International Journal of Scientific & Innovative Research Studies ISSN : 2347-7660 (Print) | ISSN : 2454-1818 (Online) The Quest for Roots : Diasporic Experience in the Novels of Indian Diaspora

ARUN GULERIA VALLABH GOVT. COLLEGE, MANDI

In the modern scenario, ‘diaspora’ is viewed as a experience. If a person has no home then there is term carrying many interpretations. The diasporic no question of his being alienated anywhere. It is experience today projects an experience of many in the home where a person’s roots are fixed and a overlapping. When we talk of the diasporas as person without a home has no place to live in and being transnationals it implies the multiple has no survival with true existence. Migrated and geographical spaces inhabited by them. People dispersed people not only experience their living outside their homelands in some way try and physical journey but have sweet and bitter effect maintain a connection with their homeland on their psyche with the sense of retrieving through history, culture and tradition that that memories of their original home. they religiously edify in their host lands. They look Life is said to be an endless journey, and back from the outside, not letting go off the \’home, it has been said, is not necessarily where baggage that they carried when they first left their one belongs but the place where one starts from.” native shores. The diasporic view their hostland or In The New Parochialism: Homeland in the writing adopted land as a temporary stopover destination of Indian Diaspora Jasbir jain avers that “the word and hence are not able to establish and emotional ‘Home’ no longer signifies a ‘given’, it does not bonding with the new land. necessarily connote a sense of ‘belonging’, instead “Even in the age of communication, the place it increasingly foregrounds a personal choice which Where your history and heritage is, and where may the individual has exercised, and ‘home’ and be your childhood was , when you are taken away ‘homeland’ are for all practical purposes separable from there it is bound to do something to your units. Uma Chaudhary enlists the inherent psyche and personality. This is an increasing oppositional tendency in the construction of documented but also imaginatively, creatively homeland associated with the Diaspora people reconstructed for it to be understood.” (Sareen) who travel far away for their homeland in search The above line by S.K. Sareen bring from of a better life when she says: “the realist Home Everywhere: The Consciousness of Diasporic discourse of home relies on a long standing Belonging, about the fact that it is home which conceptual structure in which two figures are gives birth to the sense and feeling of balanced and constructed as opposite: the figures homelessness, rootlessness and homesickness. of belonging and exile. ‘Home’ here signifies the Home is main reason behind any diasporic nation, cultural values, social values and spiritual

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International Journal of Scientific & Innovative Research Studies ISSN : 2347-7660 (Print) | ISSN : 2454-1818 (Online) values; home represents the nation and its the Diaspora is undoubtly the space of overlapping principles. Above all ‘home’ signifies one’s roots, of boundaries. But these boundaries do not existence’. Home often keeps both the terms necessarily lead to polities of heredity; therefore, it ‘homelessness’ and ‘homesickness’ together, and constitutes a politics of segregation, an innate during exile both the endless feelings stand ability in the diasporic individual to reclaim his inseparate to each other. identity as well as construct the other that gives It is the ‘Diaspora’ which comprises the stability to his self. history of slavery, indentured labour, the material Different critics give different descriptions aspects of migrant labour and livelihood, along of Diaspora to signify Indian Culture and its with abstract notions like homelessness, location and dislocation abroad. homsickness, memory, nostalgia and melancholy. Diaspora basically used to refer to the Homi K. Bhabha in The Location of Culture, dispersion of Jews after the Babylonian exile in 586 remarks that “,, although the Únhomely’’ is BC. In modern times, however, the term is applied paradigmatic colonial and post colonial condition, to describe any group of people who are so it has a resonance that can be heard distinctly, if dispersed. Harsha Patadia finds one of the reasons erratically, in fictions that negotiates the powers of of dispersion and migration in multiculturalism in culture differences in a range of trans-historical Migration and Relational Balancing between the sites.” Cultures when she says, ‘One of the reasons for the In case of failure in adjustment and want of better life, education, stable economy or location in abroad or other province with inhabit attraction of materialistic life.”8 culture ethics, a dispersed or migrated person But living in multicultural society and being reaches at the state of dilemma whether he has characterized by and ethnic identity, the Indian managed himself to escape from his original communities abroad are required to negotiate the culture or has made him able to locate him in new problem of ethnicity. They have to experience culture atmosphere. His dilemma gives birth to the ethnic discrimination that causes a great abstract notions of homelessness and dislocation of mind and heart. Stendra Nandan homesickness, because neither one is able to avers in The Diasporic Consciousness: From Biswas escape from one’s original culture nor can one to Biswasghat.” Interrogeting Post-colonialism locate oneself in that cultural atmosphere where Theory, Text and Context that “The Modern Indian one is residing currently. Gorffrey Hartman is right Diaspora- the huge migration from the when he writes in The fateful Question of Culture subcontinent that most important demographic that ‘homelessness is always a curse.6”Thus, dislocation of modern times: it now represents an dislocated circumstances are often reflecte in exile important force in world culture.”9 literature. Atanu Bhattacharya is of the view in Post-colonialism brought an historical Everything is there: Relocating the Diasporic Space period where multicultural and cultural in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies that “it discrimination and cultural dislocation issues is no ‘dislocatedness’ that defines the Diaspora, concerning were highlighted alone with the sense but the ‘locatedness’. He further emphasizes that of hybridity, alienation, identity “a sense of

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International Journal of Scientific & Innovative Research Studies ISSN : 2347-7660 (Print) | ISSN : 2454-1818 (Online)

rootlessness and the longing to search for some Trinadian by birth, English by virtue of his Oxford centres of shelter which writers and critics such a education , Naipaul has given credence to Edward Said, Homi K. Bhabha, Gloria Anzaldna, inheriting something of his insecurities of the Theodore Adorno, Jacques Derrida, Derekk Waleoll transplanted colonial with an ambiguous identity. Deleuze,, Guattari, V.S. Naipaul and Salman The Indian background has become part of mixed Rushdie have contributed a lot to describe culture.” diaspora as a multidisciplinary field and later For the present research paper the works emphasized its cutlureal perspectives. The by three male and two female writers of Indian contemporary Indian diasporic writers, such as V.S. Diaspora have been selected with aim to study Naipaul, Haqnif Kureishi, Michael Ondaatje, Uma their perception of distinct diasporic experience. Paremshwarm, Meena Alexander, Bharti The works selected are V.S. Naipaul’s Magic Seeds, Mikherjee, Rohinton Mistry, Gloria Anzaldna, Army Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies, Rohinton Mistry’s Tan, Maxine Hong Kinston, Amitav Ghosh, Hari Family Matters, Chitra Banerjee’s One Amazing Kunzu, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kavita Deswani, Sara Sulegi, Thing and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss. Agha Shahid Ali and Salman Rushdie explore the One of the male diasporic writers, V.S themes of culture consciousness, rootlessness, Naipaul has gone through expatriate experience in alienation, homelessness and dislocation in their his real life. He is imbedded with pain of his works. Novelists like Naipaul, Rushdie, Vikram displacement. Therefore, he reflects and social Seth, Anita Desai Kiran Desai, Rohinton Mistrey, conflict in A House for Mr. Biswas; expatriate Jhumpa Lahiri have made a mark while residing sensibility in his non-fictional works The Middle abroad. Passage , The Area of Darkness, and India: A The modern Diaspora Indian writers can be Wounded Civilization. Rootlessness, alienation and grouped into two distinct classes. One class psychological defences in status, power and sex in comprises of those who have spent a part of their The Mimic Man; memory and the myth of origin life in India and have carried the baggage of their and disorientation of identity, sensibility and native land offshore. Salman Rushdie, Amitav sensuality in Half a Life. Howerer, V.S. Naipaul Ghosh, Rhhinton Mistery, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, takes up more serious issues relating to Trinidad in Chitra Banerjee, were all born in India and became his two novels The Mystic Masseur and The permanent residents of foreign counties. The other Suffrage of Elvira. Both the books depict the class comprises those who have been bred since microcosm of Hindu Immigrants with multicultural childhood outside India. They have had a view of phenomenon. A Bend in the River and Guerillas their country only from the outside as an exotic take up the theme of post-colonial scenario in place of their origin; V.S. Naipaul and Jhumpa Africa. In A Bend in the River, Naipaul continues Lahiri were born abroad, and nevertheless, they do with the theme of homelessness. not remain untouched to their origin. N. Sharda Born in 1932, the Nobel prize winner in Iyer in A House for Mr. Biswas: A Study of Cultural 2001, V.S.Naipaul is a basically from Utter Pradesh. Predicament remarks., “East Indian by descent, Through his experience in displacement he

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International Journal of Scientific & Innovative Research Studies ISSN : 2347-7660 (Print) | ISSN : 2454-1818 (Online) wonderfully inculcates all these issues in his works. Hungary Tide and Shadow Lines inculcate the V.S. Patel in Naipaul’s Half a Life: A Study in themes of partition and freedom, violence, futility Diasporic Experience.”Interpreting Indian Diasporic of drawing lines across a nation to form two Experience says “ In the diasporic literature, the nations, agony of displacement, and a sense of dislocation and consequent loss of identity have alienation in the adopted land and the constant been popular themes and Naipaul is apparently a dream of return to one’s land. Thus, Amitav Ghosh champion of his issue.” from his commencement in writing novels rightly Naipaul’s vivid description of the different depicts with variety of themes. His In An Antique castes of prisoners reveals much about Indian Land is a travel book which explores incompatible society as a whole. The protagonist Willie difference between the culture of the writer and Experiences in Magic Seeds are significant, he sees the Egiptians. It could be called historical novel. His the revolutionaries as people reluctant to let go of first novel The Circle of Reason comprises motifs old ideas about home and country. Willie also and metaphor with journey motif as the author notices that some guerrillas experience the same himself has travelled from England to Delhi and displacement as himself, finding in their futile ware later to Egypt and England. The Calcutta a sense of purpose. Others are motivated by the Chromosomes has some leading themes, such as , thing as inane a sexual frustration, or as significant disappearance and discovery, sense of space and as childhood beating or lifelong suffering due to time, theme of quest and so on. K.K. Parekh in The the machination of upper class. Therefore, Willie Theme of Quest in The Calcutta Chromosome,” The brought the issue of identity, sense of alienation Ficton of Amitav Ghosh says that “ it seems that and exile though his endless journey in various the author is very well rooted in his own culture- countries. But it is Patel who compares Willie with the Indian. The novel, also explores the cyclic time albatross in ‘The Ancient Mariner’’ and brings out concept and hence the treatment of time is also the theme as “the Loss of Identity, Sense of the Indian one.” Alienation and exile is the lot of missed cross The Glass palace highlights unexpected breed, unpedigreed class.. the stigma of being a relationships across counties and cultures, political second rate citizen keeps Willie prepossessed like and ethical issues, exploitation, the dehumanizing the Albatross in “The Ancient Mariner” around the effects of racism and dispossession, struggle for Ancient Mariner’s neck.” love and death, and cultural dislocation which not Another male diasporic novelist who plays only the king, the queen and Rrajumar Raha faced significant role to promote concepts like identity but the other minor characters also remain crisis, cultural dislocation and exile, Amitav Ghosh untouched to this. Amitav Ghosh’s fiction is Sea of is that literary figure who evokes “post colonial Poppies was published in 2008. It is a historical situations and cultural dislocation.”14 Born on novel that unfolds in north India and the Bay of 1956 in Calcutta, Ghosh is an Indian Bengali writer. Bengal in 1838 on the eve of the British attack on He was educated at the Doon School, Delhi the Chinese ports known as the first opium war. In University and Oxford University. At present, he is this novel, Ghosh dramatizes two great economic living with his wife in New York. His Novels The themes of the nineteenth century, the cultivation

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International Journal of Scientific & Innovative Research Studies ISSN : 2347-7660 (Print) | ISSN : 2454-1818 (Online)

of opium as a cash crop in Bengal and Bihar for tremendously. During the recent decade, several Chinese market and the transport of Indian Parsi writers like Farrukh Dhondy , Firdaus Kanga, indentured workers to cut sugarcanes for the Dina Mehta and others, beside Bapsi Sidhwa, British on such islands as Mauritius, Fiji and Boman Desai, Meher Pestonji, Keki Daruwalla, Trinidad. Thus some of the issues on diasporic Have emerged as significant writers of Parsi experiences through the indentured labour and its literature. close association with home and homelessness, The novel Family Matters explores the identity crisis and dogmatic influence in the Indian problems faced by an average middle class society are elaborately described though the main Nariman’s family. It contains many details of the characters like Deeti, Benjamin Burnham, neel Parsi Practices, rituals intolerances and great Rattan Haldar etc. dilemmas among India’s Parsis, Persian descended Along with Naipaul and Ghosh, a Parsi Zoroastrians, to wider concerns of corruption and novelist Rohinton Mistry, born in Bombay, plays a communalism. By associating Mistry,s traits of very vital role in depicting diasporic experience being diasporic writer with Salman Rashdie, it is thorough his novels. He is as diasporic writer of the remarked that, “ Mistry’s fiction is rooted in the South Asian origin in Canada like Uma streets of Bombay., the city he left behind for Parameshwaram, Himani Banerjee, Tasmin Ladha Canada at the age of 23. This imaginary homeland and others. Sumita Pal in In search of Roots Parsi something of a literal capital within South Asian Fiction states that “ Rohinton Mistry... diasporic writng today has inevitably led to successfully evokes a sense of loss and nostalgia in comparisons with Salman Rushdie, another the immigrant’s experience and the alienation of Bombay born author now based abroad. Critical Parsis in India. He reflects the hope of a person of Perspectice. ( http: //www scholars merging into the culture of the adopted land and nus.edu.sg/[pst/Canada/literature/mistry/takha/ht the concealed desire to go back to their Native ml). Land.” Among Indian women diasporic writers, His Such a Long Journey focuses on the the youngest Kiran Desai, the daughter of great parsi community in India with its customs and Indian womean novelist Anita Desai, has made a beliefs. The novel highlights the communal life of remarkable landmark in the field of Indaian Parsies in Post independent India. Various issues diasporic writing with her award winning novel The such corruption in high places, minority complexes, Inheritance of Loss. She was awarded Bookers social disorder, turmoil in social political scenario Prize in the year 2006 as well as the National Book have been vividly depicted, “ Rohinton Mistry is Critics Circle Fiction Award in the same year. Born not only to fight for a cultural rerritory but also to in Chandigarh, she spent her childhood in Pune create distinct indentity of their own. and Mumbai. She moved to England at the age of In A Fine Balance, Mistry focuses on the fourteen. After one year her family moved to US history of his homeland, his community, his family and she studied at Hollins University and the and reveals his diasporic consciousness Colombia University.

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International Journal of Scientific & Innovative Research Studies ISSN : 2347-7660 (Print) | ISSN : 2454-1818 (Online)

Her The Inheritance of Loss has won culcutta in 1976 and came to the United States. international applause. In one of the reviews, She completed her Master Degree from Dayta Pankaj Mishara says, “ Although it focuses on the University and PhD from the University of fate of a few powerless individuals, Kiran Desai’s California. Divkurnai currently teaches at “ extraordinary new novel manages to explore, with University of Houston”. She lives in Houston with intimacy and insight just about every her husband Murthy and his two sons. Her first contemporary international issue: globalization, book of short stories, Arranged Marriage won multiculturalism, economic inequality many awards. Her other published novels are The fundamentalism and terrorist violence, despite Mistress of Spices, Sister of My Heart, and The Vine being set in the mid 1980’s it seems the best kind of Desire. She has written three books for children, of post9/11 novel.” The Inheritance of Loss , a Neela: victory Song, The couch Bearer, and The historical novel, is set in the times of Indo-Nepal Mirror of Fine and Dreaming. The Unknown Errors insurgence. It is essentially the story of the judge, of Our Lives is her latest book of short stories jhemubhai Patel and Sai and orphaned featuring tales set in India and America. The stories granddaughter of the retired judge in Kalimpong. It explore the transformations of personal is parly set in India and USA. She is westernized landscapes real and imagined brought about by Indian broght-u[ by Englsih nuns. Along with Sai the choices men and women make at every stage and her grandfather, Gyan and Biju are the other of their lives. protagonists who suffer with dislocation and The latest novel One Amazing Thing (2010) homesickness. Gyan joins a Nepalese insurgent is a tremendous fictional work written in Chaucer’s movement that demands its own homeland. He is The Canterbury Tales’ style. This novel encircles the guy whom Sai falls in love with. Biju the son of nice characters who are customers in Indian visa a cook has been sent to America, as an illegal office in an unnamed American city. An upper immigrant who works in hellish kitchen one after Muslim American named Tariq struggles with the another. He is exploited, poor, terribly lonely and fallout of 9/11. A graduate student suffers from homesick. He struggles even for his survival. Thus, intricacies in love. An afro-American ex- Soldier the novel is a composition of diasporic experience who is searching for deliverance or redemption. A faced by various characters. Chinese grandmother with her secret past and Some of the leading themes as horror of two- visa worker having an adulterous affair play alienation and despair, issues of racism, significant role as they struggle for their survival. dislocation, assimilation and post-colonialism, These psychologically and emotionally stressed sense of fear and oppression and comment on people decide to tell their life stories. Each tells class, nationality and identity find expression in one amazing thing that has never been told before. this novel. These stories consist romance, marriage, family Besides Kiran Desai, Chitra Banerjee matters, political up-heaval and self- discovery Divakurnai does not remain untouched in predicting human experiences. promoting Diasporic writing through her tremendous novels. She was born in India, she left

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International Journal of Scientific & Innovative Research Studies ISSN : 2347-7660 (Print) | ISSN : 2454-1818 (Online)

References  Pal, Sumita. “ In search of Roots.” Parsi Fiction.  Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. ( Vol.ii. Eds. Novy Kapadia, Jaydiprinh and London and New York: Routledge, 1984) 7. Dhawan, R.K.. (New Delhi: Prestige, 2001) 145.  Bhattacharya, Atanu “ Everything is there:  Parekh , K.K.. “ The Theme of Quest in The Relocating the Diasporic Space in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Calcutta Chromosome,” The Ficton of Amitav Interpreter of Maladies,” Interpreting Indian Ghosh. Eds. Indira BHutta and Idira Diasporic Experience Eds. Nityanandam. ( New Delhi: Creative, 2001) 206.  Adesh and Tapas ( New Delhi: Creative Books,  Patadia , Harsha. “ Migration and Relational 2004) 142 Balancing between the Cultures.” Indian  Chakrabati, Tapas “ culture, nation and the Diaspora. Ed. Adesh Pal. ( New Delhi: Creative Diaspora in Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace and Books, 2004) 210. In an Antique Land”, Interpreting Indian  Patel,V.S.. “ Naipaul’s Half a Life: A Study in Diasporic Experience. Ed. Adesh Pal Diasporic Experience.” Interpreting Indian  And Tapas Chaudhary. (New Delhi: Creative ools, Diasporic Experience. Eds. Ads. Adesh and 2004).Critical Perspectice. ( http: //www scholars Chakarbarti. ( New Delhi: Creative, 2004) 256. nus.edu.sg/[pst/Canada/literature/mistry/takha/  Ravindran, Sankran. “ Indian Diaspora and its html). Difficult Texts,” Indian Diaspora. Eds. Adesh Pal  Dhawan, R.K.. “ Introduction” The Novels of and Tapan Chakarbarti. ( New Delhi: Creative Amitav Ghosh. (New Delhi: Prestige, 1999) 22. Books, 2004) 130.  Jain , Jasbir. “ The New Parochialism: Homeland  Sereen, S.K.. A Home Everywhere: The in the writing of Indian Diaspora,” Theories, Consciousness of Diasporic Belonging,” Indian Hisories, Texts. Ed. Markarand Pranjpe. ( New Diaspora. Eds. Adesh Pal and Tapas Chakarborti. Delhi: Indialog, 2004) 80. ( New Delhi: Creative Books, 2004) 89.  Misra, Pankaj’s review (http: //www.  Shardaa Iyer , N.. “ A House for Mr. Biswas: A Nytimes,com/12misra.html)A Study of Cultural Predicament, “ V.S, Naipaul:  Nandan ,Satendra. “ The Diasporic Critical Essays. Vol. 111. Eds. Mohit K. Ray. ( New Consciousness: From Biswas to Biswasghat.” Delhi: Atlantic, 2005) 18. Interrogeting Post-colonialism Theory, Text and Context. Eds. Harish Trivedi and Meenakshi Mukherjee. ( Shimla: IIAS, 1996) 53  Nasta, Sushiela. “ Prologue: Some Home Truths,” Home Truths: Fiction of the South Asia Diapora in Britain. ( New York: Palgrave, 2002,)1.  Hatman, Geoffere The fateful Question of Culture. ( London: Routledge, 1984) 7.

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