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ISSN 2278-9529 Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal

www.galaxyimrj.com

Quest for Identity and Conflict in Indian Female Diasporic Writers

Dr. Madhuri Sood Head of Dept (English)

Jwalaji Degree College, Jwalamukhi.

Women writers like their male counterparts have written about their experiences in a foreign land. Travelling to foreign lands and settling there had been a taboo in ancient India. It was considered inauspicious to cross sea but within changing times the socio-political and economic realities changed and during British rule in India people were forced by their circumstances to seek their livelihood in alien countries mostly as laborers .They were not able to come back and had to settle there. That was their compulsion. They unwillingly went, forced by their colonial masters but afterwards people resorted to migration willingly in the search for greener pasture and/or for higher studies. Whether one goes to a foreign land willingly or unwillingly nostalgia for home and longing for roots is common with them.

The women who accompany their husbands to alien lands have different problems in addition to those experienced by their husbands. Men have to compete with native people for financial success. The original inhabitants feel threatened with the competition and the migrants are marginalized. They have to cling to their identity in an alien land to save themselves from elimination in the form of assimilation. They have to bear cultural shock when they land in a totally different cultural scenario. They assert their supremacy more emphatically in their homes. The women are doubly stressed. The pressure of men for maintaining the traditional values at home and totally different atmosphere outside gives rise to conflict in the minds of these women. There is another problem of those women who have left lucrative careers at home to accompany husbands who find lucrative jobs in Middle East where the conservative and traditional atmosphere almost hostile towards women especially foreigners makes them almost mentally sick when they neither find work incommensurate with their qualifications nor they are able to mingle with people who are culturally so different that they are not willing to interact beyond their families. There are shopping Malls but women are not allowed to go out alone. Not only these women but even but even those migrating to U.S. etc. also face similar situation though there are no restrictions outside but they are not able to get work of their choice. Let us look at what Deepti Lal has to say in this regard when talking about a woman migrating to another country.

Take Sinha, from being a publishing professional she was reduced to making sandwiches, an occupation she found both boring and demeaning. At times, hard won degrees are not recognized or painfully gathered skills are considered outdated.

(The Sunday Tribune, Spectrum 23 Sep 2012)

This reality is not yet explored fully in the novels of Indian women diasporic writers. We however find quest for identity and conflict between traditional and modern values in novels of C.B. Divakarni, Jhumpa Lahiri, Manju Kapur and Anita Desai etc. There are stories of people from suppression to empowerment. Marriage is all about dominance and submission, husbands and wives compromises and lives wasted and sometimes, full of conjugal happiness or joy. Mostly the women lead their lives anyhow if married with wrong partners and the married life

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become a tale of wifely martyrdom but new woman emerging in modern literature revolts against the tradition and the conflict in the mind dealing with their complex situation becomes the plot of some of the novels. It may be the difference between the two generations in C.B. Divakarni or modern values outside and pull of traditional values in Anita Desai.

In case of immigrants the first problem is to observe the cultural shock. The transplantation of human beings from one cultural world to a different cultural world is always full of pain. The material prosperity and liberty attracts from far but the problems associated with adjustment and assimilation outweighs the material prosperity. The resultant conflict creates pressure and controls the attitude of migrants. It is different for different people in varied circumstances depending upon the difference between the cultural values and traditional values. With the change of the country, traditional mindset of Indian male does not change and it results in more problems for females accompanying them. The pressure of traditional values at home and liberty and freedom outside result in conflict in the minds of female characters. This conflict is delineated in the novels of female diasporic writers along with the quest for identity in a foreign land where the migrants belong to marginalized section of society.

When in C.B. Divakarni’s novel, The Mistress of Spices this conflict of tradition and modernity is shown in the form of conflict between grandfather and granddaughter. The grand daughter is influenced by western thought. She asserts her individuality and does not conform to the image of sacrificing Indian woman bound by the traditional Indian values which expects from Indian women to lose their identity in that of their male counterparts Gitanjali Prasad rightly remarks:

Education is meant primarily to help a woman to marry well, be socially useful to her husband , be adept at bringing up her children ; equip her to render social service and is considered to be an insurance policy against broken marriage”(42)

Here the grand daughter is not ready to sacrifice her life and feelings for orthodox ideas of her grandfather on arrange marriage. Both of them resolve their conflicts by their sense of adaptability, compromise and forbearance.

The quest for identity and nostalgic feelings for the country left behind can also be seen in the novels of Jhumpa Lahiri. Jhumpa Lahiri left her country to settle in a foreign land and wife of Ashoke, the protagonist of her novel The Namesake is depicted in similar circumstances . During child birth she suffers remembering the customs and traditions during childbirth in her native place. The sense of alienation deepens when she is at hospital in an alien land with no one whom she and her husband call their own people, no one to share their happiness when they were blessed with a son:

Ahimsa thinks it is strange that her child will be born in a place most people enter either to suffer or to die. (The Namesake)

The longing to be with her own people and to be able to share her happiness makes her restless. They name their son Gogol. Ashok has his own reasons to name his son Gogol. When Ashoke is wounded in a train accident he was reading the story of Gogol and he could save himself by attracting the attention of medicos by dropping the crumpled pages of the story. That makes him emotionally attached to the name and he names his son Gogol who dislikes this name at first and then adopts it as a symbol of his own identity in his adopted land. This quest for identity is

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common for men and women both. Women writers write about their diasporic experience in varied ways. The migrants are faced with alien culture in their adopted land and they react differently depending upon their own cultural traditions and the circumstances. C.B. Divakarni has portrayed this experience in all its dimensions and her characters e.g. Tilo and Geeta in Mistress of Spices and the women characters in her other novel Sister of My Heart depict the cultural shock, the change in personality of a character in migrated country and the process of assimilation with quest of identity resulting in either a positive assimilation of good qualities of culture of the country of migration or the impact of alien culture in “Unhomeliness ” of migrant. The longing for the culture of native country and clinging to its traditional values to preserve one’s identity and the effect of different culture sometimes reduce a person into a non- entity and make him experience the feeling of rootlessness . Moreover there are original migrants who have different feeling for their native country and culture and they are emotionally attached to their homeland while the second generation of migrants is not nostalgic about the home country like their parents, however, the parents preserve their own culture and values at home and the western and liberal culture outside their home and traditional environment at their home make these children individuals with hybrid culture values Gogol in The Namesake does not like his name and reacts sharply when hid parents call him by the name but towards the end he understands the emotional importance of the name and adopts it as a symbol of his identity.

The diasporic women writers have evolved successfully and do not always write about only women related issues any more. They use various themes in their works and we can watch that there is not much difference about the themes of male and female diasporic writers. Both feel the cultural shock and feeling of alienation in a foreign land after migration. They have same quest of identity in the adopted country and the process of assimilation, and impact of marginalization and sometimes discrimination due to racial difference is also the same. But women writers write about these issues in a different way. For example Tilo in Mistress of Spices is educated to be Mistress in Land of Spices and is steeped in cultural and traditional values of her home but she practices the same profession in America with ease while preserving her own identity and enjoying the liberal atmosphere. Similarly in Sister of My Heart the traditional Indian Housewife Sudha revolts against her in- laws when they ask her to abort her female child after ultra sound. The impact of liberal and free culture makes her strong and she decides to not to bow to family pressure. She takes her own decisions and thus aims at positive assimilation into a different culture.

When a person decides to migrate, his/her cultural values, religion and beliefs migrate with him/her to a different country with him/her. It is not only the migration of an individual; it is migration of a whole life style and value system that goes with a migrant. When faced with a different culture and value systems in an alien land one reacts according to one’s belief, religion and education, that deeply affect one’s reaction. There is not only cultural difference .Sometimes when the races are different, colored individuals are discriminated against. Moreover, the natives of the country feel threatened and that sometimes results in a hostile working environment. All these difficulties coupled with a migrant’s own reaction shapes a particular diasporic experience. Bye-Bye Black Bird by Anita Desai also portrays the similar situation where the protagonist experiences the hostile reaction of the people in the land of migration and understands that he is not welcome there. All these varied diasporic experiences and the quest for identity is the reality of their very being in a foreign land. The women English Writers have authentically captured this feeling in their works that a migrant tries to stick to his identity of home and nation in Bye- Bye

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Black Bird Adit believes in supremacy of western culture and migrates to England. Adit realizes that an Indian is always looked upon as an inferior being by racially biased whites. About Divakarni’s portrayal of character K.S. Dhanam writes:

Divakarni’s books are directed mainly to women of all races and faiths who share a common female experience.

Like Divakarni, other Indian Women writers settled abroad have successfully captured the conflict and quest of identity of migrants in their writings.

Works Cited:

Dhanam, K.S. Migration with the New Culture: A study of Chitra Banerjee Divakarni’s The Mistress of Spices” critical essay on Diasporic writings. In Dr. K. Balachandran. Ed. New Dehli: Arise Publishers.

Desai, Anita. Bye Bye Black Bird. Delhi : Orient Paperbacks 1982.

Divakarni ,C. Benarjee. The Mistress of Spices London, Transworld Publishers1997 :

The Sister of My Heart, New York : Anchor Books 1999

Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Namesake. Houghton Mifflin Com,2003

Prasad, Gitanjali. The Great Indian Family, New Roles, Old Responsibilities. New Delhi: Penguin Books .2006.

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