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, . She pursued her bachelor's degree in the subject of Electronics Engineering fi-om Osmania University, 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 for quite a few years, Malladi shifted to Copenhagen, with her husband Soren Rasmussen and her two sons. Her father was working in the , 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 . 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 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. Malladi reveals the cultural conflicts that Priya experiences once she returns to her native place with different principles and prospects (Raskar, "Cultural" 1).

174 Actually, amongst the immigrant authors, the one to depict the relations between the East and West with the utmost compassion happens to be Jhumpa Lahiri, who exceeds culture to get at the human situation. V.S. Naipaul, too, has been gifted to do this with an immense sense of humor tied up with sadness. Bharati Mukherjee's The Tiger's Daughter (1971) has autobiographical implications. It tells the story of Tara, who gets married to an American and returns to India for a short time but discovers that she is incapable to unite herself in her homeland. She falls short to adjust with the effects, once she appreciated and accepted previously. Now she suffers there like an alien in her own city Calcutta, so, she goes back to the USA. Whereas, Malladi in The Mango Season 'tells' rather than 'shows' India. Priya says about her grandfather, "This was a man whose life was steeped in ritual. Life and tradition lay alongside each other and bled into each other. Thata didn't question tradition but accepted it just the way he accepted waking up every morning at six to perform the Gayatri mantram'" (Malladi 189). She states this utterly, without a sign of lament. The tale of The Mango Season turns around Priya's straightforward dilemma: how to tell her parents about her boyfriend, whom she is set to marry. In the present chapter, an attempt is made to seek the cultural clashes and dilemmas faced by the protagonist in her own native land. The depiction of India through European perception is the striking aspect of Malladi's work.

5.Z.T\iG\)\z^i^0Y\zTt\t: The Mango Season The Mango Season is a vista of Indian custom. It deals with a ?riya, who travels to America and lives there a multi-cultural life, which sets out against the principles of her extended family. The novel is about how Priya conceals her engagement to an American man from her conventional Brahmin family unit. Malladi cleverly places Priya in a state of affairs between two differing worlds. She has to set off with either the rigid custom of her family or her genuine feeling. She struggles to get the courage to inform her parents that she wants to marry her American friend. Malladi captures Priya's struggle to make her family pleased, esteem her past, and pursue her stance. All the routine places of cultural clashes are demonstrated in the novel. When Priya returns to India to tell her conventional family that the man she is going to get married is not an Indian, she faces the unkind truth of prejudice and cultural clashes in her native soil. The present chapter is an attempt to study the

175 psyche of foreign returned Indian Priya, which is affected due to the higher professional prospects and varied cultural practices that she received in the land of her migration. It is an effort to look at the cultural dilemmas and clashes faced by the protagonist in her own homeland. In The Mango Season, Malladi describes the psychosomatic push and pull of the cultural clashes and predicaments faced by the foreign returned Priya (Raskar, "Reflections" 2) D Ghayathry in her research article entitled "Janus Myth with Reference to Amulya Malladi's The Mango Season"" rightly presents Priya's twofold-living. Priya is required to either fall or rise. If she wants to win the faith of her extended family, she will lose her golden future with Nick; but if she exposes herself courageously and opens the gates, then she will go up and triumph over the heart of Nick. Lastly, she by opening her heart gets her father's permission followed by everybody. Malladi craftily places Priya in circumstances between two conflicting worlds. Priya fights her own combat and comes out successfully. The novel is a journey into a composite cultural process of Indian girls of present-day India, who go away in large numbers to study abroad (165-66).

The Mango Season deals with Indians who have moved to America and are living a multi-cultural life, which goes against what their parents' age group believes. Priya has a tough moment in accepting that her parents will not at all realize her wish to marry Nick, or to have something to accomplish with people that are not from India. Actually, The Mango Season is a light comedy, but is full of tension to continue the reader going. It also deals with the mother-daughter bond despite of ethnic setting. The typical family politics in extended family is all over the place in this book. Priya is overcome with shame at the idea of telling her stem South Indian parents in Hyderabad that she is already engaged to a man who is not an Indian Telegu Brahmin. Now she faces the dilemma of telling not only her parents but also her extended conservative family of grandparents, aunties, and uncles that she is planning to marry her American friend. Priya attempts to persuade her family that the worth of an individual does not lie in his social order or caste, prosperity, and university degree but lies intensely in his nature and behavior towards his spouse. The novel invokes the cultural space between East and West where both sides have a lot to present each other. The Mango Season is exceptionally rational in its exploration of dilemmas faced by youngsters brought up in the western countries and their families caught in the eastern convention. There is a clash between inner longing of the women in the

176 novel and the culture of the world. Their desire is natural and essential, but home and societal culture is an outside force, which holds back their desire.

Malladi uses the mango as a mark of difference between two traditions. She mixes recipes throughout her chapters for delicacies like Avakai, Mango Pappu, Rava Ladoo, and Aloo Bajji. Sanskrit ritual words of illumination are quoted to highlight sacred customs that guide the family, and many Indian words are used in italics. The Mango Season is a vivid depiction of a modem woman's suffering due to her helplessness in mixing two worlds. The story is told with stunning word pictures. Malladi's imagery creates a desire for a juicy topping of contentment to finish the story, which is a rich ripe mango.

5.4. Cultural Clash: Nostalgia Most Indians live in extensive family networks. A distinctive extended family generally consists of the mother and the father. The extended family would usually include all their children: their married sons and their wives, and their children, their unmarried sons, their unmarried daughters, and further links such as the father's younger brothers, their wives and children, the father's widowed sister, all of whom live under the same roof In a family-oriented society any trouble has an effect on an individual-financial, medical, psychiatric, or whatever that affects the entire family. One's independence is subordinated to joint harmony, and one's sense of self is submerged in the shared ego of the'family and one's group of people. A society in India has numerous general features. The members within a society normally fiancfion on a grading or a hierarchical structure. Elders are accorded particular position within the community and their significant position is very plainly accepted. Whereas western society is an activity centered society, and in contrast, eastern society in general and Indian societies in particular are relationship centered. Marriages are cultural as well as religious commitment in India. The respecfive families of both bride and groom arrange the majority of marriages. While selecfing the spouse for their son or daughter both the parents favor the equality of the family in respect of status, financial position, religion, caste, and language. India has a large society of diverse cultures and communities. In contrast, western society is an activity-centered society. The leading characteristic of contemporary western society is its emphasis on

177 individualism. It is seen as a capability to work out a degree of control over one's life, to deal with one's troubles, being self-governing, self-directed, and liable for one's actions, self-ftilfillment, and self-realization of one's internal resources. Nick's mother Frances does not think about Priya's background but she is immensely captivated by the Indianness. When they meet for the first time, she tells her, "I've never spoken to an Indian before, but I love curry" (Malladi 70). Frances is a delightful woman who always greets Priya by giving her gifts on her birthday but such liking and sociability is absent in the relationship between Priya and her mother (Raskar, "Cultural" 3)

Much of the action of The Mango Season takes place at Priya's grandparent's house in Hyderabad, where the women in the family come together to make mango pickle. The one obsession that Priya does look ahead to is the fiuit of her memories, mangoes. When she was teenaged, summer was all about mangoes, rich, flourishing, and grown sugary mangoes with juice that would trickle down to her cheeks, hands, and neckline. This season matches with the monsoons and the wedding period in India. They are representative of ardor, warmth, feeling, and contentment. Teenaged Priya and her brother Nate identify mangoes with happiness, as is observed by Ghayathry D (163-64). After each chapter, Malladi has given guidelines for recipes of South Indian delicacies, and the mainly admired is the mango pickle, which women in north and south India make at some stage in the summer by marinating large pieces of mango in oil and spices and having them dried in the outer open surface in the sun for days. A part of the book is dedicated to the custom of the women in the family making mango pickle.

There is an affectionate family custom where all the brothers, sisters and their spouses come together for a couple of days in their family home to make the mango pickle. Malladi expertly interlinks the procedure of making mango pickle. The Mango Season is an insight into the works of Indian families and their Hindu rituals, traditions and the hierarchies in which the male chief of the family reigns. Malladi uses the mango as a symbol of the disparity between two traditions. The mangoes are just as tasty and mouth-watering as Priya recollects:

178 I remembered staling mangos from the neighbor's tree and biting into them with the reHsh of a theft well done. I remembered sneaking into the kitchen at night to eat the mangos Ma was saving for something or other. I remembered sitting with Nate and eating raw mangoes with salt and chili powder, our lips burning and our tongues smacking because of the tartness (Malladi 9).

Nostalgia is remembering the things of the past and the novel The Mango Season is surcharged with the feature of nostalgia. For Priya getting a feel for mangos is harder after being absent for seven years. As a child, she loved and appreciated this season finest but, after being away for years, Priya finds the heat of an Indian summer intolerable and the whole thing about India seems different, dirtier, and more disorganized than she retains in her memory. The novel is also about the age-old tale of whether one should follow one's heart or walk on the true trail of custom. Malladi describes the psychological push and pull of anxieties and conflicts. Her characters are well drawn and the clashes of cultures portrayed are not only genuine, but also upsetfing and pitiful.

5.5. Cultural Clash: Estrangement and Separateness In the present novel, Malladi portrays the complicated world of family politics, particularly in a joint family. There is competition, jealousy, caring and love all packed together in the novel. Priya wonders to see her mother, her aunt, and her grandma staying at home all day. Her American friends say that Indian women are demanded because they stay home doing nothing but raising their kids. Priya knows her extended family is very strict in following homecoming ritual, which needs to be held properly. The fundamental rule is that "you cannot come home without a substantial amount of gifts, irrespective of your financial predicament" (Malladi 37). Buying gifts is a diplomatic mission because one can't give gifts without diplomatic intentions because it may offend others. Therefore, Priya has to be a little diplomatic while fialfilling the norms of her family tradition. In the same house, she experiences family politics and cultural clash between the members of her extended family. The battle between Lata and Radha is fought with taunts. Radha holds her head high because her husband is the managing director of an electronic company and they live

179 rather lavishly compared to Lata. Radha is still irritated that her wedding sari had cost less than the sari her parents had given their daughter-in-law, Lata for her wedding. As Sarita Sarvate rightly observes the immigrant experience is complex, but Malladi minimizes it to a set of cardboard characters and everyday situations (36). Priya does not want to give up her live-in-relationship with the African-American Nick and does not dare to reveal to her family in India her relations with Nick. This has developed the sense of estrangement.

The Mango Season is an insight into the workings of Indian families, their traditions, and their values. The main distinction we come across while understanding this book is between the two cultures, Indian and Western, relating to marriage. Priya does not abide by Indian marriage institutional customs because she is engaged to an American boyfriend Nick. While she comes at a decisive time to let her parents be acquainted with Nick, she is suppressed by the sounds of her family discussing about her marriage to a "nice Indian boy" and talking about her uncle who for them committed a great mistake by marrying a woman from another Indian state for the sake of love. The plot of this story brings about the most significant issues between this fictional tale and the conventional problems that have existed in India and amongst Indians in America. While Priya is struggling to inform the family, and is reared of the moment in all her being, family life goes on, with its tensions, opposition, acceptance, denial, and most of all cooking. Cultures are conflicting like huge tectonic plates below the earth, while on the surface the women are busy cutting up and slicing mangoes.

An individual who is successful in adjusting to a new culture is often not wholly successful at readjusting to the previous culture. A person, who adjusts willingly is amenable to new ideas, can chat cleverly with people from various countries, and be content with the varying models of overseas living. The same individual may find readjustment unsuccessfiil upon returning to homeland since the new ideas clash with tradition. This relation between adjustment to the new and nonadaptation to the old is certainly related to individual dissimilarities. Immigrants who believe in a melting pot model are motivated to make an absolute adjustment if they decide to accept the host culture while not keeping hold of their first culture. Their jobs, groceries, language, contacts, spare time activities, and kinship ties are all 180 found in the host society. If they do well, they not only adjust wholly but are also easily absorbed into the host society. Sojourners who build up close relationships with hosts would set in motion the same kind of activities upon their return home. They may be unable to locate people in their homelands, who can share the recent concerns about the world. Therefore, it is vital to revise a psyche, which is affected due to dislocation, estrangement and newly adopted culture. It is necessary to note that the misunderstandings can and do occur not just in cross-cultural connections and daily encounters but also within one's own culture, among its own people. Culture clashes are usually thought of as occurring between native Indians and foreigners, but a culture clash can also occur within the context of an Indian family.

Traditionally all cultures have always been differentiated by huge internal disparities. Before the beginning of modernization, internal politics and ideological divergences have been a crucial issue in the dynamics of their respective course of progress. Europe is not an exception in this respect. The ideas of the enlightenment were challenged and opposed from the instant they came out. During any historical course of modernization, clash between "traditionalists' and 'modernists', and the respective social forces following them, could assume violent forms. Internal differentiations, if not conflicts, were a typical characteristic of all conventional cultures long before they came under the stress of transformation from the outer and inner surfaces.

In The Mango Season, Malladi reveals the cultural distress and clashes that Priya experiences once she is removed from her adopted culture to re-examine her native culture in the light of knowledge she received in her stay in the foreign land. The novel is about Priya's struggle to retain all her roles; daughter, granddaughter, sister, lover and Indian. The story is intermingled with the expectations of Priya's mother, her father's compassion, her grandfather's treatment of her, sounds and smells of India, the India that is foreign, yet well known to Priya, by showing the reader the faults in India. She blames everything that is a part of Indian life. She also hates Indian food, she thinks Indian food takes so much time and it is too spicy to eat every day. Once Sowmya tells Priya: "You should learn to cook...What are you going to do when you get married? Make your husband eat outside food?" (Malladi 40). There is no contest between outside food and homemade food in India. The food cooked at

181 home by the wife is the best food, no restaurant can compare to that and in any case people generally do not spend money going to restaurant when you get home made food. Her understanding of the cultural differences leads her to feel estranged from her extended family in India.

In The Mango Season, Priya has to come to a decision whether to go after her heart or custom. It is a remarkable picture of modem woman's pain over her failure to bring together her two worlds. Priya refers to the "two people inside me" (Malladi 69). She looks to bring together the two halves of her individuality. When she leaves her house in Silicon Valley to meet her family in India, she carries with her a top secret-she has fallen in love with an American man and now is planning to marry him. Shortly after her arrival in her native land, Priya learns that her mother and father have selected a boy for her in the customary, traditional way of an arranged marriage. Priya's world is at once thrown into disorder, as she must settle between her infatuations and her parents' requirements. As Ghayathry D says that Priya belongs to the conventional family consisting of grandfather and grandma; ruling mother, reasonable father and adorable brother. In her grandfather's rulebook, a sense of duty is high on the record. From this backdrop she moves abroad for her higher studies. Every adolescent Indian departing from motherland to a foreign land, especially United States, is given the following orders by their parents: Priya's parents sent her to study with a few doubts and the subsequent instructions:

Do not eat beef (the sacred cow is your mother!) Do not get too fiiendly with foreign people; you cannot trust them. Remember what the English did to us. Cook at home; there is no reason to eat out and waste money. Save money. Save money. Save money. DO NOT FIND YOURSELF SOME FOREIGN MANAVOMAN TO MARRY (Malladi 3-4).

182 Priya is engaged with her American boyfriend, Nick; they even share a joint mortgage. In addition, her views on wedding were shaped long before she comes to America:

Even though I was raised in a society where arranged marriage was the norm, I always thought it was barbaric to expect a girl of maybe twenty-one years to marry a man she knew even less than the milkman who, for the past decade, had been mixing water with the milk he sold her family (Malladi 1).

These thoughts on wedding Priya reserved to herself After seven years, she gets back to India to reveal herself As she admits:

I didn't want to go because as soon as I got there, my family would descend on me like vultures on a fresh carcass, demanding explanations, reasons, and trying to force me into marital harmony with some "nice Indian boy". I had to go because I had to tell them that I was marrying a 'nice American man" (Malladi 3).

Even though Priya is raised in a culture where arranged marriage is the rule, she always thinks it barbaric to wait for a girl of may be twenty-one-years to wed a man she is acquainted with not as much as the milkman who, for the past decade, had been mixing water with the milk he sold her family. Priya assumes that most Indian women are expected to find only Indian men nice-looking; may be, it has a little to do with centuries of training. She has a runaway arranged marriage by coming to the United States to do a master's in Computer Science at Texas A and M by conveniently finding a job in Silicon Valley, and then by discovering a number of reasons to not return to India because she knows that her family would try to compel her into marital harmony with a nice Indian boy. Now, for Priya it is tricky coming home and facing her parents and the rest of the family, especially when she knows that, they would not be happy to understand her feelings, when they discover about Nick. Knowing that her family is orthodox Priya anticipates that her American boyfriend Nick will be killed and she will be set fire by her family members. The

183 sense of separateness results on account of the ground reality of Priya's choice of life partner and the expectations of her family.

5.6. Cultural Clash: Displacement, Oppression and Dispossession Generally the first generation settlers are a little unwilling to accept the new nation's culture. However, in the present novel, Priya is a first generation immigrant, who is well infomied and holds a job at Silicon Valley and actually gets used to the western culture without any misgivings. During the course of her stay overseas, she accepts the nationality of a worldwide world and fails to remember the racial inequity that she was fed on as a child. She was made to appear among the westerners as a strange being. She was made to realize that they have a diverse set of ethics and Indians are morally or ethically better. Thus, as a new immigrant she started out with only Indian friends. Her circle grew as she mutually grew. As she says, "I had somewhere down the line stopped looking at skin color" (Malladi 213). Priya carries a hybrid identity that transforms her from being an outsider to being the citizen of the host country and finally to being a world citizen. In India, no single culture exists. Too many cultures have crossed and combined here, and produced a hybridity in us that cannot now be separated. The Indian cultural identity has acquired a varied composition with today's youth who are on the move in search of better jobs.

The Mango Season offers the reader an interesting trip into the life of Priya Rao and the tests and troubles in her life as she is faced with the mission of telling her family that she is engaged to an American. Malladi demonstrates the cultural shock/clashes that many immigrants experience, once they leave their adopted culture and enter with diverse principles in their native land. She is so mush impressed and absorbed in western values that she loses her unique Indian identity and feels like a stranger in her own motherland. America has given her innumerable chances to discover her true self The Indian culture is old fashioned. Everything that is not accepted in India is accepted in America.

Receiving permission fi-om her Grandfather is a most important step for Priya. Her feeling of guilt closes the doorway to let her tell the truth. If she tells about Nick then she thinks that the entire family would desert her. Priya's contentment lies in the

184 hands of her grandfather. When he accepts, everyone would follow him and Priya's path will be clear. Priya's dilemma becomes a personal anguish when she cannot inform her family that she is engaged to an American. After arriving in India, she discovers that her family members are in the same state as they were seven years before. Her parents persist that it is time they arrange her wedding to a "nice Indian boy" (Badami 3). Priya's extended family discusses nothing but a marriage, mostly the wedding of her uncle Anand with Neelima. Anand enters into a love marriage with a woman from the state of Maharashtra. This inter caste marriage is not accepted by her family. Gladness and care for love are never the principle of her family. In her family's rulebook, sense of duty is at the top of the list. This type of orthodox thinking upsets her and she hides her secret, and this made her even to consent to a bride- seeing ritual, but luckily, the person she meets opens the important incident of his life, which makes her put a defensive guard on herself (Ghayathry 164-65). In her review, Swapna Krishna rightly presents Priya's dilemma. As she says, Priya loves her family and she knows her grandfather is racist and a man of extreme views, and is not fi-ightened to voice his views. She stands up for what she thinks is true, but at the same time, she cannot but feel affection for her grandfather. It is simple for the reader to observe why she cannot tell the truth; so much pressure is put on her to be a good, dutifijl daughter, and she actually needs to be that for her extended family. Priya also understands that she ought to live her own life, not the one her mother desires for her. It is hard for her to recognize that selecting Nick might undeniably denote sending-off her family (Krishna para 3). The novel is the story of an immigrant Priya fighting to keep hold of all her roles. The novel is also about Priya who moves to America and lives a multi-cultural life, which goes against her parents' and grandparents' generational thinking.

In the novel, Priya narrates the incident that she experienced in her adolescent age when she was with her mother on vacation in Kullu, Manali in Himachal Pradesh. In a bazaar in Manali, her mother was trying to purchase a shawl and she was negotiating, as she had never haggled before. The bargaining had stopped over one single rupee. The man said fifty and ma said forty-nine and they went on for ten minutes, after which her ma just walked out of the store and then being called in by the vendor who believed that she was serious about one rupee. As the bargaining at the shawl shop dragged, Priya cried out "it is just one rupee, Ma, why do you have to 185 be such a KanjoosT (Malladi 10). As soon the word was out, she knew it was a mistake; ma slapped her across the face in the centre of the market. She gets such experiences about her mother's bargaining habit at various places. Once, she observes how her mother does bargaining while buying mangoes, and finds herself fortunate because the culture of bargaining is not in vogue in America. As she muses, "Thanks to happy memories like that 1 never, ever, bargained. It was a relief that in the United States I didn't have to do it for groceries and clothes; everything came with a fixed price tag" (Malladi 11). It shows the bargaining nature of Indian people is entirely new to western people. Priya hates the bargaining culture of Indian people, particularly of her mother. Therefore, there is thus an ideological clash between Priya and her mother (Raskar, "Reflections" 3).

In this novel, the inter-caste marriage of Anand and Neelima has taken place. Anand is a Telugu Brahmin while Neelima is a Maharashtrian Brahmin. In Priya's family, a Maharashtrian Brahmin is considered a lower as compared to the Telugu Brahmin caste. Ananda's secret marriage breaks everyone's heart. All the family members are convinced that Neelima is not the right woman for him. They believe that Neelima is in fact a witch who has developed a vicious potion to catch their poor little innocent son into her web. In the novel, we see being Telugu is very essenfial. Telugu is the official language of Andhra Pradesh. Being of the same caste is not enough to approve a marriage. To marry someone, that someone has to be from the same caste and same state. Therefore, a Maharashtrian Brahmin in the state of Telgu is considered the lower caste. When Anand finds that his wife is constantly verbally tortured by all the members of his family, he gets angry and says, "Neelima is my wife, she deserves respect. If as a family you all have decided to ill-treat her-" (Malladi 131). He does not want to bear the torture that is being done because of caste. He goes against the very orthodox thinking of his family. He wants Neelima to get equal respect like the other members of his family. He desperately wants Neelima should not be discriminated for being a Maharashtrian Brahmin. Thus, there is a cultural clash between the modem thinking of Anand and traditional principles governing his parents. Priya defends the decision of her uncle Anand getting married to a girl of his own choice.

186 Traditions play a vital role in India and many treat it on a higher level, especially in the case of marriage. These traditions are held so dear because many of India's ancestors tie them to patterns, beliefs, and practices. We perceive a regular conflict between tradition and modernity through shifting times and generations. Marriage is a cultural as well as a sacred obligation in India. It is an important institution. In India, the respective families of bride and bridegroom arrange the greater part of marriages. While choosing the spouse for their son or daughter both the parents prefer equality of the families in respect of status, financial position, religion, caste, and language. The Indian marriage institution considers marriage not only in relation to the spouses but also to the families.

Caste favoritism or Casteism is not legally allowed in modem India, but in practice, the diversity of groups and the complexity of relationships make such a decision difficult to put into effect. For instance, Rajni is a maidservant at Priya's grandparent's house. She is not a Brahmin and so she is not allowed inside the kitchen. Therefore, Sowmya cooks and leaves the dishes outside where Rajni cleans them. Priya's grandmother has such a view because Rajni is fi-om a lower caste. She cannot enter their kitchens; in fact in the good old days, lower caste people would not even be allowed inside the home and Rajni would be untouchable in every sense of the word. Priya's grandmother Ammamma claims, "We Brahmins have become more tolerant, what with the days being so modern and everything" (Malladi 26). It seems that she does not feel happy about the modem days.

Priya, Lata, Sowmya and Neelima present the younger generation in the family presided over by Thatha and Ammamma with their orthodox traditional ways. Sowmya delayed marriage, Neelima's belonging to another state, Lata's third pregnancy for a son as the heir of the family and Lata's marriage are the problematic situations which bring out the features of oppression, displacement and dispossession.

5.7. Cultural Clash: Double Marginalizatlon .Malladi addresses the issues, which include; arranged marriages, preference for sons in Indian society, use of ultrasound to abort female foetuses, cultural conflicts between East and West and also at the domestic level. Malladi's novel. The Mango

187 Season develops these themes through the story of Priya, a young woman who returns to her native South India to inform her family about her engagement to Nick. Her America is a color-blind Utopia in which she lives. Her American boyfriend, Nick is African American, an important feature about him is opened only in the last paragraphs of the book. Malladi deliberately leaves the ending of the novel ambiguous. The ending holds a surprise. She discloses Nick's race at the end of the book. His e-mails to Priya during her visit to India do not suggest his ethnic background, which in any case, is not an issue in Priya's enchanted life in America. When Priya goes home, she finds her family, her mother in particular, practicing conventional customs and superstitions. She finds no comfort in her company. In the first chapter of the novel, she says, "It had just been three days, but I was already tired of being in India, at home, and especially tired of my mother" (Malladi 13). Further, she goes on to explain the daily state of affairs in India:

The road was bumpy and the auto rickshaw moved in mysterious ways...There were no rules; there never had been. You could make a U- tum anywhere, anytime you felt like it. Crossing a red light was not a crime. If a policeman caught you without your driver's license and registration papers, twenty to fifty rupees would solve your problem (Malladi 13-14).

All the commonplaces of culture clashes are put on show in the novel. Priya deliberately hides her engagement to an American. As she says, "I had escaped arranged marriage by coming to the United States to do a master's in Computer Sciences at Texas A&M, by conveniently finding a job in Silicon Valley, and then by inventing several excuses to not go to India" (Malladi 1-2). At the age of twenty- seven, Priya returns to her home city of Hyderabad and runs headlong into a dizzying range of parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. She is ftightened to tell anyone about Nick, fearing he will be rejected, and she even agrees to meet an Indian man, her parents would like her to marry. Priya's family falls precisely into stock types: the arrogant mother who desires Priya to marry within her caste; the fashionable younger brother represents new westernized generation of Indians; the cruel aunt who constantly passes judgment on her niece. Here, Priya faces the unkind

188 truth of prejudice and cultural clash. Besides religion, caste, and financial status, there is the matter of skin color. Lighter is better, and Priya is considered "dark".

After coming back seven years later, Priya finds everything abnormal in India, which was never the case in the past. As she thinks, "Everything that had seemed natural just seven years ago seemed unnatural and chaotic compared to what I had been living in and with in the United States" (Malladi 14). She enjoyed the mango season more than a few times with her brother. She never paid her attention to the quality of food in the past, but now she thinks, "Now, I couldn't imagine putting that piece of white and green fruit inside my mouth. It was not about taste, it was about hygiene..." (Malladi 9). She fiirther recollects what her Indian fiiend who visited India after having lived in the United States said to her "Everything will look dirtier than it did before" (Malladi 9). Therefore, Priya is confronted with the polluted, infected, and unhealthy standard of living of the Indians. She starts sweating as if she has never been during an Indian summer before. She makes a remark on load shedding and power cuts in India. As she says, "The electricity was out. For six hours every day in the summer, the electricity was cut off to conserve it. The cut-off times changed randomly but were usually around the times when it was most hot" (Malladi 16). It means, Priya finds a fault in everything that she experiences in India. She finds India sfill in its old form, nothing seems changed there (Raskar "Reflecfions" 3).

When Priya goes to Monda market, she finds her light pink salwar cloth gets dirty and she is worried as if she never had been there during an Indian summer before. However, she had lived for almost twenty summers in India, and now seven years later, she is having trouble relating to her home culture. She finds faults about India, she sees her skin has turned dark in the skin burning heat, she finds her hair stringing. She finds everything strange in Hyderabad. She is unable to adjust herself in her homeland. She does not get comfort with anything in Hyderabad. She finds everything there, as it was seven years back. She blames everything that she experiences in India. The changing cultural practices and differences during her stay in America make her an entirely different personality. She successfiiUy adopts American life style; so she does not find herself connected with her present culture anywhere in India. She goes on blaming the Indian cultural practices, which are still based on old and irrational conventions. 189 Priya's family is deeply set in conventional Hindu values, where daughters are supposed to be obedient; they are supposed to marry Indian boys, and produce nice male heirs. In Hindu religion, marriages are supposed to be arranged by the family elders, and love does not have much to do with it. Priya's mother wants her daughter to get married soon. As she says, "If they have a good U.S. boy in mind and he is in India on leave like you, we can probably arrange something... If it works out, you will be married and happy. It will be a load off my chest. An unmarried daughter...what must the neighbors think?" (Malladi 23). Priya's mother does not like the living style of her daughter. As she says to her:

You go to America and you want to look like those Christian girls. Why, what is wrong with our way? Doesn't a girl look nice with long, oiled hair with flowers in it? Even when you were here, you didn't want the nice mallipulu, fresh jasmine, I would string. Always wanted to look like those.. .short hair and nonsense (Malladi 8).

It means, Priya's mother firmly believes in Indian culture and does not like the manner in which Priya uses color to improve her physical appearance. She certainly considers Indian culture the most appropriate one and does not like the way in which Priya upholds her look. As she knows Priya's friends, Manju and Nilesh were wedded gladly in India but they were separated once they shifted to the United States. As she says, "same caste, same... real good match. They went to America and now they are getting a divorce after four years of marriage. What happened? If they were in India, it would have never happened" (Malladi 80). The clash of costume is also mentioned in the selected novel. Indian women wear saris well-matched to their culture. However, the American women put on tight jeans and t-shirts. Once Priya wants to wear a pair of shorts to defend against the terrific heat of Indian summer at Monda Market, but her mother refiises to accept her by saying that "Wearing shorts in Monda Market? Are you trying to be an exhibitionist? We don't do that here" (Malladi 8). Priya finds it bizarre to notice women in India prefer wearing saris even in the summer season. As she says, "I never understand why Indian women wore saris in this day and age when alternatives like salwar kameez would not be fi-owned upon. A sari was uncomfortable..." (Malladi 20). Priya finds herself trapped in Indian

190 conventions, where there is no freedom even to wear clothes of one's choice. Her mother warns her not to wear fashionable dress but to select that which suits Indian tradition. Here, we notice the clash of costume between Priya and her mother about what to wear and what not to (Raskar, "Reflections" 3-4)

We see love-hate relationship between Priya and her mother. Her mother says to her "we sacrificed for you, so you have to be our slave" (Malladi 86). When Priya discovers her mother not taking care of her well, she says to her "Then you have to learn to treat me with respect, too" (Malladi 89). Her mother gets armoyed and reacts: "you are too young to gain my respect and you have done nothing so far to gain it," she raged. "Respect! Children respect their parents...and that is all there is to it. You have to learn to behave yourself I am not your classmate or your friend that you can speak to me like this" (Malladi 89). In Indian culture, the elders are always honored even though they are on the wrong side. The young have to be incredibly respectable towards their seniors. The westerners call people by their names even though the individual is much older than they are. In the present novel, Priya calls Nick's mother by her name, Frances, even though she is much older than Priya. In India, elders are given extraordinary status within the society and their significant responsibility is very clearly accepted. Western society is a work and activity-centered society and in contrast, eastern society is wide-ranging and Indian societies in particular are relationship centered.

In India, Priya cannot work up her nerve to inform her parents about the USA situation. She is young and never violated the rules of her family tradition yet. The differences in the religion between her family in India and her boyfriend in the USA make the things most difficult for her. She is duty-bound towards her parents because she has been raised and cannot act differently under the circumstances. Priya is in a dilemma, whether to follow the rigid rules of her family or to violate them for the sake of her fiiture prospects with her boyfriend Nick. Her dilemma is the result of two lived cultural practices, which develop conflicting ideologies in her mind. She faces the dilemma and clashes in India, once she is removed from her adopted culture with different experiences and values to revisit her native culture.

191 The novel is about arranged marriage versus love marriage. This is an issue discussed in every Indian family unit when it comes to marriage. Children love someone else but they are asked to marry the person chosen by their parents. This issue can clearly be noticed in this novel as this whole story reflects on Priya, who faces a conflict having to make a decision between arranged and love marriage. Arranged and love marriages have their own compensation and disadvantages. Arranged marriage shows a sense of reverence and assurance of the younger generations towards their elders by following them in deciding their future life partner. On the other hand, love marriage exhibits their courage and strength of mind in striving for their love and with the person they love. Priya, the most important character in this novel is a Telugu girl who comes from a Brahmin family. Therefore, it is necessary for her to tie the knot with a Telugu Brahmin only. The clash begins when Priya is in love with a black American, Nick. The main disparity we come across in the novel is between the two cultures, Indian, and western, dealing with marriage. Priya has a cultural clash with her family where none of them is prepared to sustain her except Nate and Sowmya (Raskar, "Reflections" 4) When, Priya decides to marry Nick, no matter what happens, Thatha, her grandfather objects to her decision. This shows how strict older generations are in forbidding a love marriage. An arranged marriage is planned in a businesslike manner. A man's parents wish a number of qualities in their daughter-in-law and a woman's parents desire certain qualities in their son-in-law. What the children want usually does not find a place in the negotiation. In the novel, there is a cultural clash between traditional ideology of arranged marriage and modem view of love marriage.

Sowmya is caught in a no-man's-land. She has been discarded or cast off by numerous suitors for being less qualified, "Sixty-four matches and not one worked out" (Malladi 36). Despite having a bachelor's degree in Telgu literature, Sowmya has not at all held a job in her life. Thatha says, jobs are not for women of their class. With her education and all, at best she can be a secretary or a clerk, which is unacceptable to him. He thinks these are careers and jobs for people with a lower socio economic status. It shows that Thatha is a very caste-conscious man, who wants to maintain the traditional norms of his dominant Brahmin caste. He does not allow Sowmya to go out to prove her existence. He confines her to the long-established

192 conventions, whereas Sowmya wants to catch up with the changes in the world, but she is controlled by her extended family

Priya's hesitation to disclose her relationship with Nick illustrates how the cultural set-up to which she belongs and her belonging to her family in the role of a daughter or a granddaughter has caused the double marginalization. Sowmya's situation illustrates the same double marginalization. For different reasons but both the daughter-in-law Lata and Neelima are subjected to this feature of the cultural clash known as the double marginalisation.

In the western culture, class inequality is based on the economic criterion and culturally it is open to an individual to attain his own class position. Individual class mobility is achievable in class systems, and certainly, this is the culture of most developed class systems in the contemporary world. While caste system is based on custom and religious criteria, it is still a significant indicator for marriage, particularly among the first-generation immigrants and short-term visitors. In India, sometimes Brahmin parents would say that a Brahmin of any group is acceptable, but, in practice, challenging efforts are made to discover matches' in one's own linguistic and regional groups. An important aspect of the maintenance of group boundaries is that people should marry only people from their local community. One cannot achieve social mobility by remaining rigid and orthodox. Among the second-generation immigrants, marriages arranged by parents are increasingly rare. 'Own-Choice' marriages may include young men and women taking initiatives through websites to find their partners and caste is not a relevant consideration in this regard (Raskar, "Reflections" 5).

5.8. Cultural Clash: Reconciliation The ceremony of arranged marriage is the main thorn on Priya's side. She opposes to it in the broadest sense, considering that people must marry for love, even if that means going in opposition to the wishes and traditions of the family, and marrying outside their sacred beliefs and societal position. She opposes arranged marriage on a more individual level, and speaks out against the pelli-chupulu (bride- seeing ceremony). There is a rifl; between Priya and her family members, who aspire

193 to see her getting married to an Indian. Therefore, they insist on the bride-seeing ceremony. However, Priya firmly believes that it is one's choice that is to be respected more than the choice of parents. She resists her family and shows her reluctance to follow rigid conventions of Indian culture. It means, Priya though bom in India to Indian parents shows her resistance to Indian cultural demands. She goes on fighting with her family to oppose arranged marriage. It shows that there is a cultural clash between tradition and modernity.

In the context of Priya, we can obviously notice many changes in terms of lifestyle, her perception of things in her daily life, after she returns to India after living in The United States for seven years. Simultaneously, we can perceive that she has a diverse mindset now, as she is much liberalized and rationalized. She thinks that going through pelli-chupulu is just a waste of time. When Priya declares her decision to marry her American friend Nick, her grandmother, Ammamma opposes her decision and says to her "In our family we don't let our daughters chase and marry men from other castes" (Malladi 52). Priya stays firm on her choice of marrying Nick, So Thatha also reacts in the same way. He says to Priya: "I will not accept it, Priya. If you marry this man, then you are not my family" (Malladi 222). This shows how elder generations severely treat a love marriage. However, Priya has a special way of looking at love and marriage. She says: "In several arranged marriages, couples don't fall in love with each other, they merely tolerate each other" (Malladi 59). For Thatha, a marriage is based on promise, not on love. As it develops, the feelings routinely get increased. He shows unwillingness to permit Priya to wed someone from another caste or ethnic group. The words like 'happiness' and 'love' are totally missing in his rulebook. The sense of duty is at the top for him. Now Priya is forced to select between the love of her family unit and Nick, the love of her future life. Thata attempts to transform the mind of Priya by saying that, "You cannot make mango pickle with tomatoes," (Malladi 170). He further advises her that, "You cannot mesh two cultures without making a mess of it. I say this because 1 love you. Forget about this American. They are not our people. They will never understand us. Marry Adarsh. He is good boy and it will make your family happy" (Malladi 170). Children who are staunch believers in Hindu marriage institution agree to the idea of elders finding a match for a girl or a boy. However, Priya finds the culture of arranged marriage so dominating, where the children are barred firom choosing their partners.

194 Therefore, she protests against her family. Priya's family and relatives are against her decision of marrying American boy. Here we notice difference of opinion between two generations regarding the culture of arranged marriage (Raskar, "Reflections" 5- 6).

Initially, Priya's father Nana also shows reluctance to let Priya marry someone from other caste or ethnic group. He objects to her resolution by convincing her that "Marrying someone who does not understand your culture, your roots, your traditions, it will not work out" (Malladi 211). Priya gets angry at watching the conventional culture of her extended family. She loses her temper when Neelima says, "We are not like all those white women who have sex with hundreds of men. We marry the man we have sex with" (Malladi 76). Priya's mother looks worried due to her daughter's dark colour. However, Priya's boyfriend Nick cannot see the clever distinction between the various shades of Indian dark. As he says, "All Indians are dark" (Malladi 29). Finally, Priya's experience as a "semi-foreigner" in her own country gives her pain. She knows her family would not be able to see Nick beyond the colour of his skin and the fact that he is a foreigner. It would not matter if he were the kindest, richest, and most good-looking man that ever walked on the earth. His ethnic group and race has already barred him as a potential groom for her. Now Priya thinks:

This was not home anymore. Home was in San Francisco with Nick. Home was Whole Floods grocery and fast food at KFC. Home was Pier 1 and Wal-Mart. Home was 7-Eleven and Star-bucks. Home was familiar, Hyderabad was a stranger; India was as alien, exasperating, and sometimes exotic to me as it would be to a foreigner (Malladi 134).

Priya has been not in India for many years and now she comprehends that she no longer feels at ease in her motherland, but would somewhat be 'home' in America (Raskar, "Cultural" 3-4). She does not feel comfortable in her own homeland. After having stayed in America for some years, she assimilated the American culture. Now she finds herself homeless in her own home.

The novel argues the experiences of NRIs in India. A persistent theme in diasporic Indian literature is depiction of the experiences of the NRIs-(Non-Resident 195 Indians) and the PIOs-(People of Indian Origin), in India. The diasporic actions of these people are by no means always ending, and many of them travel and move back and forth. If immigrants are often in doubt in their new locales, there is an equivalent approach towards them in the place of their "origin" as well. If the concept of "home" is challenging, or even haunting, in the diasporic condition, such feelings are frequently reinforced during a stay "back home" (Kuortti 18-19).

Priya believes that change is everlasting, and one cannot respond to it negatively. When we are on the soil of the westerners, gradually we get adapted to the way of life there. For instance, the cultural clash is also seen in the living styles in America and in India. Living jointly before marriage is considered totally illegal and immoral in India but not in the western society. This living together is basically not acceptable before the couple gets married according to Hindu marriage institutional customs. The stereotyped Indian system of India creates harsh barriers when one marries a non-Indian. Here, we can notice that Priya's lifestyle had drastically changed when she went to America. She lived together with Nick in the same home even though they were not married then. Therefore, the facts gathered from the novel assume that we may get adapted to the culture where we are. In today's world, we perceive how diverse types of people work together in the global world. Unluckily, the line between cultures is not always without difficulty or sometimes gets blurred. In today's globalised world, some customs and traditions have become out of place and need to be done away with. Similarly, discrimination and hatred based on race and class are often the grounds of severe cultural clashes and it becomes pertinent to remove these two evils that have plagued the contemporary world.

Priya goes on to clash with her family members and after that amazingly empowers every member in the house. She succeeds in bringing transformation in the lives of her family members. At the end of the novel Priya gives power to every female in the house to revolt against the controlled, cruel, prejudiced culture of male subjugated society. She carries with her awareness that she gained in America. Priya's cross-cultural experiences enrich her creative awareness even as she finds herself a foreigner in her homeland. Her compromise absorbs conflict of cultures without being bitter. She struggles to make society more balanced and friendlier to promote cultural diversity. Her diasporic identity makes a huge impact on the members of her family,

196 particularly all women stand up for themselves and learn to demand and claim their place in society. Sowmya gets liberal and independent. As she says, "1 am going to change my life, Priya. 1 am going to change it. 1 am not just going to sit down and let them do what they want...l am going to decide what 1 want to do" (Malladi 182). She fiirther adds: "And 1 want to stop wearing saris. 1 want to only wear salwar kameez. This sari is so uncomfortable. And I want to go to America to see your house and see that country" (Malladi 183).

In India, woman is well thought-out to be an "embodiment of sacrifice, silent sufferings, humility, faith, and knowledge" (Everett 76). We notice how at Priya"s grandparents" house there is a lot of anxiety to know about the sex of Lata"s baby because Lata, the mother of two daughters, is expecting a child again. Therefore, Priya's grandfather Thatha wants a "pure blooded" boy to continue the family name. But Lata criticizes by saying that "I don't want to know the sex of this baby" (Malladi 221). She makes a decision that "There will be no ultrasound and no amino test" (Malladi 221). Further she desires, "I want to have this child and 1 want it to be a surprise like it was when Shalini and Apoorva were born" (Malladi 221). She also asserts, "I wish more women would stand up for what they want" (Malladi 217). Her husband Jayant fails to change her decision. Thatha gets angry after listening to Lata's decision; meanwhile Sowmya gets in the way and manages to defend Lata's decision. Sowmya shocks everybody by saying that Tf she doesn't want to know, we should not force her. We are not that kind of a family" (Malladi 222). We notice how the women of Priya's extended family for the first time come forward to reftise to accept the old conventions and the nature of discrimination (Raskar, "Cultural" 4). In agreement with antique Hindu scriptures, the birth of a male child in a family is considered a blessing for different reasons. First, it makes sure the maintenance of the family name. Second, the son is seen as a financial advantage and upon marriage would bring a dowry. Third, he would also be expected to help and look after his parents and is likely to carry out all the funeral rites and light the funeral pyre, to make sure the safe passage and the ultimate release of the spirit. The birth of a daughter, on the other hand, is treated with varied feelings and even with a few doubts.

197 After listening to Priya's choice to marry her American boyfriend, Thatha declares to Priya's father, "I want you to know that>'OM will be the person with the most blame. You can stop her. Do it now" (Malladi 223). However, Nana shows development in his character by supporting the decision of his daughter. As he says, "She is my daughter and this is my choice to make, just like you are making yours. I trust her. 1 believe her to be a smart and intelligent woman. I think that if she says she is happy with Nicholas, she is telling the truth. Priya is no fool" (Malladi 223). At the end of the novel, almost all the members of Priya's extended family begin to realize the importance of acceptance, liberalism, tolerance, and negotiations along with empowerment that must be made in order to maintain and improve their relationships with their closely connected people (Raskar, "Cultural" 4). Priya's initial dilly­ dallying is overcome and she clearly states about her relationship with Nick. This leads to her reconciliation with her core family. Priya's approach has its impact and Sowmya discusses her "future" with the groom-to-be Anand demands appropriate status and respectful treatment for Neelima and Lata refuses to go in for the 'amino test'.

5.9. Summing Up: With globalization and increase in educational amenities, there is a huge alteration in the views of people. As modernization has affected every section of society, inter-caste marriages have also received approval from the people in urban and modem societies. There has been a broad change in the social state of affairs. Family members and relatives of the lovers are coming up with minds that are more open with wider acceptance of marriages outside their own castes. But, based on this story, we can gather that Priya comes from a family which still has the older generations mindset on inter caste marriages. America and India are far different from each other in everything. America is an industrially developed country while India is still a developing country. It is very tough to compare two countries, which are so diverse in everything.

Nate and Priya have a good relationship. They communicate regularly via email and even on the phone. There is no sibling opposition between them. Nate is ten years younger than Priya. They acknowledge that both had spent time in the same

198 womb and they accept each other's flaws but they keep fighting over happiness and other various food items and philosophies. Nate has a North Indian girlfriend, Tara; a girl who comes on her Kinetic Honda to meet her boyfriend Nate in the night. Tara belongs to new Indian modem generation. She does not belong to the type to which Priya's mother belongs. In her tight yellow blouse and small black skirt, she is not different from a representative girl of her age in the US. For Priya, it is cultural shock to know how things have changed to a great extent in India. Tara is a self-determining woman of the 21^*' century. Priya confesses that she herself knows very little about pop music of the United States but Nate and Tara are aware of it. Their feet tap to the music and Tara has hummed the lyrics. Priya admits, "...when I was in India I didn't know much about the pop music of the United States. Nate and Tara were aware of it all, their feet tapped to the music and Tara hummed to the lyrics" (Malladi 173). She accepts that it is completely new Indian generation in which "...girls could meet boys at a place like this after nine in the night" (Malladi 173-74). Priya gets shocked to see the entirely different side of Indian younger generation, which is so advanced and mature. She finds Indian younger generation like Americans in every aspect of life (Raskar, "Cultural" 4).

199