kind of ek-stasis, a being outside oneself, being beside one-
self, a state in which truth is known (and spoken) from a position that
does not know itself to be the position of truth”(Giving Offense, 94).
This is somewhat similar to Said’s approach when he suggests that the
intellectual should remain amateur rather than expert.
The work of Coetzee and its ethical content bears strong kinship
to the philosophical ideas of Mahatma Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy. The
philosophical quality, striving after truth and ethics are some of the
preoccupations that relate him with these great thinkers. Coetzee’s
writing is engaged in a hidden polemic with Gandhi and Tolstoy though
this is not a statement about Coetzee’s intentions, beliefs, or anxieties
of influence. The term “Hidden Polemic” was first used by Mikhail
Bakhtin in his Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics for a kind of double-
voiced discourses: “It describes the uncanny effect, when reading, of
two discourses unexpectedly clashing with each other, both inspite and
because of their shared interest in a subject, the closeness of their
approach to it, or the similarity of their assumptions about it” (qtd. in
Dvorakova 360).
Common patterns can be traced in literary texts belonging to
different cultures and eras. As Northrop Frye points out, all themes of
literature belong to “one big interlocking family” (qtd. in Thulasi). A
work of art shows repetition because writers express themselves in

imitation of other literature. Thus, the element of recurrence creeps into
a text. This vast network of texts can be described as World Literature.
The idea of Weltliteratur i.e. world literature was propounded and made
popular by Goethe. In his journal Propylaen, Goethe writes:
It is to be hoped that people will soon be convinced that there
is no such thing as patriotic art or patriotic science. Both belong,
like all good things, to the whole world, and can be fostered only
by untrammelled intercourse among all contemporaries, continually
bearing in mind what we have inherited from the past. (qtd. in
Strich 35)
World literature comprises of a wide range of works coming from
different cultures and histories. For Claudio Guiller, world literature
encompasses “all literary works that circulate beyond their culture of
origin, either in translation or in their original language (qtd. in
Damrosch). Damrosch points out that a work enters into world literature
by a double process: first by being read as literature; second, by
circulating out into a broader world beyond its linguistic and cultural
point of origin. The sphere of world literature too keeps on changing.
For instance, a work of literature serves as world literature for some kinds
of reading but not for others. As Goethe points out, a work gains in
richness as it moves beyond its context “the need for an intercourse
with great predecessors is the sure sign of a higher talent.” Goethe
contends that the serious and intellectual people who are concerned
about truth and progress of humanity should form a quiet and secret
company. In this he advocates an international brotherhood among
writers. This is precisely where Coetzee figures in relation to Tolstoy
and Gandhi.
Works Cited
Attridge, Derek. J M Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading: Literature in

the Event. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press,
2004. Print.
Coetzee, J M. Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews. Ed. David
Attwell. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992. Print.
---. Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship. Chicago & London: The
University of Chicago Press, 1996. Print.
---. “The Novel Today.” Upstream. 6.1 (Summer 1988). Web. 9 July
2011. http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i7545.html.
Dvorakova, Alena. “Coetzee’s Hidden Polemic with Nietzsche.” J M

Coetzee and Ethics: Philosophical Perspectives on Literature. Ed.
Anton Leist & Peter Singer. New York: Columbia University Press,
2010. 357-84. Print.
Leist, Anton & Peter Singer. J M Coetzee and Ethics: Philosophical
Perspectives on Literature. New York: Columbia University Press,
2010. Print.
Poyner, Jane, ed. J M Coetzee and the Idea of the Public Intellectual.
Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006. Print.
Said, Edward. Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith
Lectures. London: Vintage, 1994. Print.
Strich, Fritz. Goethe and World Literature. Trans. C A M Sym. London:
Routledge, 1949. Print.
Thulasi, J. “Imagination at the School of Seasons. Frye’s Educated
Imagination--An Overview.” The Indian Review of World
Literature in English, 3.2 (July 2007). Web. 15 July 2011. http://
www.savepdf.org/more-imagination-at-the-school-of-seasons-
fryes-educated-913840.html.
Vice, Samantha. “Truth and Love Together at Last: Style, Form, and
Moral Vision in Age of Iron.” J M Coetzee and Ethics:
Philosophical Perspectives on Literature. Ed. Anton Leist & Peter
Singer. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. 293-316. Print.
March of Life
Hazara Singh
A child seeks to fend for self as it grows up

An old tends to depend while nearing fag end
A child learns whatever an old so often forgets
Strange, indeed, is the march from birth to death.
SHORT STORY
A Prodigious Tale
Rajshree Trivedi
The guests started arriving one by one. Some of them who had
arrived earlier gathered around me. “Hmmm . . . What a great feeling!
It`s all so much like a wedding . . . And I? I was like a newly-wedded,
bashful bride!” I was watchfully attended by each one around. The fresh,
corporal fragrance of my body transpiring out of sandalwood paste and
the jasmine scent enveloped the whiffs emitting out of the camphorwood
that quietly burnt at one corner of the room. Flaunted of possessing a
richly embellished golden border, the red, fascinating Baluchari sari was
enjoying its maiden drape being wrapped around my silken skin. With
the exquisite gold adornments rightly placed on their respective parts,
the bejeweled beauty was now all geared up.
I was actually feeling great; somewhere at the top of the blue
skies.
They were quietly whispering to one another about my
achievements at such a young age; some of them described me as a
lover of aesthetics; while others found me charming, beautiful and
stylish, too. A small group of elderly women labeled me as a tradition-
lover, noble, respectful to elders and friendly to all. Some men, in their
middle age praised me for my business acumen and my knack of
integrating commerce with art in being a successful artifact-dealer.
Overwhelmed and gratified, I remained speechless and motionless. I
wanted to tell them that I had always enjoyed being praised and perhaps,
that had been motivating me to be the way I was. But I could not speak
anything.
skies.
The chants started. And so did the rituals. The holy fire that gave
way to the smoke from that copper vessel had started showing its flames.
They were all standing, still and stoic. All those whom I knew very well
were sojourned, waiting to leave as soon as possible. More than friends,

I could see the foes, the most. I wanted to hug them all. Neither the
repressive nor the passionate feelings were any more a part of my
existence. It was a state of ecstasy, an indefinable, unutterable joy that
filled my existence that actually did not exist anymore. Folded within
my self of many selves, I gathered myself and looked closely at the too
many selves throbbing around me.
skies.
The procession started. As soon as the four bearers lifted me, I
was smoothly hoisted by four silver clouds that quietly appeared
from nowhere and started sailing me across the unknown terrains.
The path was illumined with a cerulean glory that glowed all through
the way. A sweet, echoing music rung in my ears. I did not know
whether that resonant melody had manifested from me or from the
surrounding. I was a part as well as the whole of that soft blue void
that fused and diffused across the dimension of time, space, event,
deed, thought or whatever you consider in terms of delimiting within
the beginning and the end of it. There was no pause, no reversion, no
turn, no crossroads, no divergence but a continuous journey, perhaps
an upwards moving spiral course that steadily increased the glow and
infused fresh energy that rekindled my spirit.
skies.
I don’t know how long it took me to sail through the serene,
mystifying azures but it was for sure that I wasn’t waiting to reach to
any destination. The musical journey was gradually, becoming more
and more blissful. The glow that was steadily getting wider and wider
now took the form of a spherical mammoth that actually bedazzled me.
Unable to bear the magnificent glare, I found myself closing my eyes
tightly only to open and find that my existence merged with the
Mammoth form there. The “I” that had been lived through was now
embedded in the lap of an undecipherable, fathomless entity. It was an
endless mass of light rolling ahead at its ordained pace. The destination
that was not sought was found only to be realized that it was not
stationed but perpetually moving.
Outside, the bell rang. The speaker had just finished his discourse.
The meditation class was over. I regained myself from the trance that I
realized did not last more than a jiffy. Perhaps, in that short moment, I
had found answers to some of the quests that I had always been in
pursuit of.
I actually felt great; somewhere at the top of the blue skies.
Krishna
O. P. Arora
Krishna, the romantic—

handsome, smart, pranks and pricks
fun, masti, stealing butter and curds
teasing gopis, flirting with hundreds of girls
watching them nude, stealing their garments…
Krishna, the valiant—
kills Kansa, the tyrant king
for his parents and grandpa, opens life with a swing
restores order, gives people the zing
brings hope and prosperity, freedom and life’s string…
Krishna, the peacemaker—
an ambassador in the court of Dhritrashtra
persuades, coaxes, cajoles, one and all
the mighty Bhishma, the learned Drona, the adamant Duryodhana
pleads for giving just five villages to the Pandavas…
Krishna, the philosopher—
blows his conch, gives a war-cry
when evil rules, demons goodness humiliate and decry
it should shed its shell, befriend the fury
fight out evil with all its might, do its duty to purify…
Romance, love, valour, peace and war
not exclusive, essential for man’s existence
just or unjust, only a matter of context and conscience…
Rid the earth of devils and demons, law of Dharma
no sin, only a duty to cleanse the universe of Adharma.
Salman Rushdie’s Shame: A Postcolonial

Study
Punyajit Gupta & Shrikrishan Rai
.
Between shame and shamelessness lies the axis upon which we
turn; meteorological conditions at both these poles are most
extreme, ferocious type. Shamelessness, shame: the roots of
violence. (115-116)
Postcolonial literature in English language and other vernaculars
is a way to register the protest of the orient against the occident. It is
a medium to reply to the exploitation and atrocities of the colonizers by
undermining the ideological web of the colonized literature. These
colonies were the outcome of early phases of the globalization of
commerce patronized by European imperialistic ambition to civilize the
world on their Capitalistic term. Those missions to impose Eurocentric
culture had almost obliterated the indigenous cultures of colonies and
made the Subject race to suffer from identity crises. To overcome this
identity crises the subjects of colonies started looking back to their pre-
colonial cultural traditions which later on develop into Postcolonial
literature in English language as well as in other vernaculars representing
the ethos of people from the former colonies of India, Africa, and West
Indies etc. Postcolonial writing in India has its beginning in any form
of literature with anti-colonial theme but gradually developing itself
representing the changes perceived in socio-cultural contexts of Indian
subcontinents due to its colonial encounters. Sir Salman Rushdie is
regarded as an authority of recording such encounters in English
language through his various award winning historical fictions like
Midnight’s Children, The Satanic Verses, The Moor’s Last Sigh, The
Enchantress of Florence, Shalimar the Clown and Shame.
The context of Sir Rushdie’s historical fiction Shame is the time
after the Second World War when the British Govt. could not continue
their Empire in the Indian Subcontinent and when they decided to
recognize their former colonies and allies in the Indian subcontinent as

independent nations or states. But main inhibition of India to emerge
as a single independent nation was India’s diverse culture, which was
addressed by the then British Govt. and the Indian leaders to a
simplified issue of majority and minority as per population density of a
place on the basis of religion. As a result, power of governance was
transferred to two nations instead of one; India for Hindu majority areas
and Pakistan for Muslim majority areas of undivided India under the
direct British rule and the Princely states- Subsidiary alliances of British
Empire were free to join either India or Pakistan. Hence, Post- colonial
nation of Pakistan was formed unifying certain places of the Indian
subcontinent of the British Empire on the basis of religion. In his novel
Shame, Sir Salman Rushdie pieces together through magic realism a
space free from colonial time with no pre-colonial existence where “effect
precedes the cause”(Members of English). The entire plot is narrated
by an omnipresent narrator, who like fairy tale become our tour guide
to some fictitious person and itinerates (places) of Pakistan acquainting
us/reader of the sociopolitical history of Pakistan .This encourages the
readers to study the novel Shame by Sir Salman Rushdie from
Postcolonial perspective.
Magic realism is a narrative technique used nowadays by different
Postcolonial writers like Rushdie, Marquez etc. to represent the
ambivalence of real and fictitious situations in their works. Sir Rushdie
particularly has handled his Postcolonial theme to perfection in his novel
Shame. Through Magic realism his omnipresent narrator, narrates a
concocted history of Pakistan with real historical figures like Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto , his daughter Benazir Bhutto and others are masked as
Iskander Harappa and his daughter Arjumand Harappa ‘the virgin
Ironpant, etc.’ And some real historical events like usurping ruling
Government through military coups in Pakistan, war against India over
Kashmir, Civil war against East Pakistan, unconditional surrender of
Pakistani army to Indian forces and the formation new nation of
Bangladesh from East Pakistan, etc. The omnipresent narrator starts
narrating the story of shame and shamelessness from the palace of
Nishapur situated equidistant from Bazzar and the English Cantonment
which symbolizes an imaginary space equidistant from local and the
‘Occidental culture.’ This isolation from both the cultures evokes the
sentiments of shame and curiosity among people about the
shamelessness of Shakil family. The description of the palace of
Nishapur in the imaginary town of Q at once reminds us of Coleridge’s

Oriental imagination of Kubla Khan’s Palace of Xanadu in the poem
Kubla Khan. The following lines from the poem gives vent to us about
poet’s fixed imagination of beautiful and savage East or Orient:
A savage place! As holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath the waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her Demon Lover!
Similarly, Sir Rushdie by adopting the narrative technique of Magic
realism in his novel Shame narrates a blend of both Occidental and
Oriental views about Pakistan through his narrator who like Sir Rushdie
straddles between fixed ideas of East and West juxtaposed to each other:
The country in this story is not Pakistan, or not quite. There are
two countries, real and the fictional, occupying the same space,
or almost the same space….Omar Khyyam passed twelve long
years, the most crucial years of his developments, trapped inside
that reclusive mansion, that third world that was neither material
nor spiritual, but a sort of concentrated decrepitude made up of
the decomposing remnants of those two more familiar types of
cosmos. (29-30)
Sir Rushdie also uses the narrative technique of Magic realism to
evade colonial time frame and to create an atmosphere of
Supernaturalism as well as savage ambitions of masked persona of major
historical figures of Pakistan delineated in this novel Shame founded
their base in orthodox the medieval culture of shame and honour
(shamelessness). It initially may appear to Western reader that the
narration is of medieval culture of effect preceding cause but again the
real historical events mentioned in the novel will direct the reader to
the period as recent as the year 1970 and onward: “All this happened
in the fourteenth century. I’m using the Hegiran calendar, naturally:
don’t imagine that stories of this type always take place long long ago.
Time cannot be homogenized as easy as a milk, and in those parts, until
quite recently, the thirteen –hundreds were in full swing” (13).
The elements of multiple levels of Diasporas in exilic as well as
relocation experiences are prominent in Sir Rushdie’s novel Shame. The
objective narration and continuous comparison of Western with Eastern
culture reveals the distance of the narrator from the culture of Pakistan.
The omnipresent voice of narrator finds relocation in the character of
Omar Khyyam Shakil because of his passive role in his own life due to
his innocence or lack of knowledge about shame or honour: “‘I am a
peripheral man,’ Omar Khyyam answered. ‘Other persons have been the
principal actors in my life-story . . . . I confess to social climbing, to
only-doing-my-job, to being cornerman in other people’s wrestling
matches. I confess to fearing sleep’” (283).
Omar khyyam Shakil is the only child of three unmarried sisters
Munnee, Chhunni .and Bunny. He becomes a famous doctor but led a
debauched life. Omar is obsessed with his mentally challenged patient
Sufia Zinobia and married her. His bride Sufia Zinobia, thirty one year
younger than him is the daughter of President Raja Hyder, the killer of
his brother Babar Shakil, relative but arch enemy of his former friend
Iskander Harappa. Omar sheltered Hyder and his wife Bilquis in their
hour of crises in his place Nishapur in the border town of Q where he
or his three mothers have avenged the death of his brother Babar Shakil
by murdering Raja Hyder, later on he himself is also being killed by his
wife Sufia Zinobiya. The journey of Omar from his shameless feminine
dystopia of his home Nishapur to his meteoric rise in the society calls
our attention to shamelessness in Pakistani society which manifests a
series of compromises, political, religious and even in conjugal lives of
people. They cultivate the acts of shamelessness to get rid of shame.
The relocation of Omar in the feeling of shame completes his circle of
shamelessness in killing of his guest former President Raja Hyder to
avenge his brother’s killing which is a kind of honour killing to get rid
of shame and restoring honour! : “Once, before he went out in the world,
they had forbidden him to feel shame; now they were turning that
emotion upon him, . . . It became obvious to him that his mothers hated
him, and to his surprise he found the idea of that hatred too terrible to
be borne” (278). Besides the diasporic journey of the Omnipresent
narrator and Omar khyyam, the diasporic journey of Bilquis as daughter
of Mahmoud Kemal, ‘the Woman,’ from Delhi, India to wife of Raja
Hyder. She crossed the border during partition of India and came to
Pakistan and was looked down upon by her other female relatives as
Mohajir (immigrant) a term us to denote Muslims who went to Pakistan
from India in search of communal and social security. But afterward they
are relegated to minority and look down upon by the local people of
Pakistan as refugees. Hence their religious faith is considered
contaminated by elements of impurities of foreign culture. This alienation
and plight of Bilquis in Bariamma’s house describe her rootless condition
in Pakistani soil. She is seen trying to find her root or relocation by
giving birth to not only a son of the soil but also a mother in Bilquis.
But like “Second Coming” by W. B. Yeats where in place Second Coming

of Lord Jesus came an ugly beast Bilquis also instead of mothering the
future Hero or deliverer of Pakistan has given birth to a mentally
challenged girl Sufia Zinobia which in the novel also symbolically stand
for the birth of a corrupted shameless State of Pakistan in place of the
promise of making it a God’s own country: “When the swaddled child
was handed to Bilquis, that lady could not forbear to cry, faintly, ‘Is
that all, my God? So much huffery and puffery to push out only this
mouse?’” (89)
‘Islamic Feminism’ is comparatively a new term used in postcolonial
literature to represent Islamic women’s point of view in Islamic society.
Much in the same way Indian Postcolonial writing Postcolonial women’s
position has been represented to be in critical condition with a feeble
voice of their own. Consequently, in Shame Sir Rushdie has registered
of Muslim women as repository of cultural values of society, groaning
under the double slavery of honour and shame to represent the plight
of women in Islamic society of Pakistan. The novel Shame brings forth
to us an array of female characters who are categorized as beauty
juxtaposed to beast (Patriarchal oppression) i.e. virtue or honour and
shame to the orthodox Islamic society of Pakistan specifically and West
Asia at large. Sir Rushdie through his narrator has been guiding us to
elite class of Pakistani society as a token to represent the suffering of
women in fetters of orthodox religious idealism in Islamic society of
Pakistan. The entire identity and entities of female characters in Shame
are passive, secondary and restricted compare to vibrant male characters.
Rushdie has delineated a transition of three generations of women
playing the second fiddle to men in their own ways in Post-colonial
Islamic society starting from Bariamma to Bilquis and Rani Humayun
and then to Arjumand Harrapa, and Naveed Hyder (Talwar). But the
portrayal of characters like Mahmoud kemal, the woman and Omar
Khyyam Shakil as passive and three Shakil sisters as active and use of
veil or Burkha of Bilqis by her husband former President Raja Hyder
and Omar Khyyam Shakil to save their life reversed the conventional
gender role of the society, which is again a stain of shame on honour
of Male supremacy over female. The portrayal of three unmarried Shakil
sister as mother of two sons Omar and Babar and rearing of Omar as an
embodiment of Shamelessness symbolizes new culture of Pakistan
developed after the abrupt end of Colonial rule. Rushdie presents the
languishing life of women in Bariamma’s house committing shameless
acts of adultery in the cover of darkness and their pleasure in discussing

about adultery of their family uncover their sexual repression imposed
by the Islamic patriarchal social system over their women. This is also
evident when village women taking pride instead of shame in the act of
sharing their foreign returned husbands with white doll or white women
(concubines) brought from Europe. Even elite women like Rani Humayun,
wife of Iskander Harappa is no exception in this case as she is also
ashamed of but is forced to tolerate the shameless character of her
husband’s pride in extra marital affairs and vaulting political ambitions
which shows the shame of subaltern position of women in Postcolonial
society of Pakistan.
The Ugly face of society towards women exploitation is more
betrayed when the narrator of the story rationalized a honour killing of
a girl of Pakistani origin by her own father in London . The narrator
also draws close parallel with the humiliation suffered by Raja Hyder at
his daughter’s denial to marry Little Mir Harappa on her day of marriage
on account of her love affair with top policeman Talvar Ulhaq coupled
with the presence of a mentally challenged daughter Sufia Zinobia in
Raja’s family become public. However, the nail to the coffin of women
exploitation is hammered by woman like Bilquis who rationalized and
convince the unwilling Raja Hyder to give the hands of their mentally
challenged girl to shameless fellow like Dr Omar Khyyam Shakil who is
thirty one year older than his bride: “‘Besides,’ Bilquis said with finality,
‘he is her doctor, this man. He has saved her life.Into whose hands could
we more safelyplace her? Into nobody’s, I say. This proposal has come
to us from God’” (162).
‘Nationalism’ and ‘neo colonization’ in the former European
colonies of third world countries are the cause and effect of
Decolonization. European imperial colonial power has inculcated the idea
of nation among the colonized natives on the basis of homogenous
elements resulting rise of Nationalism among the colonial native to set
their country free from foreign rule of which India is an example. But
during or after the power transfer to local national leadership saw the
outbreak of civil war among various groups of national leadership to
turn heterogeneous elemental culture into homogenous national culture
to grab the reign from their departing European Masters. This led the
former British Empire of India to partition. Partition of India created two
nations on the basis of religious majority India for Hindu majority of
people and Pakistan for Muslim irrespective of their geographical and
cultural differences. After setting a national culture on the basis of Islam,

Pakistan began to subvert the cultural and geographical differences
between the West and the East Pakistan. Consequently, the Colonial
master was replaced by the elite section of the society as ruler. From
time to time Pakistani Army marginalizing all other sections of the society
has taken over the administrative power of the country in their hands
and unleashes military dictatorship with the plea of good governance
and conducting elections for healthy democracy ahead. This kind of
dictatorship come and go on account of military coups due to unending
chivalry shown by rival elite groups against each other and against the
neighboring country of India to secure more landmasses on the basis
of Muslim majority for e.g. The nationalistic sentiment arouse in the
novel Shame when Raja Hyder won some useless landmasses on
Karakoram range in military expedition against India. “In that hot season,
the two newly-partitioned nations announced the commencement of
hostilities on the Kashmiri frontier….Those who fell in battle were flown
directly, first-class, eternity by four gorgeous Houris ,untouched by
man or djinn. ‘Which of your Lord’s blessings,’ the Quran inquires,
‘would you deny?’” (77). Rushdie characters are the representatives of
clown or dwarf like elite national leaders who has donned the giant’s
robe left of by their colonial masters. They are trying to duplicate their
former colonial masters by standardizing their profit seeking views as
religious views of Islam as the national culture through sheer force,
undermining other voices as subaltern. This has given rise to serious
dissent among the people on whom this politicized form of religion and
culture are imposed as mainstream culture or the national culture of
Pakistan resulted into severe repression on them by the Pakistani
government. This led us to view it from multiple angle of Postcolonial
subalternization on one hand and neocolonialism on the other for
example the civil war between the West and East Pakistan on language
and cultural ground where being the seat of administration of Pakistan
West Pakistan imposed themselves as Masters like their former colonial
European masters over their own people of East Pakistan relegating them
as subaltern subject in their own nation. The atrocities done by Pakistani
army over its own people of East Pakistan forced them to see this act of
Pakistani Govt .as version of Neo colonization resulting into the
formation of another nation of Bangladesh from East Pakistan.
The real trouble, however, started over in the East . . . . The West
in a state of Shock ,the sound of one Wing flapping, beset by the
appalling notion of surrendering the government to a party of

swamp aborigines, little dark men with their unpronounceable
language of distorted vowels and slurred consonants; perhaps
not foreigners exactly, but aliens without a doubt. President Saggy
Dog, sorrowing, dispatched an enormous Army to restore a sense
of proportion in the East. (179)
Thus, the Postcolonial perspective of Shame is to reveal the
symbolically implied instability of Pakistan. The country based on the
stable bedrock of religion, witnesses the instability and disturbance. The
whole concept of nation is at stake because of political and historical
forces of the country. Though Pakistan is presented in the novel from
a very narrow angle of events and characters of elite section, it is an
intentional stunt of the author to project claustrophobic events of despair
as determinants of course of a nation. Nevertheless, Sir Rushdie like
one of his characters Rani Humayun (who has weaved shawls
representing the exploitations of common people of Pakistan) has
weaved this novel as a political satire with symbolical characters referring
to real historical figures of Pakistan. These characters successfully
betray the crises condition of a post colonial nation. Novel shows
Pakistani leaders using religion as a shield to reap their political mileage.
But they fail to address the cultural and economical crises of their
people, leaving them to their fate as Sufia Zinobea, a mentally
challenged girl, who rattles but blushes just like the poor citizens of
Pakistan. In a nutshell, the following lines, adroitly, describe Sir Salman
Rushdie’s sense of shame in Shame: “Not enough scarlet thread on
the earth to show the blood, the people hanging upside down with dogs
at their open guts, the people grinning lifelessly with bullets-holes for
seconds mouths, the people united in the worm-feast of that shawl of
flesh and deaths” (195).
Work Cited
Rushdie, Salman. Shame. London: Vintage Books, 1995. Print.

Portrayal of Women and their Sufferings in

Select Plays of Mahesh Dattani
K. Sathya Devi
Dattani is one of the greatest names among modern Indian English

dramatists. It is worth mentioning here that Dattani is the first Indian
English playwright who has been awarded the prestigious Sahitya
Academy Award for his play Final Solutions and other plays. His plays
are photographic representation of sufferings and sorrows, pains and
problems of the deprived section of our society. He presents real life
situation in his dramatic works. He takes up the issues like family ties,
communal tension, conflict between tradition and modernity, gender and
sexuality etc. His plays reveal the dark secret, cruelty of mankind,
violence of our private thoughts and such ugly aspects of life. From
the issues of Mahesh Dattani, this paper focuses on the portrayal of
women and their sufferings and how they struggle for their rights and
choices.
Women writers by the virtue of the identical experiences of women-
hood in patriarchal social order have seriously represented the inner
world of female consciousness. They represent the images of women
stretching from silent and submissive women to aggressive and violent
women, struggling to register their protest against oppression and
injustice. With the textual representation of these women, they are
encouraged to speak of their rights and choices. However, the women
images conceived by Mahesh Dattani in his plays are unconventional
beyond the periphery of the sentimental quest of feminism. He presents
them, placing in the background of familial relationship. Women are the
sufferers but they are sensitive to preserve their identity and self respect.
They are endowed with the essential tributes of feminity but
simultaneously they sustain their independent identity and protest
against the irrational myths and conventions of society. Bharati in Tara,
Smita in Final Solutions, Ratna in Dance Like a Man, are some
unconventional women characters presented by Dattani. Regarding his
own perception of gender identity in society, Dattani admits: “. . . he

seems to be fighting for my feminine self. And since I have the male
self, which is equipped to fight as well, it is a proportionate battle. The
feminine self is not a victim in my plays. It’s subsumed yes! It is
marginalized, but it fights back” (161).
In the play Tara, the creation of Bharati and Tara, opens the gate
to appreciate Dattani’s ideal of women-hood. Tara and Chandan are
conjoined twins and they are to be separated through a surgical
operation. Mr. Patel, the symbol of parental authority plans the future
of his son Chandan but ignores the interest of Tara. Both Tara and her
mother Bharati appear as the victims of gender bias and Patriarchal
authority. In case of Bharati, the emotional and mental torture is more
intense than social humiliation. Bharati feels herself guilty for the
handicap of Tara but Mr. Patel does not permit her even to make a
confession of her own guilt in the company of her children. To save
the life of Tara, she is ready to donate her kidney. However, out of the
fear of Mr. Patel, she maintains silence and cannot express her desires.
The attitude and authority of Mr. Patel reflects his pride of his
hegemonic power. He is confident that there are distinctive work spaces
for a girl and a boy. He prefers that Tara should take interest in the
works like ‘Knitting’ and Chandan should go to college and office. In
contrast of his authority, Bharati emerges as an image of a subjugated
woman but she is aware of her decisions and gathers courage to assert
herself for the sake of Tara. She is not free in the conventional society
but she is conscious that a girl should also be provided every
opportunity for self development. However, the contradiction is seen
in her attitude also. She fights for the happiness of Tara but is helpless
to get rid of the myth. Through the character of Bharati, Dattani
establishes that woman being committed to family and society, cannot
go beyond it. Tara in spite of being committed to family and social
apathy presents a perfect foil to the character of Bharati and identifies
herself with the smiles of Tara. She is an image of sensitive wife and
sensitive mother caught in the whirlwind of social conventions. She
bears the irrational authority of Mr. Patel but by the end of the play,
she gathers her strength to compromise with reality.
The characters of Sonal, Kiran and Preeti in Where There’s a Will
are also projected as the suffers of patriarchal authority. These three
women related with the life of Hasmukh Mehta, expose the different
dimensions of feminine psyche in patriarchal society. Sonal, Hasmukh’s
wife is a typical traditional Indian wife whose identity is confined to the

pleasure of her husband and the management of household. She has
neither economic independence nor intellectual awareness. She is
ignorant of the intricacy of business world and keeps herself busy in
managing the menu for lunch and dinner. The most significant ritual of
her life is to provide blood pressure tablets to her husband. She has no
power to speak against the authority of Hasmukh because all economic
resources are controlled by him. Preeti, the daughter-in-law is
comparatively cunning enough to have an insight into the intentions of
Hasmukh. She tolerates the authority of her father-in-law but she can
also frame policies to challenge his authority. Kiran, Hasmukh’s executive
secretary, manages the whole affairs of Mehta Group of Industries. She
belongs to the groups of intellectuals. She is appointed the future trustee
of Mr. Mehta’s will and is given the responsibility to manage his
property and business after his death. Sonal in the first part of the play
appears only as a silent and submissive woman. Most of the time, she
is busy in kitchen, making ‘salaad,’ and setting the ‘halwa,’ Hasmukh
calls her, the greatest tragedy of his life. Even family matters are indirectly
controlled by Hasmukh.
The hegemony of Hasmukh in contrast to the subjugation of Sonal
affirms that women in Indian society can rarely define her own ‘self’
because her image is framed only in male dreams. It is remarkable that
Sonal exhibits no discontent with the conditions in which she was left
to survive. Patiently, she bears his pride and arrogance and even her
disgust and pain for her Hasmukh’s ‘happiness’ is the greatest pleasure
of her life. In the company of Hasmukh, she finds no space for her
emotional satisfaction and calls her only a dog. However, Sonal’s
comments after the death of Hasmukh present an entirely different shade
of womanhood. As soon as she came to know about Hasmukh’s will,
she declared, “He has ruined us.” It suggests that Sonal is sensitive
enough to realize the consequences of Hasmukh’s decision; she also
expresses her contempt on the issue of Mehta’s extra-marital
relationship. Preeti’s advise that Hasmukh’s will can be declared invalid
on the ground of insanity, is certainly striking and exposes the
hollowness of the parental authority of Hasmukh.
In spite of her limited expectations and confined spaces, Sonal is
conscious of the consequences born out of Kiran’s involvement in her
own family. Besides, she is aware of her authority and she uses it with
Preeti as a traditional mother-in-law. Kiran is an economic head and Sonal
is an administrative head of the family. She guides Preeti’s methods of

walking and talking. She even exhibits her intelligence in having an
insight into the working style of Kiran. Sonal controls Preeti, guides Ajit.
She accuses Kiran and even challenges authority of Hasmukh with
exceptional confidence. She not only challenges her husband but the
entire community of males. Kiran also presents herself as the guide and
guardian of Hasmukh. She was a not a weak mistress but a protective
guardian to safeguard the interest of Hasmukh. Kiran’s observation, the
life of Sonal is a witness to the fact that Indian is not basically weak.
The real strength lies in the will power. The conversion of Kiran and
Sonal has come close to the study that Indian women may be silent but
not weak. It gives an insight into the fact that there are no predetermined
roles in social structure. It is the nature of relationship in society that
determined the position of women, “her place as a mother/sister/daughter
or daughter-in-law, wife completely at the disposal of male relatives, first
by virtue of birth and second by marriage. The woman’s role is rigidly
defined by male authority structure” (169). To quote Michael Walling,
there’s something very “Indian” about the play. Mahesh Dattani loves
the traditional art forms especially Bharatnatyam which is integral to
Dance Like A Man (xiv). The play says Dattani, is about Bharatnatyam
dancers. Its theme is society versus individual. Here is the family-family
as the microcosm of society-society that lays down the unwritten rules.
Jairaj follows his heart’s desire and becomes a dancer, but has enraged
his father in the process. Amrital Parekh is disappointed because his
son’s ideas of happiness do not fit in with his. He says, “I have always
allowed you to do what you have wanted to do. But there comes a time
when you have to do what is expected of you. Why must you dance?”
(1.656)
Understandably enough, it is not easy for Jairaj to dance to different
tune and there are times when he wonders whether it has been worth all
the sacrifices. All his life he has tried to achieve perfection but always
made mistakes. It is only after Amritlal’s death that he and Ratna, free
from the demands of life and society, are able to “dance perfectly. In
unison. Not missing a step or beat” (xiv). To reach this stage, they have
paid a great price--Jairaj has compromised on his manliness and Ratna
on her motherhood. One of Jairaj’s deepest regrets is that he has not
been able to dance like a man. Ratna has been a successful dancer but
she has had to pay the price with the life of her son Shanker, and for
the rest of her life the albatross hangs from her neck. She has a feeling
of guilt that the mere mention of her child’s name puts her off. She
considers herself a failure and for this she blames Jairaj and accuses
him of being a jelly in front of his dominating father.
Ratna, the female protagonist of the play Dance Like a Man is
also an unconventional image of woman. It has been argued that Ratna
in her passion to get her identity overpowers the manhood of Jairaj.
Dattani in the conspiracy of Ratna, explores the invisible horrors of
gender discrimination. He discovers those aspects of feminine psyche
where woman is not a silent sufferer but a conscious individual with a
passion for self identity. Ratna is a dancer and she wants to develop
her art in union with Jairaj who is also a dancer. In order to secure her
future as a dancer she makes a secret agreement with her father-in-law
to divert the passion of Jairaj. Sacrificing the image of dedicated wife,
she becomes an instrument of affliction. It is attributed; This is the twist
that the playwright gives to the stereotypes associated with ‘gender’
issues that view solely women at the receiving end of the oppressive
power structures of patriarchal society (163).
It is only passion for dance that brings Jairaj and Ratna closer.
However, Jairaj seems to be too weak to resist the authority of his father.
All his choices and actions are guided by Amritlal’s desires. He forbids
Ratna from visiting the old devdasi who teaches her the art of
Bharatnatyam. Ratna is expected to yield before his proposal that he
would support her career in dance only if she helps him to pull Jairaj
out of his obsession and help him to make a ‘manly man.’ Ratna has no
option but to choose either Jairaj or her career. She appears as an
oppressor. For her if the company of Jairaj is a question of her
womanhood, the art of dance is positively a question of her identity. In
dealing with the issue of identity crisis in such an unconventional way,
he has reflected on the negative perspectives of feminine ideals. Dattani
makes a confession: “My women protagonists fight, scheme and get a
piece of the action albeit at great personal cost. They are seen as
‘negative’ qualities, sadly by some women too . . . but really, we have
yet to see feminism find expression in Indian Society” (163).
In the play Dance Like a Man, Ratna has to struggle at two levels-
for her realization of femininity and for her assertion of individuality.
She has an insight into the nature of Jairaj that he had not that will which
can give strength to an individual. When her inner self aspires for male
companionship, she finds herself frustrated. The shadows of discontent
in Ratna-Jairaj relationship affirms that woman has also every right to
express her sexual desires. What she expects in the company of male
was positively wanting in the life of Jairaj. The contemptuous remark of
Ratna about Jairaj reflects her own frustration, “You are nothing but a
spineless boy who couldn’t leave his father’s house for more than forty-
eight hours (1.453).
Ratna has yearning for the real manhood of Jairaj, “You stopped
being a man for me the day you came back to this house” (1.456).
Unconsciously Ratna sublimates her sexual desires, and starts seeking
its outlet in her dance performances. She keeps her talent alive and tries
her best to boost up the talent of her daughter. For Lata, she has a
satisfaction, “She is talented and can become famous” (1.466).
Dattani’s women are the sufferers of patriarchal authority but they
are also the sensitive human beings to identify their sufferer and to
retaliate their suffering. Ratna’s efforts have three determinants-her
anxiety for self preservation, her yearning for perfect male companionship
and the torture of gender stereotype. In spite of certain blemishes, Ratna
is positively surer of herself to control and resist the forces of society.
Jairaj identifies this aspect of her character too late, “Oh! You are
brilliant! I truly am jealous of you; you are quite a looker, quite a dancer
and quite an actress? One has to hand it to you. You really have style.
Not to mention brains” (1.481).
Her character reflects that vital energy that generates the conflict
of a woman to make a choice between her femininity and individuality
violence and rebellion are the natural outcome of forced suppression. It
has been accepted: “It is socially acceptable that within the family man
is the master and the woman is inferior and the subordinate partner. Social
pressures force woman to maintain it. A woman, who does not accept
the traditional role of submissiveness into accepting this position, and
any means including violence, is justified” (165).
Dattani’s idea of womenhood is the search for idealized goddess
like image, that it has been the basis of Indian thought. Similarly, he
also denies the possibility of radical feminism and the whole stress is
on the sexual drives of woman. The female images conceived in his
dramatic world are neither conventional nor archetypal. His perception
is not only socio-cultural but also socio-psychological. Woman is also
essentially a human being endowed with basic urges and impulse. If she
possesses the tributes of ‘love’ and ‘compassion,’ she can also fight
back to defend her ‘identity’ and the ‘basic self.’ Dattani’s women
characters in spite of being marginalized, possess a will of their own to
resist the forces hazardous to their survival. Dattani’s women characters

are a witness to the fact that Indian women are not basically weak. The
real strength lies in their will power. It gives an insight into the fact
that Indian women may be silent but not weak.
Works Cited
Agrawal, Beena. Mahesh Dattani’s Plays. Jaipur: Book Enclave, 2008.

Print.
Chaudhri, Asha Kutheri. Mahesh Dattani: An Introduction. New
Delhi: CUP, 2008. Print.
Dattani, Mahesh. Dance Like a Man. New Delhi: Surjit Publications,
2010. Print.
---. Tara . New Delhi: New Delhi: Surjit Publications, 2010. Print.
---. Where There’s a Will. New Delhi: Surjit Publications, 2010. Print.
Martin Luther King
Hazara Singh
Martin Luther King was not ruler of any land
But of hearts, thrilled by his awakening dream;
Inspired by norms, basis of beneficial reforms,
Desired to be pursued to elevate human beings.
‘When many, not exploited for a privileged few,
When colour lowers not an individual’s worth
When talents not harnessed for a vicious loot
Depriving other people of their rightful means.’
King felt pained that the laws were inoperative
Racial prejudice in latent from still lingered
Human rights, sought abroad, were within denied
In letter and spirit the system got nullified.
The policy of moderates , to just watch and wait
Did not help as it merely lulled the depressed
A discourse on Gandhi revealed the missing link
Between tenets and practice of Christian faith.
Conflict of Culture in
John Steinbeck’s “Flight”
S. Sujaritha
The present paper is an attempt to analyse, how John Steinbeck,

an American writer presents the Indian characters and their nature in
his work. The argument that the paper tries to make is with regard to
Steinbeck’s portrayal of the Indian. A general perception by many
writers/scholars is that Steinbeck’s portrayal of the Indian was generally
constructed from his idea of cultural imperialism. However by the
analysis of Steinbeck’s short story “Flight” the paper would like to
reveal his dilemma and his stance of being struck within two cultures
by using some of the Postcolonial concepts.
John Steinbeck, the American novelist and Nobel Prize Winner
for Literature in 1962, is well known for the depiction of working class
and immigrant workers in his works. He has written several novels, short
stories and travelogues and is a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for his
novel, The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck often presents the marginalized
Indians in his works. From his first novel, Cup of Gold, throughout his
all major works, he portrays, “an abstract, romantic, and somewhat
clichéd concept of “Indianness”” (Owens 87). Kino in The Pearl, Zapata
in Viva Zapata, Danny in Tortilla Flat, Pepe in “Flight,” Gitano in “The
Great Mountains,” Tularecito in The Pastures of Heaven, Juanito in To
a God Unknown, Joseph and Mary Rivas in Sweet Thursday and Juan
Chicoy in The Wayward Bus, are some of the characters who belong to
the marginalized community. Reading his works, Britch and Lewis
divides Steinbeck’s marginalized characters into two categories: (i)
Those who will not compromise with the White culture and follow their
heritage and (ii) those who repress their tradition and follow the culture
of the dominant group. They further state that generally the first
category face tragic death while the second merely survive in society
(39).
Steinbeck’s portrayal of the Indians, namely, the Native Americans

is drawn from a mythified perception. Britch and Lewis state that his
characterization is based on the image of Indians in popular legends
rather than from the pages of history. “They are conjured up from some
other world, timeless as memory, and borne as in a dream” (39). Most
of his representations of the Native Americans are in a way homogenized
for they are depicted as sharing similar problems. He presents the Native
American character as a member of a particular race and gives reason
for their behaviors, based on their ancestry. Britch & Lewis reveal that
“. . . Steinbeck characterizes his Indian figures as members of a particular
race, who act as they do because of some subconscious predisposition,
and who, in like manner, are so identified as Indians by members of
Western culture” (39). In fact Steinbeck’s Indian characters are normally
not full blooded Indians but are of a mixed origin. Yet they behave like
Indians because of their intuitive nature. For Steinbeck, the Indian seems
to “exist on a less rational, more harmoniously intuitive basis than does
his Anglo European counterpart” (Owens 86). In many of his works, he
makes his Indian characters to hold their past still to continue and make
them to live in an open space. Those characters will be somewhat remote
and exotic when compared with others and they are merely presented
as an impulse or a shadow. Britch & Lewis observe Steinbeck’s portrayal
of Indian characters:
Half of Steinbeck’s writing presents ethnic character whose
identity is in crisis, because of the conflict between cultures. For
his Indians, whether in Mexico or the U.S. efforts to retain the
pastoral world and its values are tragically doomed. His characters
cannot escape past influences be it biological, cultural religious
or the collective activities of migration and war. (57)
Seinbeck’s “Flight” was published in 1938 in, a collection of stories
The Long Valley set in Salians valley in California. Salians valley is a
culturally diverse place where Steinbeck grew up with the knowledge
of immigrant history. He exhibits this knowledge in most of his works.
A single reading of “Flight” reveals Owen’s observation that, for
Steinbeck the Indian was first a shadowy presence (87). Pepe, the
protagonist is the elder son of a fatherless family. In the story he lives
with his mother, younger brother and a sister. He is presented as a lazy
19-year-old boy and when his mother asks him to go to Monterey town
to buy medicine, he ends up by striking a man in a fit of anger and later
on due to his mother’s advice, hides in a hill in order to escape capture.
But there he is chased relentlessly by a shadowy figure and finally shot

down.
In the story “Flight” Pepe and his family are depicted as living 15
miles below the town of Monterey. It shows that Indians are not mixed
with Americans but made to live separately by the author. Steinbeck
depicts the Indians in his story as being poor and leading almost
subhuman life. One such illustration is revealed at the outset of the
story where Pepe’s farm is described: “The farm buildings huddled like
little clinging aphids on the mountain skirts, crouched low to the ground
as though the wind might blow them into the sea. The little shack, the
rattling, rotten barns were grey-bitten with sea salt, beaten by the damp
wind until they had taken on the color of the granite hills” (45). Pepe’s
family is living near the sea and their house is surrounded only by
natural things like hill and ocean. They have no neighbors but only
horses, cows, pigs and chicken. This location indicates that Steinbeck
made his Indian characters to be close to nature and at the same time
live separately from other human beings but with animals. The
protagonist of the story, Pepe is introduced by the author as, “the tall
smiling son of nineteen, a gentle, affectionate boy, but very lazy” (45).
Steinbeck uses a stereotype to describe Pepe, which is usually
associated with Indians as, “he was very lazy” (45). He is presented as
immature and his head is a “tall head, pointed at the top” (45), so it is
a sign of subnormal intelligence of Pepe (Chapin 676).
Pepe is safe and innocent when he lives in the mountain with his
family. Once he experiences the world and comes out of his innocence,
the imperialist culture does not allow him to live. When Pepe goes to
Monterey to buy medicine, he strikes some one there, who speaks ill
about his race and because of it finally he faces his tragic end. It
symbolically shows, Pepe’s entrance into the imperialist culture is
considered as a crime and his life is taken as a punishment for it. In the
story Steinbeck does not give the expanded picture or Pepe’s visit to
Montrary: instead he presents it in a brief way through Pepe’s narration
regarding it to his mother. In the American society, Indians were viewed
merely as a shadow but not as a flesh and blooded human beings. When
Pepe enters into it to buy medicine for his mother, his presence disturbs
the White community. It results in a fight in which Pepe strikes a man
with his knife. Steinbeck gives nothing more about that incident to the
readers.
When Pepe returns home his mother senses that something has
gone wrong. When she learns that Pepe has struck someone in the fist
of anger, without asking for further explanations, she prepares for him
to go to the mountain and advices as, “Look my son! Do not stop until
it is dark again. Do not sleep even though you are tired. Take care of
the horse in order that he may not stop of weariness. Remember to be
careful with the bullets-there are only ten. Do not fill thy stomach with
jerky or it will make thee sick. Eat a little jerky and fill thy stomach with
grass. When thou comest to the high mountains, if thou seest any of
the dark watching men, go not near to them nor try to speak to them.
And forgot not thy prayers.” (51). It reveals that it is a common everyday
occurrence among the native Indian community. The Native Indians
were not having any rights in the judicial system and they cannot fights
for their rights/lives. The only punishment for their crime is their death.
When Pepe leaves for the mountain his family members knew that he
will not return home. Rosy, Pepe’s younger sister answers Emilio, her
brother regarding Pepe as, “He has gone on a journey. He will never
come back” (52).
Pepe’s family members are sure that Pepe will not return home.
When he leaves home, they veiled the death veil, “Our beautiful—our
brave,” she cried. “Our protector, our son is gone.” Emilio and Rosy
moaned beside her. “Our beautiful – our brave, he is gone.” It was the
formal wail (51). It signifies such a journey is a common one among the
Native Indians and no one will return after the journey. It proves that
the Native Indians were not treated as human beings in the American
society and moreover they are denied judicial rights. The writer does
not narrate whether the person, whom Pepe attacked, was dead or only
injured. Yet the punishment for Pepe is his life, because he happened
to fight with the White. It reveals that even though the American society
is portrayed as a multicultural country, which gives equal rights to all
the citizens, it practices discrimination upon some races. Native Indians
were occupying minority/marginal role in the American society. The
Native Indians were not given rights to speak or to mingle with the
White community. When Pepe enters into the imperialistic culture, he
was rewarded death as his punishment. Steinbeck, who is also the
product of the imperialist culture, does not wish to make his Indian
characters to be successful in the fight for his life. It results in the murder
of Pepe in a brutal way.
In “Flight,” Pepe after coming from Monterey goes to a mountain

to hide. Steinbeck reveals how he enters into a primitive existence. Pepe
begins to eat leaves and grass and when he finds no water to drink, he
tries to take water directly from the wet mud. He, “stooped up a handful
of mud and put it in his mouth, and then he spluttered and scarped the
earth from his tongue with his finger, for the mud drew at his mouth
like a poultice” (55). His behavior and movements slowly changed from
a humanized one to that of an animal. When he feels very weak to walk,
“he crawled up the hill on his knees and one hand . . . . He moved with
the instinctive care of an animal” (54). During his journey to the
mountain, Pepe meets wild animals like snake and lion face to face, but
no animal pays much attention to him and crosses him casually. “They
seem to recognize a fellow creature, who also live for a moment in a
wilderness, they in the throes of an instinctive existence, he in the play
out of an inevitable phenomenon” (Vogel 226). But the white hunter
finds Pepe and kills him. Through this Steinbeck symbolically portrays
wild animals and the Native Indians are one and the same. The White
people hunt the Native Indians like wild animals without considering
them as fellow human beings.
Many of the thinkers from the western countries and from U.S.
romanticize the concept of living in nature. Wordsworth and his
companion Coleridge are known for their worship of nature. They feel
that living in open space is a romantic thing. In the U.S., Thoreau’s
Walden (1854) was celebrated by the readers for the romantic idea of
living in nature. When the White decides to live with nature in the open
place, the imperialist culture makes the readers to accept it as romantic.
Instead when a marginalized/subaltern group live in nature, the same
society changes its notion of romantic to primitive. Similarly in “Flight,”
Pepe’s family is portrayed as primitive by the writer. Later when Pepe
enters the mountain, he begins to eat from the nature. Steinbeck presents
it as transferring from the form of human being to animal. It proves how
the concept of romanticism changes into primitivism in the case of the
Native Indians.
The colonizers wanted the colonized to mimic them but never
wanted them to change completely like the colonizers. They did not allow
the colonized to change and always wanted to dominate them. Similarly,
when Pepe lives in an isolated home, he is free and happy but when he
feels happy to go to the town and try to mingle with them, the imperialist
culture is unable to stomach it. For Pepe’s wish, it takes his life as its
price. A shift from his place to the city Monterey brings death to him.
Before his death he looses one by one all the western cultural things
he has. Even things of imperialist culture do not help him. It shows, the
reason for his death is, the White cultural imperialism. Pepe is made to
be killed by Steinbeck because Pepe, “is an Indian and was not
considered a human being with rights” (Ariki 89).
From Steinbeck’s portrayal of Pepe’s family, who are the Native
Indians, readers can understand that they belong to the subaltern
community. The term subaltern which means ‘of inferior rank’ was
adopted from Antonio Gramsci. It refers “groups in society who are
subject to hegemony of the ruling classes” (Ashcroft 215). Steinbeck
takes liberty to portray the stereotypical native Indian characters in the
short story “Flight.” He does not wish to give any rights or physical/
mental strength to the characteristics of the Native Indians. They are
merely presented as objects, who do not possess any power in the
society. Steinbeck, the representative of the imperialistic culture tries
to give voice for the voiceless community. When he attempts it through
the story “Flight,” unconsciously he utterly erases the voice of the
voiceless community and instead he gives the voice of his own
community. In the story, Pepe is not given a voice by the author to
narrate in detail about the incident of his striking a man with a knife.
Later when he returns home, he packs his things to leave for the
mountain. It proves that the Native Indian subaltern group does not
possess any voice to fights for their lives legally. The story symbolically
gives answer to the question of Spivak that is ‘Can the Subaltern
Speak?’, that the subalterns are not given opportunity/platform to talk;
instead they will be given a voice by the imperialist.
When Pepe is shot dead by a white, he falls down, and “the
avalanche slid slowly down and covered up his head” (58). Even after
his death, he becomes a prey for the western imperialism his head is
fully covered by avalanche and his identity is made as indefinite. Here
Pepe is doomed when he attempts to guard his race from others insults.
For his living in between, that is in half form of his Indian culture and
at the same time in the shadow of the White culture, he is made to
sacrifice his life.
Steinbeck structures his Indian characters in the pattern of a
“dying-race” in his stories. Here in the short story Pepe is used in that
way. Pepe suffers because of the threat of the White culture and also
because of the fact of cultural change. When he tries to enter into the
White culture, he is made to face his tragic end and it is the result of
the cultural imperialism which Western culture practices. Outwardly he
is presented as an ordinary human being who suffers like others, but
the fact is that he is from a different culture which gives a threat to
survive. By portraying Pepe’s trouble and his tragic death, Steinbeck
tries to show his Indian characters as merely a shadow and good for
nothing in the American society.
Steinbeck’s stay in Salinas Valley made him to be interested in
portraying Indian characters and their lifestyle. The story “Flight” was
written in 1939, during the time of Great Depression in the U.S. It made
Steinbeck to present the oppression faced by the society. The effects
of Great Depression might have caused him to portray the sufferable
life of the Native Indians. But yet he is not successful in his attempt to
portray fully about the tragic life and discriminations faced by the Native
Indians. He does not explain in detail regarding the cause for the fight
Pepe underwent and whether that person was killed or not.
Steinbeck himself suffers with the dilemma whether he has to stand
with the imperialistic culture or with the Native Indian family. Finally
his innate prejudice wins. Even though he portrays the poor and aloof
condition of the Native Indians in the story, his imperialistic pride does
not allow him to make his protagonist Pepe as a victorious hero, instead
Pepe enters into the mountain for the sake of his life where he dies as
a hunted animal. It proves that even though Steinbeck tries to stand
with the Native Indians, he fails in his attempt due to his cultural
prejudice. In the words of Owens, “a dream that diminishes the American
Indian throughout Steinbeck’s fiction, a dream that remain the exclusive
property of the White dreamer while excluding the Indian—in a
recognizable American pattern – from any meaningful existence in the
real world Steinbeck chronicles so effectively” (85).
Works Cited
Ariki, Kyoko. “From “Flight” to The Pearl: A Thematic Study.” Steinbeck

Review 3.1 (2006): 85-95. Print.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gaerth Griffins and Helen Tiffen, eds. Key Concepts in
Postcolonial Studies. London: Routledge, 1995. Print.
Britch, Carroll and Cliff Lewis. “Shadow of the Indian in the Fiction of
John Steinbeck.” MELUS 11.2 (1984): 39-58. Print.
Chapin, F. Chester. “Pepe Terror: A Steinbeck “Natural.”” College

English 23.8 (May 1962): 676. Print.
Owens, Louis. ““Grandpa Killed Indians, Pa killed Snakes”: Steinbeck
and the American Indian.” MELUS 15.2 (1988): 85-92. Print.
Steinbeck, John. “Flight.” (1938). The Long Valley. By Steinbeck. New
York: Viking, 1983. 45-58. Print.
Vogel, Dan. “Steinbeck’s “Flight”: The Myth of Manhood.” College
English 23.3 (1961): 225-236. Print.
POEMS
What a Great Republican Shore are

We Basking in
Aju Mukhopadhyay
Caught in a vortex we are under siege

of those whom did we select
as our representative friends;
now nothing is in our hands
though we are the true republicans.
No neutral body to apprehend and punish
the real culprits they would establish
for those who govern the house
by mutual consent do not find the proposal sound.
They keep an appropriate bureau of their own make
which is at their beck and call, for their own sake
to engage the bureau their adversaries to hound.
Gradually we are pushed to the corners of our rooms
with something to live on a good
according to our respective petty capacity;
may be hybrid or genetically modified food
trifles like free-rice, free-TV, free-cycle or some doles pretty.
That at the pinnacle of our country’s pride
is a player or a female model, we are not surprised.
Our agricultural model is fixed in such a country’s agro-operation
where depend on agriculture less than one per cent of its population
the rest feeding on meat in their cozy corners reside;
for better business it is thrust on our shoulders;
there during 1995 to 2010 167. 3
billion dollars were paid as agro-subsidy
whereas out of 550 million of our population
depending on agriculture
debt-burdened 256913 farmers committed suicide.
With the age old farming experience of a country of our size
we go for foreign seed, discarded pesticide
and entirely unsuitable foreign expertise.

Aping is for causes serious; the republicans
fail to comprehend that everything including petty vegetables
will come to their hands well packed, marked by multinationals.
Muddy hands and legs, poor farmers or tilled lands and bullocks,
nothing will remain except foreign breed profit and stocks.
Our forests already denuded, their bowels getting quickly emptied
to feed the foreign business interest, our industry’s greed;
it must have already satisfied our national need
for they are partners of our business tycoons; our guardians indeed.
On our pristine sea shore or some peace-abode
is made nuclear factory or missile testing site
defying the people’s legitimate right;
for we have taken the development road.
Development surely for statistics show that we have developed
but who are the we?
We who have captured the house and our supporters
in art and culture, in literature, in media and in various fields
to whom we give prize every year on merits
this day, as our friends and ambassadors.
Culture
PCK Prem
1
I sit alone and mumble
but find it difficult
as words on the lips prance,
for yet to be born fable in the eyes
when brows continue to behold
a fixed point
and even sounds roughly make sense
while tickling a languid Kundalini
in the hope of resurrecting the Gita
for Karma theory is distorted.
There are sin-flushed meanings

around the loneliness of the man

wanting to peel off armour
when I try to follow edicts
of pillars engraved eras back.
Detractors and wanton doers hop around

And I turn head swiftly
eyes emit hideous sparks after a second,
and tears roll down to laugh at
contrived sufferings in action,
as I lie flat on bed of roses thorny
with sermons on life dry
for no archer digs a hole for water.
I learn, deaths in the family

outlived a night long inferno
and burnt a home
of love banished.
A mute God on a poster lives
in a corner
and he closes eyes in front of it.
2
Others lived in the adjacent room
masked men played havoc
woman cried aloud as white robes
counted beads in fervent breathings
while entangled in legs naked.
A man in statue lost the will to rule

wishes to take care of a vacant orphanage
no one safe in this country
he heard but was thrown out
a burly push of a butt reduced him
to a cataleptic.
He could not cry even

fear of death made a captive
he knew the struggle,
little cries of tots below

still trying to know life in four walls.
Not knew that men clutch women

an awful exhibit of will, a sign of peril
all had left after the orgy and kill.
And so a tragic story in smiles grows up

before the fleshy fingers
talking to the computer
about a gory event of loot and murder.
I was quiet and settled down with the man

and words refused to grow wheat
when tears speak of deep dead
ardour of water
in inner anguish and desolation
of a flowing river
where words soundless flowed
and chilled touches of yielding love.
One by one each vanished

the words elapsed into eerie deadness
echoing shrills for a few seconds,
I kept sitting for no exacting rationale.
3
I wanted to measure the pains
misery was the last point
a strange linkage suits I knew
for one does not have add-ons.
As I trembled with a brutal ache

I realized he lived in splinters of voices
like the chirping of sparrows
and songs of koels moving
when tie is born in conked similes.
I found he is gone into the darkness

of a forest with long tunnels
of tribal-hooting
I stood, blew out a word and was pained

to forget children tears.
And a man splits into tiny particles

undoing fastened bonds is rare.
Not easy to erase the face of a woman

a wife, a friend and a caretaker
self-doubting to live in the world
minus memoirs.
I tried to comfort the man within

that world was safe in terror
and quite aggressive and floating
in spite of continuing violent acts
and sprinkling of human blood.
For it is now a routine

a new culture is born in lull
absolute.
Nightmare
S. V. Rama Rao
Dreams after dreams in my life I dreamt

But the dream of last night as I slept
Was unique instilling in my mind fright
For, it was then midnight devoid of light
Never was I a timid person for any fight

But in my dream some one bulky and stout
Over powered me by showing clenched fist
And tried to pull me down from my bed first.
I was bewildered not expecting the plight

Even while awake with my eyes straight
How such a sinister act me upon cast
Even for a while I couldn’t think just.
The assailant capable of doing wrong act

Suddenly pulled a sword from his waist belt
Sharp end of the blade pressing on my chest
Threatened to take away my life first.
I became nervous dumb founded and hurt

And alarming shrieks beyond my might
Drove me out from bed drifting violent
Making me run helter-skelter to resist.
As I ran inside I found on the walls straight

Hung scabbard sword a pair set aright
Which I pulled with my hands left and right
And affronted courageously the evil ghost.
After brandishing my sword at

Every object that simulated like the ghost
I felt I was the victor conquering the spirit
Lately realizing it a nightmare that was past.
The Prophecy
S. V. Rama Rao
A futurist crazy of his future

Often consults a foreteller
Be he a palmist or astrologer
To know about his career.
A novice or professional frightens the client

Telling evil times are not for him distant
And advises worships of various kinds,
To propitiate adverse astral trends.
A weak client subjugates to the Astrologer

And pursues the ritual of propitiation fixture
Many a times he loses faith in Astrology
And turns around Palmistry or Numerology.
If he consults some other foreteller,

The kinds of predictions are different altogether
As the consultant gives high hopes of bright future
And plucks money tactfully, it is his nature.
Every client wishes to know his prosperity

And Matrimonial plurality out of curiosity
The consultant claiming to be mighty
Tells that only by stars propitiation there is feasibility.
A foreteller be he professional or amateur

No matter his proficiency texture
Personifies as author of astrological repertory
Tells often predictions most often derogatory.
A way side visiting Palmist

Sits with a bunch of cards and parrot
He by-passers consult him in trust
And his predictions are just worst.
Never stretch your palm

Before any foreteller even for fun
He is likely to disturb your equilibrium
And can’t solve your conundrum.
Amputee, about an abused child

Stephen Gill
Far from the lashes of ego
is your serenity
that breaks the locks of slavery.
You scatter
vitalizing brightness of hope

in that land
where the inanimate hands
produce fruitless trees
without the roots of self-esteem
and where
birds forget to flit and chirp.
Your eyes,
the resort of trust.
You go with the breeze
handing to new-borns the guilt-free lilies
which grow in the oasis of the angels.
You know human puzzles and dwell
among the white jasmines of sincerity.
You are the warden

that feeds the beauty of the infants
who speak the language of the rocks
that is neither spoken nor written
but understandable by mothers.
The stainless holiness
that flows from you is the elegance
that lingers on their cheeks.
In your sanctity
I perceive the soul of the flying doves
and birds on the branches
of the cherry tree in the spring
of your deathless grace.
Ease in your presence
dominates the soaring harmony
which expels tension.
On the wings of my humility

escaping the cobras of fear
I come to present the bouquet of my vision
that should decorate the cradle of today.
Simply a touch to the hem
of your garment shall animate me
as an apostle of irrefutable truth.
REVIEW ARTICLE
K. V. Dominic—A Humanitarian in
Conception and Socio-Consciousness: An
Analytical Study of Write Son, Write
DC Chambial
K. V. Dominic’s second poetic collection, Write Son, Write is a

collection of 31 recent poems. The poems have cartoon illustrations by
Mr. K. K. Anas.
Love for God’s Creation
The first poem, ‘Write, My Son, Write,’ that gives title to the book,
is a long poem in 21 parts: Part One exhorts the poet to write because
He has created him with this purpose. In Part Two, the God asks him if
he doesn’t feel “the symphony / of the universe” and tells him that
while animals and plants dance to His music, man doesn’t. Part Three
tells that all creatures and objects live in harmony with Nature. Part Four
tells as all parts of human body work in harmony so do all creations.
Part Five informs about man’s “discordant notes” with nature. Part Six
is about the harmonious existence of all animate and inanimate things
in this world while man’s mind makes all the difference. Part Seven
implies that God has created other things: plants animals and nature
for man’s company but man is bent upon destroying them. Part Eight
tells about man as God’s latest and intelligent creation. Part Nine exhibits
man’s folly in considering himself “the master / of all wisdom.” Despite
his celestial qualities he prefers to foster “hate and violence;” and shows
“no mercy / to animals and plants.” Part Ten tells that man for his jovial
festivities kills animals to devour them and feel happy. While Part Eleven
again exhorts man to learn from nature to live in harmony, Part Twelve
tells to expose human deficiencies and imbibe God’s “symphonies.” Part
Thirteen is about God’s love for man; even thunder is not his wrath.
Part Fourteen is about God’s granting man His “reason / [not] to learn
/ my [His] plans.” Part Fifteen is about God’s love for man like all other
creatures and things of this universe, but asks the poet to tell man that
he “needs humanity.” Part Sixteen is about man’s position in this world:

he is one among other creations to live happily and harmoniously and
not exploit and mislead others. This part introduces readers to three
types of existent mafia: religious, political, and intellectual. Part Seventeen
is about “religious mafia” that misguides common men that He is loves
flattery, hymns, money, and jewellery that men offer in their places of
worship. Instead, “karma is the best prayer;” and service unto humanity
the best service of God. Part Eighteen is about vegetarianism: God has
created man as herbivorous but he kills animals living on land, sky and
in water for his food. Part Nineteen is about political mafia that “exploits
masses; / dictates, strategies / and makes them slaves”. Part Twenty
tells about intellectual mafia that “assume [to be] omniscient,” deludes
and diverts common man’s mind from God, the Supreme Creator, and
imposes his pseudo philosophies on them. Here the poet also shows
that religious and intellectual mafias are one and the same without any
difference. Part Twenty-One is the crux of the poet’s “views and
philosophy” of life in this poem: if and only if man learns to live in
harmony with nature and His creations, he has the possibility of
survival; if his exploitation of humanity and Nature continues, nothing
can save him. This poem exhibits poet’s love for all creatures and Nature.
Elegy
The second poem, ‘An Elegy on My Ma’ (38-41), is based on his
emotions for his mother after her death on 14 October 2010. It is a poem
that tells about mother’s suffering in her old age when she suffered from
“old age ailments” accompanied with breathing problem. He tells about
her life that she brought up her brothers and sisters about the death of
her parents; hard labour in farm from “Dawn to dusk.” Mother’s live is
all pure without any dross: “Truly mother’s love / is the purest love.”
In her acute suffering, she often cried: “Why doesn’t God / call me
back?” ultimately she is confined to bed and lives without food. The
poet also laments that, because of his job responsibilities, he could not
be by her side when she called for her children and wanted them to
sing. Now he feels deserted after her death. The poem ends with
complete surrender to Him: “Surrender unto Him / who created you.”
The poem is replete with tragic pathos.
Poems about India
There are two poems: ‘Victory to thee, Mother India!’, and
‘Rocketing Growth of India,’ that tell about India. The first one (42-43)
sings praises for fostering uniting in people of varied cultures, religions,
races and speaking different languages: it sings of unity in diversity.

But now divisive forces sadden Mother India: “Patriotism, nationalism,
secularism / give way to / terrorism, communalism, and regionalism.”
He asserts the cause: “Matha, I know the cause of your tears: /
Religious, political, intellectual mafias / tear thy heart and drink your
blood.” In these lines, the poet’s concern for the country as one being
weakened by its own people is also manifest. The Indian virtue of
harmony in diversity seems at stake at the face of some shenanigans
and multi-faceted mafias jeopardize not only her unity but also her very
nature. Despite present dismal image, the poet is hopeful that many great
men like Tagore, Gandhi and Nehru will be born to redeem her of her
present sorrow. The second poem, ‘Rocketing Growth of India’ (77-78)
, is a satire on the government’s statistics to show growth vis-à-vis
development in India, while the truth is quite contrary to these statistics:
“First in population growth; / first in number of poor; / top in ignorance
and illiteracy; to in superstition and fundamentalism.” It is the rich, who,
in fact, are growing. The death of the poor, at the collapse of a gate of
an ashram, who had swarmed there for food is the stark reality that our
rulers are averse to see. The poet’s jibe comes alive when he writes:
Had the government granted
half the amount when they were alive;
had the government shown half the love
they shower to the rich,
many such tragedies be averted. (78)
Poems about Animals
The poems like ‘Massacres of Cats’ (44-46), ‘A Cow on the Lane’
(47-48), ‘Crow, the Black Beauty’ (57-58), and ‘To my Deceased Cats’
(97-98) are about animals. ‘Massacre of Cats’ is about the cats that met
their death when they were poisoned by the neighbor. It not only
teaches the lesson “to love other beings / as fellow beings” and not to
serve them. The poet compares the killing of cats to the killing of
albatross in ST Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner and pleads for a similar
expiation from the killer of cats. ‘A Cow on the Lane’ is adamant to
occupy its space on the road which leads to the railway station through
which the persona wants to drive and reach the station on time before
the trains leaves. The cow doesn’t budge; the persona has to take other
route to reach the station. The poet beautifully uses an allusion from
Mahabharata when Bhimasena—the great and powerful Pandava—is
unable to move the tail of Hanuman lying on his path. ‘Crow, the Black
Beauty’ is about a bird that is always detested. None want to hear its
caw-caw. The poet wants that crow is also His creation and should have
the same love and laudation of the people that cuckoo and dove and
such other birds enjoy. He laments: “When will we behold God’s
creation / with impartial eyes / and find His beauty in all forms?” (58)
‘To my Deceased Cats’ describes the pain and suffering that the cats,
after being poisoned, suffered. It relates its story of previous birth the
cat was a human being, a doctor, he had also poisoned a cat that also
suffered the same pangs of death. Now the cat thinks its present fate
only the result of his action in previous birth. Indirectly the poet teaches
the altruistic theory of karma – as you so, so shall you reap; if not in
this birth, but must in the next. It concurs with the Hindu view of karmic
retribution.
Poems on Hero Worship
The poems like ‘Aung Sun Suu Kyi: Asia’s Lady Mandela’ (53-
54), ‘Bravo Katie Sportz!’ (55), ‘Tribute to Mohammed Rafi’ (87), and
‘Wolfgang, the Messiah of Nature’ (93-94) imply poet’s hero-worship.
In all these poems, the poet sings the glory of these persons in their
respective fields. Aung Sun Suu Kyi has been eulogized as the Mandela
of Myanmar. She suffered a lot at the hands of military junta there and
spent most of her life in jail. Her suffering didn’t deter her from her
crusade to free the country from military junta [now she has been
released from jail and won the recent election, held in March 2012, in
Myanmar]. Katie Sportz, a 22 year old, is dauntless in her courage and
rowed alone in her boat for 4,534 KM in sun and shower braving the
sea storms, solitude and desolation in a bid to raise US $ 70,000 fund
for the project “Blue Planet Run Foundation, / supplying drinking water
round the globe.” The poet is all praise for her and prays: “Let your
race fill this planet.” It is his greatest encomium to the “valour of
women.” Mohammed Rafi has been a prodigy of Indian singing. When
he sang, his notes touched the very cords of heart and mind alike. He
died some 30 years back but his music is still alive; nay, it will survive
till eternity. The poet/persona likes his songs very much and feels as if
Rafi is with him. He feels “his melodies raise us to heaven.” Indeed his
voice in his songs has immortalized him. In ‘Wolfgang, the Messiah of
Nature,’ the poet sings of Wolfgang, a German by birth, who came to
Kerala at the tender age of twenty and since has lived here for more
than forty years in the forests of Kerala teaching people how to live in
harmony with nature. He lives in the company of dreaded snakes,
animals and lovely birds. They do not fear him nor do they cause any
harm to him or to his children. Such is his intimacy with Nature. The
poem, despite singing Wolfgang’s glory, also teaches that God created
everything to live in harmony. It gives not only peace and joy but also
brings heavenly bliss for both Man and Nature. The poet calls Wolfgang
“Nature’s Christ/ born to redeem Nature.” All human beings should
learn a lesson from him how to live in harmony with Nature and save
not only earth but also humanity from destruction.
Poems on Nature/Poems on other Themes
Poet’s love for Nature is contagious. While reading his poems,
one loves to live in Nature. It is difficult to shift Nature from his poems,
yet ‘Coconut Palm’ (56), ‘Nature Weeps’ (71), and ‘Wagamon’ (88) are
two typical poems that describe Nature in two different shades.
‘Coconut Palm’ is a short poem and tells the rapid growth of the tree
and slender yet very tall. Its “sparkling leaves and alluring nuts” mingle
the visual and gustatory senses beautifully. Its tallness, thin stem
bearing tons of fruit appears like a “marvel to all architects.” Every part
of this tree is used for human welfare. The poet wonders at its
mysterious nature. ‘Nature Weeps’ speaks about the havoc that man
and his industrialization has brought upon Nature. All trees serve
humanity in one or the other way, yet man cuts them to denude earth.
Ecological imbalance leads to scarcity of rains: fields turn dry, no crops
grow; if it rains, it is full of acid due to emission of poisonous fumes
from factories that cause air pollution; flowers wither; birds fail to sing;
temperature rises very high; man encroaches upon the land meant for
wild beast, so they move towards settlements . . . . In fact, the ecology
is totally disturbed. All beauties of Nature have become things of past.
Nonetheless, the poet presents a heaven of natural beauty in
‘Wagamon’. Here God’s omnipresence appears in natural beauty: full
of greenery, cataracts falling “like white curtains,” uneven texture of
land—”mounds after mounds,” clouds, moon and stars seem to abound
in “the therapeutic / power of Nature.” The beautiful
Pine valleys of Wagamon
an exotic wild beauty.
Tall and thick pines trees
support firmament
from falling.(89)
Really the tall pine trees present a look of pillars supporting the
sky. Here the sun is “always gentle” evening full of “nocturnal music”
and “resounding hymns of angels” and the “semi darkness” that falls
here at dusk lifts “our minds / to an eternal / abode of repose.” Will
there be some other place so beautiful, so soothing and so lively to
live on earth? Certainly not.
Tragic Poems
The poems entitled ‘Teresa’s Tears’ (81), ‘To My Colleague’ (83),
‘Train Blast’ (85), ‘Water, Water, Everywhere . . .’ (91) picture human
tragedy in various moods. Teresa is a labour-woman who sweeps floors
to earn her bread in a school; she is given wages after a year but taken
back as donation to the institution as per the condition laid down in
the agreement. Her eyes are suffused with happiness to see currency
but, at the same time tears represent her helplessness; for, she has to
give them and she is left penniless. The poet calls “such forced donation
/ a canker of Kerala.” The poem, ‘To My colleague,’ is manifestation of
irrational religious fanaticism: the poet’s colleague’s [Prof. TJ Joseph’s]
hand and leg are hacked, rather severed from his body, on 4 July 2010.
None come to his help. Only crocodile tears are shed. The poem is an
attack on the right of liberty to do anything that may cause other’s
death: “Largest secular state! / Equality, fraternity, liberty. / Liberty to
do anything?” ‘Train Blast’ caused by Maoists. He pleads that “diabolic
means” should not be used to achieve “Utopian ends.” Though those,
who are killed in such blasts are spared off the pains of this world, but
those, who they leave behind them, are subjected to endless suffering.
The poet, here again, with an allusion for Mahabharata, tries to show
his doubt in the existence of all protecting and merciful God: “How can
I ease in / sambhavami yuge yuge?”
Still there are poems that have not been mentioned, for space
restriction, but equally important and charming that exhibit the poet’s
understanding of life around and lend weight to his humanitarian
philosophy steeped in contemporaneous societal consciousness making
him an advocate of the down-trodden and human values. It is a must
read for all those who want to enjoy a good read with some social sanity.
Work Cited
Dominic, K. V. Write Son, Write. New Delhi: Gnosis, 2011. Print.

BOOK REVIEW
K. V. Dominic, ed. Critical Perspectives on

the Poetry of R. K. Singh, D. C. Chambial
and I. K. Sharma. New Delhi: Access, 2011.
Pp. xii + 340. Price: Rs.900. HB. ISBN:
978-81-921254-9-7.
Kavitha Gopalakrishnan
The book under review entitled Critical Perspectives on the Poetry

of R. K. Singh, D. C. Chambial and I. K. Sharma, is an honest attempt
made by its editor Dr. K. V. Dominic to try and give their rightful place
in the poetical canon of Indian English Literature. The editor himself
states: “The chief motive behind my editing such an anthology is a
retaliation, reaction or solution to the question, as to why in the list of
the prominent poets, Prof. R. K. Singh, Prof. D. C. Chambial, and Prof.
I. K. Sharma could not find a place” (vi ).
The book has two interviews and twenty-eight critical articles by
various contributors who include stalwarts, writers, professors and
research scholars. The articles cover each poet extensively. They deal
with various aspects of the three poets whose poetry signifies the new
momentum that English poetry has now gained. The first eight articles
deal with R. K. Singh the poet and his poetic output. They unravel
various aspects of the poet. There is an article which makes a
comparative study between the poetry of Shiv K. Kumar and R. K. Singh.
Fifteen articles of thirty are devoted to D. C. Chambial’s poetry. Apart
from this there are three articles solely on the poetry of I. K. Sharma
and two articles that make a comparative study between the poetry of
I. K. Sharma and Mahanand Sharma.
The introductory article by P. C. K. Prem is a curtain raiser to the
poetry of the three stalwarts. He states that “Indian consciousness is
the hallmark of their poetic strength.” He further adds that the clarity,
genuineness and simplicity of poetic art is what makes them truly
distinguished. He draws a comparison between the verses of the three
poets, which present “the cities, filth in politics” and “their search of
music and rhythm in life (2). He very clearly delineates the “dissimilar
similarities” in their poetry:
I. K. Sharma visualizes a world where peace and harmony prevail.
R. K. Singh is a superb artist in the delineation of a moment’s
experience and he is totally committed to life in all its shades.
Chambial has an inherent ability to stun the readers with the
sparkles of images and holds the view that the victory of man is
the ultimate reality of human existence. (14)
Among the eight articles on R. K. Singh’s poetic oeuvre, Patricia
Prime notes how Singh’s poems are noteworthy for their straightforward
observations that are translated into poetry through simple, plain
language that is, very often than not, “begging forgiveness for those
tendencies towards insularity and over-intellectualization” (17). Citing
from Singh’s poetry, Prime states how tanka and haiku deal with
‘everyday things’ and yet “reveal these things to be mysterious and
extraordinary” (19). In the next article, V. V. B. Rama Rao delineates R.
K. Singh’s poetic oeuvre by analyzing his collection Sexless Solitude
and Other Poems. Rao citing from various poems of this collection
shows how “the scabrous and scatological are part of the actuality
around” (24). He emphatically states that all the poems in the collection
“without exception stimulates us and provoke thought as to what
existence is both in actuality and ideal in the poet’s imaginative
perception” (29), and all this without moralizing and preaching. The
authors Jindagi Kumari and Rajni Singh surveys the poetics of R. K.
Singh which is “oriented towards beauty, self harmony and peace with
its base in Indian thought and cultural which considers search for beauty
or truth as chief aims of life (40). They give an overview of R. K. Singh’s
poetics—the theme dealt, the formal features used, the symbols recurring,
the analogy engaged, the philosophy alluded to and so on in a detached
manner. Next, is an interview with R. K. Singh done by K. Rajani. We
get a wonderful definition of poetry straight from the horse’s mouth.
Singh says that he thinks that poetry “lies in articulating momentness
of a moment as lived or experienced and in continuity of memory, which
is free to make illusion of truth or reality, and truth or reality of an illusion
(48). He clearly states that he doesn’t believe didactism and moralization
through poetry. G. D. Barche next delves on the stylistic interpretation
of R. K. Singh’s poem “Sexless Solitude.” The writer analyses the lines
of the poem and “unfolds the two streams of life that have flowed from
time immemorial”—”the life of restraint and discipline” and “the life of

worldly pleasure” (60). He highlights the significance of the use of colour,
the necessity of contrastive parallel structures so as to suggest the two-
tier pattern of life. In the next article, Barche analyses number of capsule,
i.e. short of R. K. Singh in his recent collection Sexless Solitude and
Other Poems, highlights the fact that the poet “has tried to protect two
categories of people in two sets of poems, viz. one, the Sanjaya Type,
i.e.—those who remain detached and can see things as they are and
two, the Dhrutharashtra type, i.e. who get attached to things and fail to
see their real nature. In the next article, Ruchi Bangar claims him as a
“socially conscious man” (81), who seem to draw the attention of the
reader towards the issues plaguing society. In the next article, the writers
Jindagi Kumari and Rajni commendably surveys the treatment of myths
and use of rituals in the poetry of R .K. Singh and Shiv K. Kumar, and
states that, they “emerge as realists and rationalists” in their treatment
of myths (95).
The major part of the book is devoted to the analysis of the poetry
of Duni Chand Chambial. Dr. K. V. Dominic in his article critically
analyses the thematic content of Chambial’s poetry, and brings out the
“subtle and concrete imagery, and the beauty of his simple, sonorous,
rhythmical diction” (106). In the next article, P. C. K. Prem focuses on
the main feature of Chambial’s poetry viz. “intellectual probing into lives
dilemmas in the contemporary scenario” (107). In the next article,
Satyendra Kumar explores the poetry of D. C. Chambial with the stylistic
approach. He describes Chambial as an “exiled Prospero performing from
his shack with no Ariel or Caliban to carry out his commands . . . . Kumar
after thorough analysis of the lexis, lexical devices (vernacular items,
expletives, verb, adjectives, verb, adjectives, noun, conjunction, etc.);
stylistic devices (syntax, capitalization, punctuation marks, morphemes,
inversion, repetition of phrases, stanza scheme etc.) and semantic devices
( emotive meaning, cognitive meaning, connotative words, signs,
symbols, enjambment etc.); confidently states that his poetry “shows a
chiseled workship” (149). In the next article, Mandira Banerjee and Rajni
Singh focus on the fact that Chambial is a poet of social reality. They
state that the poet is “grieving at the crumbling of human values and
hypocrisy and cynicism that are rampant in the modern society” (152).
He exhorts his readers to face the adversaries with a positive frame of
mind. In the next article, Rachna Singh infers that the “poetry of Chambial
is a glimpse of the infinite in the midst of the finite things of the universe”
(170). Sishu Paul Sehgal shares his interview bytes with Chambial. The
extensive interview covers myriad aspects of the poet and his poetry.
The poet’s thought on creativity needs to be placed on record—
”creativity is an endless work like the flow of a river. As long as one is
sensitive to one’s hinterland and life around one goes on creating
something new” (189). His definition of poetry is also noteworthy: “a
good poem is one that uses imagery with economy of expression and
compels one to think and refracts its meaning(s) like light reflected from
a diamond—one that is not plain/flat in its language” (188-189). In the
next article, Madhavi Nikam and Sudhir Nikam place him among the
leading poets and state that he is “one of the forceful voices in the
literary gamut” (190). In the article, the writers explore the “various
themes style and imagery in his latest collection of poems, This
Promising Age and Other Poems (2004). They state that the collection
reflects the present day social milieu, the mechanization of the mind,
heart and body of human beings and degradation of values in modern
life. In the next article, Tribhuwan Kumar, emphatically states that “the
poetic canvas of Chambial is so diversified and rich that his works can
be viewed and evaluated from kaleidoscopic point of view” (199). This
article too analyses the collection The Promising Age and Other Poems
and states that the poetic oeuvre of Chambial is strengthened by
“universal philosophy of life and death” (204). He also draws a parallel
between Wordsworth and Chambial in his article. He also shows how
Chambial has the metaphysical quality of “unification of sensibilities,
ideas and images. In the next article, Sashi Nath Pande studies the poetry
of Chambial very closely and says that” It (poetry) shares the thematic
and technical quality of almost all the great and established twentieth
Century British Indian poets but with a great difference that unlike them
his poetry is free from obscurity, pedantic use of language and allusive
use of images and metaphors” (224). In the next article, K. Vani uncovers
“the poets struggle against oppression and violence, both through
peaceful means and through the deployment of counter violence” (226).
He shows the poet’s adeptness at conveying the gross exploitation that
is prevalent in today’s society. In the next article, Nalini Sharma shows
how Chambial is a poet with a difference as his poems have “aesthetical
appeal and exude the divinity of his soul” (235). In the next article, P. V.
Laxmi Prasad, discusses the philosophy of life in the poetry of Chambial.
He states that the lines in the poetry of this master writer “are not streaks
of imaginations . . . but are infact, accurate revelations on the life of
eternity. Suresh Chandra Pande in his article analyses in detail the

collection “Before the Petals Unfold.” This is a collection of nearly 58
poems. His poems is stated t have puns, aphorisms, sublimity and
connotative words in plethora. In the next article, Aju Mukhopadhyay
ruminates on the poetry of Chambial. He analyses the3 poems in a
detailed manner and says that “the central motive force of Chambial’s
life is to see and meet the Beyond, beyond his poetry, to escape into
eternity” (273).
Next, we have three articles that study the poetry of I. K. Sharma.
The first article by O. P. Mathur states that “Sharma’s own experiences
cover a kaleidoscopic range of objects, both inanimate and animate. Their
visions are conveyed through . . . irony, satire, pity, sympathy,
admiration, and adoration” (228) which help the readers to gain wisdom.
In the next article, N. P. Singh states how the recent poets do not write
in the comic mode, and how I. K. Sharma is different in this respect.
Satire, mock- heroic expressions, irony is rampant in his poems. His comic
vision helps see the problem and evils of the world in a lighter vein.
Singh states that, “the poet loves the colour and excitement of the world
we live in and he can visualize the sensory richness of the human drama
that the comic mode can perceive with trenchant clarity” (290). V. V. B.
Rama Rao makes a deep study of I. K. Sharma’s corpus of poetic
creations and portrays him as a “large-hearted sensitive humane
personality” who is blessed with several epiphanic moments and
impressive intuitive depth.
The next two articles make a comparative study between two poets,
I. K. Sharma and Maha Nand Sharma. The first article studies the use
of wit by the two poets and the second one studies the use of sarcasm
by them. In the first, the writers Ram Kulesh Thakur and R. K. Singh
discusses the concept of “wit” and how the concept of wit has evolved
over the times. They then go on to show how wit helps the two poets
to “achieve wonderful intensity, tone, rhythm, setting, exposure of
culture and society, dialogue, or form” (318). Their “poetic wit is
distinguished by brevity, eloquence and surprise” and also “plays a
role in the formulation, transmission, and conservation of their cultural
wisdom” (318). However the two poets differ in the use of wit in their
poetry. Maha Nand Sharma uses wit to inform and instruct and I. K.
Sharma to amuse and generate humour. In the next article, the writers
discuss how sarcasm is one of the prominent tools employed in poetic
communication. They help the readers understand what sarcasm is and
how it has evolved over the years. Their thorough analysis brings out
the fact that “Maha Nand Sharma relies heavily on sarcasm as a tool to
communicate,” while “I. K. Sharma uses sarcasm only as a catalyst to
provoke the thoughts of his readers” (338).
Thus this mammoth book speaks at length on all aspects of the
trio’s—R. K. Singh, D. C Chambial and I. K. Sharma—poetry. I cannot
but agree with the editor’s words that this book “will be a great reference
material for research scholars besides being an intellectual feast to the
lovers of Indian English poetry” (ix).
OUR ESTEEMED CONTRIBUTORS
z Dr. Sudhir K. Arora, reputed English critic and author of several

books, Associate Professor of English, Maharaja Harish Chandra
PG Colege, Moradabad, U.P., India.
z Dr. Monir A. Choudhury, Assistant Professor of English, King
Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia.
z Dr. Rohit Phutela, Editor of The Literati, a peer reviewed journal
of English language and literature, is Assistant Professor of
English, DAVIET, Jalandhar, Punjab, India.
z Dr. Rosaline Jamir, Professor of English, Assam University,
Silchar, Assam, India.
z Mr. Aju Mukhopadhyay is a reputed English poet, author, critic
and bilingual writer of fiction and essays. He has already authored
28 books, and received several poetry awards besides other
honours from India and abroad. He resides at 8, Cheir Lodi Street,
Pondicherry-605 001, India.
z Mr. Pronab Kumar Majumder is Reputed English Poet, Playwright,
Story Writer, Translator, Critic, Anthologist and Editor of Bridge-
In-Making, a Journal of Indian English Writings. He has published
more than forty books. He is a former Special Secretary, Govt. of
West Bengal. Contact: P-233: Block-B: Lake Town, Kolkata -
700 089, India.
z Dr. Sujatha Rao, Associate Professor and Head, Dept. of English,
Maniben Nanavati Women’s College, Vallabhbhai Road, Vile Parle
(W), Mumbai – 56, India.
z Dr. Sajitha M. A., Assistant Professor of English, Farook College,
Kozhikode, Kerala, India.
z Dr. Chikkala Swathi, Department of English, GITAM Institute of
Technology, GITAM University, Gandhi Nagar Campus,
Rushikonda, Visakhapatnam, A.P., India
z Dr. Bishun Kumar, Asst. Professor of English, BBD University,
Faizabad Road, Lucknow, U.P., India.
z Dr. Gigy Alex, Reader in English, Dept. of Humanities, Indian
Institute of Space, Science and Technology, ISRO P.O. Valiamala,
Kerala, India.
z Dr. Ketaki Datta is an Associate Professor of English,

Bidhannagar Govt. College, Salt Lake City, Sector 1, Kolkata
700064, West Bengal. She is a critic, creative writer and a translator.
z Mr. Ezzeldin Abdelgadir Ahmed Elmadda, Sudanese Research
Scholar, doing Ph.D. in Kuvempu University, Shimoga, Karnataka,
India.
z Dr. Nagya Naik B. H., Research Guide, Kuvempu University,
Shimoga, Karnataka, India.
z Ms. S. Bhuvaneswari, Assistant Professor of English, Annamalai
University, Annamalai Nagar, Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu, India.
z Ms. Dhanusha Vyas, Asst. Professor of English, Maniben
Nanavati Women’s College, Vallabhbhai Road, Vile Parle (W),
Mumbai – 56, India.
z Dr. S. Lavanya, Assistant Professor of English, PSGR Krishnammal
College for Women, Coimbatore -641004, Tamil Nadu, India.
z Mr. Jayanti M. Dalal, Reputed Gujarati novelist and short story
writer, settled in Mumbai, India.
z Mr. Pramesh Lakhia, Translator, A/2,Friends Home society,
44,Juhu Cross Lane, Upasara Lane, Andheri (W), Mumbai-400058,
India.
z Dr. Madhur Kumar, Assistant Professor, University Dept. of
English, BRA Bihar University, Muzaffarpur (Bihar), India.
z Dr. K. Managayarkarasi, Associate Professor of English, Anna
College, Arignar, Krishnagiri District, Tamil Nadu, India.
z Dr. Namrata Nistandra, Assistant Professor, Dept of English,
Doaba College, Jalandhar, Punjab, India.
z Dr. Rajshree Trivedi, Assistant Professor of English, Maniben
Nanavati Women’s College, Vallabhbhai Road, Vile Parle (W),
Mumbai – 56, India.
z Mr. Punyajit Gupta, Assistant Prof. of English (Humanities),
Bengal College of Engineering &Technology, Bidhannagar,
Durgapur-713212, West Bengal, India.
z Dr. Srikrishan Rai, Research Guide, Department of English, NIT,
Durgapur, West Bengal, India.
z Ms. K. Sathya Devi, Research Scholar in English, Annamalai

University, Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu, India.
z Dr. S. Sujaritha, Assistant Professor in English, Pondicherry
University Community College, Lawspet, Puducherry-8, India.
z Mr. P C K Prem (P C Katoch, Katoch Cottage, (Mian Luder-
Mahant House), Chanakyapuri, Palampur-176061, Kangra, Himachal
Pradesh, India), reputed poet, novelist, critic and short story writer
has more than thirty books in English and Hindi. He taught English
in several colleges of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh before shifting
to civil service. As a critic of Indian literature in English, he ranks
among the best.
z Dr. Itishri Sarangi, Assistant Professor of English, KIIT
University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India.
z Dr. K. V. Dominic, English poet, critic, short story writer and
editor has authored eighteen books. He is the Secretary of Guild
of Indian English Writers, Editors & Critics (GIEWEC), Editor-in-
Chief of Writers Editors Critics (WEC), Editor of International
Journal on Multicultural Literature (IJML) and also the Editor
of New Fiction Journal (NFJ).
z Prof. Hazara Singh is a veteran thinker, educationist, writer in
English, Urdu and Punjabi. He was the Head of the Department of
Journalism, Languages & Culture, Punjab Agricultural University,
Ludhiana. He has published thirteen books in English including
three books of poems. In addition he has published bulletins,
manuals and wall charts. He is a Freedom Fighter who went to the
bars thrice during 1942-45. Prof Singh was awarded Honorary
Doctorate Degree of Literature by World Academy of Arts and
Culture. He can be contacted at: 0161 2302888. Postal Address:
Prof. Hazara Singh, 3-C, Shaheed Udham Singh Nagar, Ludhiana –
141 001, Punjab, India.
z Dr. O. P. Arora, Reputed English Poet, is a Retired Professor of
English, Delhi University, settled in Paschim Vihar, New Delhi,
India.
z Mr. S. V. Rama Rao, MA, LLB, (“Andhra Keats”), Gifted English
Poet, is a Retired Additional Superintendent of Police from Odisha,
India.
z Dr. Stephen Gill, World Renowned English poet, critic and novelist
from Ontario, Canada. He is the Poet Laureate of Ansted University
and an Adjunct Professor of European-American University. He
is an expressive voice of Canada, India and Pakistan. Gill has
authored more than twenty books, including novels, literary
criticism and collections of poems. His poetry and prose have
appeared in more than five hundred publications, mostly in
Canada, the United States of America and India.
z Dr. D. C. Chambial, Reputed English poet, critic, short story writer
and interviewer, is the Editor of international biannual journal,
Poetcrit, Maranda, Himachal Pradesh, India. He has authored eight
collections of poems in English and four books of literary criticism.
z Ms. Kavitha Gopalakrishnan, Assistant Professor of English,
Viswajyoti College of Engineering and Technology, Vazhakulam,
Muvattupuzha, Kerala, India.

Longing and Alienation in The Diasporas

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International Journal on

Volume 2 Number 2 (July 2012) ISSN 2231-6248

The Pleasures and Principles of Culinary Art: Shifting Paradigms

Portrayal of Women and their Sufferings in

The Prophecy (Poem) 174

other continents could be considered only as an unavoidable,

Thodupuzha Dr. K. V. Dominic

Culture, Multicultural and the

Human culture, which determines the growth of a nation, is itself

Hindu culture, Muslim Culture, global culture etc., it possesses some

communicates; communication makes interaction possible with different

to another. Differences concerning behavioural practices, norms and

Om Aasto ma sat gamaya

the concept of Indian culture without losing their basic structures. If

Change and Dynamism in African Society:

The theme of change and dynamism in African society has been

an interview with Feroza Jussawalla, Achebe affirmed this dynamic

created the ‘man of two worlds’ theory to prove that no matter

Europe’s construction of the image of Africa as a backward

Kangan in the novel Anthills of the Savannah. Christopher Oriko

Achebe, Chinua. Anthills of the Savannah. London: Picador, 1987. Print.

Pronab Kumar Majumder

1) I am world’s last evening song

I’ve been a slave:

American literature in English is dotted with complexities of

humanitarianly as it is today. Such a disordering cultural exercise began

The experiences of women in Black-American context pale further

susceptibility to corruption brought into the pristine hinterland of

Hutson, Jean Blackwell. “Remembering Langston.” Essence Magazine

Reflections on the “Feminine Cause” in

poet unmasks the sensations and sensibilities of the female as she

.... The man starts berating, then beating the woman

When you do not return and dreams

Un-touching the stones of the street

He exhibits an unusual fascination for truth and beauty. He shows

Davies, Smith. Women Who Changed the World. Fifty Inspirational

Parvathy Baul’s Way of Life:

But sai or sain too is in use. It is to be remembered that Bauls have no

dance, so impressed I was by this art form that I gave up formal

Ramakrishna. She encouraged me in following my Baul way. I fully enjoy

Time: The Crazy Clock

unmindful about her husband Shamik. Initially he could not understand

thoughts and got frustrated. He already realised that their incompatible

Silent Voices and Liberated Women:

The status of women in Indian society varies from ancient times

Bhandaru Acchamamba wrote stories on women’s issues which

Acchamamba revolutionized the concept of ‘modern woman’ centuries

In her dampathula prathama kalahamu [The first dispute a Wife

one would be liberated. In an age where women and Dalits had no

George Lamming’s Silent-Violent Voice

The coloniser has set up targets of hidden exploitations by

Prospero claims that he has taught Caliban everything that is

He had once deserted his comrades in San Cristobal. It was

Socio-Historical Documentation in Select

Indian Diaspora, a magical wor‘l’d that has contributed immensely

Two of my novels (The Shadow Lines and my most recent The

as feeling left out of the mainstream thus experiencing displacement and

powerlessness. Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1977) discusses how

Bhautoo-Dewnarain, Nandini. Rohinton Mistry: An introduction.

Dear my fellow beings,

but only one nation THE WORLD,

India, Number One!

Sixty percent of my countrymen