Chapter V Cultural Clashes in the Mango Season
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Chapter V Cultural Clashes in The Mango Season 5.1. Introduction: For many diasporic writers the act of writing involves their way of recovering their motherland. The immigrant's story has proved to be a very fruitfiil topic and the South Asian immigrant writers have assured that the dilemmas of displacement will be inquired into the act of across two cultures coping with new countries and their cultures. Overall, the diasporic writers capture a broader, worldly humanist view and thus nurture a kind of homesickness for their past and traditions. Diasporic Indian Writing in English is a type that is constructed in a variety of ways. While on the one hand it can be said to be a typical genre within the wider picture of post-colonial (transnational, cosmopolitan) dialogue, on the other hand, it needs to be kept in mind that it is not a monolithic, uniform sort but a composite and versatile field with a marked prominence on intercultural associations (Kuortti 14). Diasporic Indian writers are charged with double obligations. They write about their homeland for the natives of the country they have adopted and share their diasporic experiences with the readers of their homeland. They depict the predicament of women, cultural alienation, displacement nostalgia, estrangement, separateness, oppression, dispossession, double marginalization, and cultural clashes suffered by immigrants in both cross-cultural interactions and within one's own culture. They also study the psyche of foreign returned Indian immigrants, who get shocked in the return visit to their homeland and severely face cultural clashes in their own culture, among their own people. 5.2. Amulya Malladi's Contribution to Diasporic Writings in English: Amulya Malladi was bom in 1974 in Sagar, Madhya Pradesh. She pursued her bachelor's degree in the subject of Electronics Engineering fi-om Osmania University, Hyderabad and later she received a master's degree in journalism from the University of Memphis, Teimessee, USA. She then moved on to work as an online editor for a 171 high-tech publishing house in San Francisco, and then as a marketing manager for a software company in the SiHcon Valley. After having stayed in the United States for quite a few years, Malladi shifted to Copenhagen, Denmark with her husband Soren Rasmussen and her two sons. Her father was working in the Indian Army, thus, she extended her stay all over the country. She has written five novels until now: A Breath of Fresh Air (2002), The Mango Season (2003), Serving Crazy with Curry (2004), Song of the Cuckoo Bird (2005), and The Sound of Language (2007) (Ghayathry 159). A Breath of Fresh Air (2002) presents the lasting power of love. Anjali's attempt to determine the roles of wife and ex-wife, working person and mother, lights up both the striking duality of the modem Indian woman and the difficult selections all women are supposed to make. On December 3, 1984, Anjali hangs around for her husband to pick her up at the station in Bhopal. In a moment, her world changes everlastingly. Her annoyance at his being late turns to shock when a terrible gas leak poisons the city air. Anjali unbelievably survives but her marriage does not. Now Anjali remarries Sandeep, who is a caring man, a professor. Their life moves smoothly except for their young son's declining physical condition. However, when Anjali's first husband unexpectedly comes back in her life, she is thrown back to those troubling days of her marriage with a power that affects everyone around her. Her first husband's return brings back all the uncertainties, which Anjali thought fime has alleviated, mainly about her choice to break up, and about her place in a society that views her as a shameful character for having walked away from her arranged marriage. The Mango Season, (2003) is the story of Priya Rao a young Indian lady, who moves to America to pursue an academic career and ends up falling in love with an American boyfriend. She conceals it from her parents but at the time the novel begins, she is going back to India to inform her family unit about her engagement to her American boyfriend Nick Collins. To inform her family becomes more difficult than she had expected, and now Priya postpones telling them the truth. Finally, she shows the guts to cross the unidentified cultural boundaries that exist between the Indian and American, and takes the courageous step in spite of her family's misgivings. In the meantime, she takes part in the customs of the mango season, and finds herself returning to everyday life in India. She has been away for many years now, and 172 realizes that she no longer feels happy in her homeland, but would rather be "home" in America. She is forced to select between the love of her family and Nick, the future prosperity of her life. Malladi's third novel Serving Crazy with Curry (2004) is a dark comedy in which suicide is the core of the tale. The reader is allowed into the interior thoughts of Devi Veturi as she contemplates murdering herself, plans it, effects it, and then tries to pull through from it while living with her passionate family in the Silicon Valley. The novel is merged together with delicious recipe; this tale mixes wit, and jump off- the-page characters into a rich stew of a novel that reveals a woman's effort for acceptance from her family and herself Devi is on the edge where the only way out seems to be to jump, since she experiences the difficulty to maiTy as happens to a customary Indian wife and the disgrace of losing her job in Silicon Valley. Yet, she finishes it all but falls short when the last person she wants to see is her mother, who saves her. Forced to go with her parents until she recovers, Devi refuses to speak. Instead, she cooks nonstop. She whips up in the kitchen every night. Once an unfamiliar person comes into view unexpectedly, for Devi, it appears as a secret one that touches many nerves in her family. Though revealing some devastating facts, the top secret would also carry them back together in ways they never dreamed possible (Ghayathry 161-62). In the novel. Song of the Cuckoo Bird (2005) there is a group of outcasts and exiles who make a family by holding firnily to their dreams. Kokila comes to Telia Meda, an ashram in the Bay of Bengal, hardly a month after she is married. She is now an eleven-year old orphan. Once she makes a thoughtless choice that changes the basics of her life. Instead of becoming a highly regarded woman, a wife, mother, youthful excitement and flight compels her to make her mark at Telia Meda in the company of the young and good-looking guru, Charvi and along other strong yet intensely inconsistent women, who are also eccentric and misfits in society. The Sound of Language (2007) is woven round the Afghan refugees who gravely suffered due to the war undertaken by America in retribufion of the assault on WTC seeking asylum in Denmark and their travails (Padmaja 58). The novel is the tale of an Afghan refugee Raihana, who leaves Kabul to settle down with her distant 173 relatives in Denmark. Raihana tries to begin a fresh life with the purpose not to feel about the fortune of her husband who was taken prisoner by the Talibans and never heard afterwards about him. In Denmark, refugees get monetary support from the government and in return, they are obligated to take Danish classes and participate in what is called praktik. Generally, refiigees come together and articulate in their native language as they clean supermarkets or do other jobs of the same nature for their praktik. However, Raihana finds a praktik with a beekeeper, Gunnar, who is a new widower. He and his wife had loved their bees and now Gunnar neglects them as he worked hard to cultivate with his late wife. He is unwilling to have Raihana work for him at first, but gradually she worms her way into his life, and helps to bring back love for bees and his life. Both Raihana and Gunnar come together in a doubtfial relationship, regardless of the disapproval of their respective friends and relatives. Gunnar's presence makes Raihana set her past life behind and embraces her prospects. However, when the brutality Raihana thinks she experienced in Afghanistan, both Gunner and she are required to deal with the dark past as they plot a route towards the unsure hope. This is not a love tale. This is a story about an exceptional friendship between two people who cannot speak plainly with each other because they do not speak the same language in the land of their adopted country (Ghayathry 160-61). Malladi's novels mostly focus on the themes like, family tension, the changing prospects of recollection, the subtle nature of mind, the understanding between two generations, the clash between modernity and traditional values, and the changing position of women from traditional roles to contradictory characters due to the effect of acquiring diasporic space. The main issues revealed in her works are related to women, their self-actualization, emotional transformation, problem of identity and issues of gender and culture. The cultural clash between belonging and loss of belonging is the type in which diasporic writers form unlike homelands. The Mango Season is not only about the conflicts between the East and West that are prominent, but also the conflicts within our own family and our own traditions.