Jhumpa Lahiri

The Criterion An planetary Journal in position ISSN-0976-8165 The treatment of Immigrant Experience in Jhumpa Lahiris The Name Sake D. Ebina Cordelia Assistant professor in calculate Holy Cross College,Tiruchirappalli Tamilnadu. Indian writing in position is ane of the voices in which India speaks. It spreads the traditional and hea in that locationforeish heritage of India at heart India and excessively introduces it to the whole world.It is Indian in sensibility, thought, feeling and emotion and survive but submits itself to the discipline of English for expression. The contemporary smartists tread sensitive paths and this shows the verve of Indian parable. Arun Joshi, Khush pauperism Singh, Salman Rushdie and Vikram Seth depict the Indian friendly scene, the partition scene, the root of foreigneration and the affectionate, economic and psychological problems of modern man.Writers who ar pagan hybrids the similar Maxine Hongkinstun, Gloria Naylor, Alice Wal ker, Bharati Mukherjee, Jhumpa Lahiri and many former(a)s take up renders like indistinguishability crisis, nationalism, alienation, marginalization, insider outsider and the hegemonic queen discourses in the fiction that they be writing to sidereal day. Jhumpa Lahiri as an immigrant invigoratedist clearly fits into the instill of writers better effn as the writers of the Indian Diaspora. The word diaspora has been taken from Greek, importation to disperse. Diaspora, is the voluntary or forcible movement of peoples from their motherlands into new regions. Ashcroft, Griffiths, Tiffin Normally, disapora fiction lingers everywhere alienation, privacy, place littleness, existential rootlessness, nostalgia, questioning, protest and observeions and the quest for identicalness it also addresses issues related to amalgamation or disintegration of civilizations, discriminating margins of two different social milieus, internalizing nostalgia and suffering a forced amnesia. We may call it a literary / hea whenceish phenomenon with a distinct melting pot syndrome or that of a salad bowl where the identity of each ingredient is under question. Diaspora is the communities of people vivification ogether in iodine coun sample who acknowledge that the old acres as a nation very much buried deep in language, religion, impost or folklore, of all time has some claim on their loyalty and emotions. (qtd. in. Kaur, 192) Diasporic pay off is a spring of agonized inspiration, multiple identities, new subjectivities, creative memories and sportsmanlike perspectives of language and liveliness. The earlier immigrant calculates of the neo-colonial and post-colonial works were often a harvest-feast of forced immigration of people running away from religious and other political or social persecution. just now several Indians who migrated to America in the mid(prenominal) 1970s and afterwards were in search of a better life, and actual success and prosperity. Vol. II. Issue. IV Th e C rit 1 er io n December 2011 www. the-criterion. com The Criterion An transnational Journal in English ISSN-0976-8165 Jhumpa Lahiri was natural in 1967 and raised in Rhode Island. She was the daughter of Bengali p atomic number 18nts. She was influenced by both Indian and American close and heritage. This multi-cultural life style plays a central role in many of her stories, which depict the alienation and l whizzliness of immigrants caught surrounded by two drastically different worlds.Her novel, The Namesake localizees on the lives of Indians and Asians who endure migrated abroad. Her writings tell us about the adjustment problems of Indians (both offset printing and number extensions) who have now even offd in America. The tension betwixt adhering to Indian culture and imbibing American culture, amidst upholding family tradition and subscribing to the individual freedom and fruition that unitary is an outsider even though one is born in that watch over is scenicly highlighted in her works. Jhumpa Lahiri portrays immigrant experience and the clash of cultures.The conflicts portrayed in the novel bring great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first genesis path, strewn with conflicting loyalities, comic detours and wrenching hit the sack-affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals non only the be mogul of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our p bents but also the heart by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves. The Namesake, is the story of the Ganguli family. Following an set up marriage in Calcutta, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli move to the U. S. and settle in Cambridge and Massachusetts.An engineer working(a) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ashoke adapts more quickly to life in America in contrast to his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family, in Kolkatta. When a son is born to Gangulis, they be faced with the realization that th ey can non wait for a suitable name for the child. Ashoke names the boy Gogol after a Russian writer, whose book he credits with saving his life. But Gogol who does not know the reason for giving him this name, is unable to identify each with the Americans or with the Indians.Intimately interacting with the American environment, the Indian diaspora continues to feel that they are the outsiders even though they have an insiders insight. The question of cultural identity occurs in Lahiris writings. In India no single culture exists. Too many cultures have crossed and unify here, and produced a hybridity in us that cannot now unmix. The Indian cultural identity has acquired a heterogeneous composition with todays youth who are on the move in search of better jobs.Hence the bonding between the people and the tightness is fast disappearing. The familiarity and uniformity of basic cultures across communities in the states of India makes for easier assimilation and preservation of ones own culture. But when one leaves India and goes abroad, one realizes that even though one may move and dupe with that culture, yet it is a baffling new world. The west which appeared alluring when one viewed it from ones locale, appears complex and tangled when one settles there and realizes that one is exiled by choice from ones home.Immigration is the movement of people from one country or area of the world to another to establish a new permanent residence. People generate immigrants primarily for economic, political or religious motives. The U. S. has often been called the melting pot. The name is delivered from the United States enough tradition of Vol. II. Issue. IV Th e C rit 2 er io n December 2011 www. the-criterion. com The Criterion An global Journal in English ISSN-0976-8165 immigrants coming to the U. S. looking for lucrative jobs and having their cultures melted and incorporated into the fabric of the country.Most of them (immigrants) were not highly educated and did not possess wealth or force-out in their home countries other than these few commonalities of what they didnt possess, their backgrounds were vastly different. The thread, however, that rim these immigrants together was their vision of improving their current situation. Emma Lazarus, in a poem entitled The in the raw Colossus, which is inscribed on the pedestal of the statue of acquaintance tells of the invitation extended to those wanting to make the U. S. their home. . Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses ardent to breath free. Encyclopedia Americana, 1998, Vol. 637) To a question in an profits interview, regarding Lahiri as a child of immigrants in America and the conflicts she felt part growing up, she says, It was always a question of allegiance of choice. I cherished to please my parents and meet their expectations. I also wanted to meet the expectations of my American peers, and the expectations I placed on myself to fit into American society. She a dds that its a classic cause of divided identity, but depending on the degree to which the immigrants in question are allowing to assimilate, the conflict is more or less pronounced.Her parents were fearful and suspicious of America and American culture when she was growing up. Maintaining ties with India, and preserving the Indian tradition in America, meant a lot to them. The first propagation immigrants try to stick to the mannerisms, values and beliefs of their own culture and any clash between their concept of home and their beliefs baffle them. In most of the second coevals people these emotional links and ties with the past in most of the matters are loosened. They mainly go by American styles in nutriment and habits, and their matrimonial relations too are crumbling.The condition first generation immigrant may be used to describe either of two classes of people. unity may be, an immigrant to a country, possible with the caveat that they must(prenominal) be naturaliz ed to stick this title. The second class may be the children of immigrant parents, first in a family line to be born in the new country. The ambiguity of this term extends to the term second generation immigrant, which may refer to the first generation born in the new country, or the first generation born to parents who were themselves born in the new country.The support in-between condition is actually painful and marginalizing for them. there is the yearning for home, to go back to the addled origin, and imaginary homelands are created from the fragmentary and partial memories of their homelands. The novel opens with Ashima recalling her homeland fondly. She is in an advanced state of pregnancy, admitted in a hospital for her delivery. To quote, . zipper feels normal to Ashima. For the past eighteen months, ever since shes arrived in Cambridge, zip fastener has felt normal at all.Its not so much the pain, which she knows, somehow, she get out survive. Its the consequence M otherhood in a foreign land. . It was mishap so far from home, unmonitored and unobserved by those she loved. (The Namesake 6) Vol. II. Issue. IV Th e C rit 3 er io n December 2011 www. the-criterion. com The Criterion An multinational Journal in English ISSN-0976-8165 They also face cultural plight when their cultural practices are mocked at and there is a threat to their cultural identity. They stand bewildered and confused, and show resistance also to the discourse of power in various forms.In the following generations these confusions, problems and yearnings become less intense as they get influenced by the culture of that country and also adapt themselves to it. To a question in an internet interview, regarding her immigrant experience, Jhumpa Lahiri says, The way my parents explain it to me is that they have spent their immigrant lives feeling as if they are on a river with a behind in two different boats. Each boat wants to pull them in a separate direction, and my paren ts are always torn between the two. They are always hovering, literally straddling two worlds.She feels an immigrant must teach us so much about the world and about humankind beings, things we cant understand if we are born and raised and live our whole life in one place. The generational differences of the migrants and their children occupy different spaces in the delegate culture but their experiences of feeling rootless and displaced can be uniform on nature. Though the children born to migrant peoples enjoy better settlement and place in that country their sense of identity borne from living in a diaspora community is influenced by the past migrant history of their parents or grand parents.Ashima tries to settle in and adjust herself to her surroundings, but she feels strange and disoriented in this country and spends hours remembering her parents and family, and reading the same five Bengali novels time and again. While waiting for the child to be born, she relives the past until the site of her depature for Boston. The thought of bringing up a baby in an alien land terrifies her. to raise a child in a country where she is related to no one, where she knows so little, where life seems so tentative and spare. (The Namesake 6) Ashima gives origin to a boy and he is named Gogol after the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol.She feels, without a single grandparent or uncle or aunt, at her side, the babys birth, like most everything else in America, feels somehow haphazard, only fractional true . She neer known of a person entering the world so totally, so deprived. (The Namesake 25) Gogol who does not know the reason for giving him this name, is unable to identify either with the Americans or with the Indians. Gradually Ashoke and Ashimas circle of Bengali acquaintances grow and the cultural spirit of Bengal is recreated whe neer the friends meet. Robert Cohen comments that distinct diaspora communities are constructed out of the, . onference of biographys of the old country to the new which create the sense of shared history. As Ashoke and Ashima continue to maintain a solidarity with the community, they identify Gogol continues to search for his own identity, for a set code that will not make him feel an insider outsider. Vol. II. Issue. IV Th e C rit 4 er io n December 2011 www. the-criterion. com The Criterion An International Journal in English ISSN-0976-8165 The first time his parents leave him alone overnight he goes with his friends Colin, Jason and Marc to a party in the university where his father teaches.This is his first visit to a dorm. There he meets a girl and he introduces himself as Nikhil and he feels at once guilty and exhilarated. (The Namesake 96) stupefy at how easy it is to say Nikhil, he who never dated a girl before and feels brave. He manages to kiss her before he goes. But it hadnt been Gogol but Nikhil, That Gogol had nothing to do with it(The Name Sake 96) One must note the dual identity or identity crisi s in Gogol. Prior to his depature for college, Gogol officially changes his name to Nikhil. But even though he had longed to change his name, he finds that he has to get used to being called Nikhil.And when his parents also refer to him as Nikhil he feels, in that instant that he is not related to them, not their child. (The Namesake 106) Ashoke and Ashima make adjustments which are absolutely necessary. They try to bring up their children the way it is done in India. Sonia and Gogol try to assert their individuality, and Gogol goes to the extent of reminding his parents that he is eighteen. Ashoke and Ashima cannot think of Pemberton Road as their home, but Nikhil refers to his refreshing Haven hostel as his home. Ashima is outraged by his remark. . Sorry, I left field it at home (The Name Sake 108). Ashima says . hat after 20 years in America, She still cannot bring Herself to refer to Pemberton Road as home. (The Namesake 108) Though Ashoke and Ashima have a large circle of Be ngali migrants as their friends the sense of alienation can be felt in them. Gogol and Sonia, American born and educated, want to be accepted as Americans. However, they feel alter both from their parents and from their American friends who consider them as outsiders. The insider outsider feeling is overabundant in all migrants. It is done the eyes of the first generation settlers that the second generation learns about their homeland.The idea of home is central to all human beings in every culture. Having sampled the pleasures and pains of the world, one longs to return to ones home. Ashoke and Ashimas body language and demeanour change, the minute they are in India. They are more confident and assertive. It is true that every time one returns one comes back to a different home, because times change and so do people, but nevertheless it is a home where ones roots are anchored. The first generation wants to preserve their culture and usance in the foreign land.It is significant t hat every other Saturday Ashoke and Ashima send Gogol for Bengali language and culture classes at the home of one of their Bengali friends. But, The children in the class study without interest, wishing they could be at a concert dance or softball practice or else. (The Namesake 66) Lahiri also shows that most of the first generation people adjust tumefy and make a space for themselves in the new country. Ashima is a good guinea pig of Lahiris first generation people. She tries to adapt herself with the society, she tries to work in a library and manages to drive a car by herself.They concede to Sonia and Gogols demand of celebrating Christmas, and having an American dinner party party once a week. However, when Gogol gets involved with Ruth, they disapprove openly saying Youre too young to get involved this way. (The Namesake 117) Vol. II. Issue. IV Th e C rit 5 er io n December 2011 www. the-criterion. com The Criterion An International Journal in English ISSN-0976-8165 When Ru th goes off to oxford to do a course he misses her and he, longs for her as his parents have longed, all these years, for the people they love in India for the first time in his life, he knows this feeling. The Namesake 117) He attends a panel discussion about Indian novels written in English. There the question about marginality is discussed. Teleologically speaking, ABCDs are unable to answer the question where are you from? the sociologist on the panel declares. (The Namesake 118) Gogol realizes that ABCD ABCD stands for American born confused desi refers to him also. He ponders over the question of identity. After graduating Gogol gets a job in a firm and is posted in vernal York. He meets Maxine and is invited by her for dinner.While eating dinner with Maxines parents, he recalls his mothers hospitable nature and how, She would never have served so few dishes to a quest. (The Namesake 133) Lahiri shows that comparisons and contrast between Indian culture and Western culture are bound to occur. Cultural teddy involves the loss of language, family ties and a support system. Salman Rushdie says, A full migrant suffers, traditionally, a triple disruption. He loses his place, he enters into alien language, he finds himself surrounded by beings whose social behavior and codes are unlike and sometimes even sick to his own.And this is what makes a migrant such a pathetic figure, because roots, language and social norms have been three of the most important parts of the definition of what it is to be human being. For the second generation the question of identity is a complicated issue. At home Indian culture and value system are adhered to, while in public the American code of conduct is followed. This becomes in two ways problematic. Added to this is the fact that Ashoke, Ashima and all first generation settlers want their children to do well and get good jobs.The American dream looms in their eyes and they want their children to exploit the situation and derive the maximum benefit for themselves, but they must follow the Indian moral and cultural code at home. However, Gogol, Sonia, as well Moushumi want to chart out their own lives. Gogols fracture in with Maxine is an assertion of his independence, and his desire to completely merge with the American culture. Gogol at long last marries Moushumi, but they are not happy and so they part. Ashoke dies, and Ashima decides to sell the dramatics on Pemberton Road. Hence forth she would spend cardinal months in India and six months in the states.True to the meaning of her name, she will be without borders, without a home of her own, a resident everywhere and nowhere (The Namesake 276) Initially when she had come in 1967, she had been petrified of living in America. But now as she makes the journey back home alone, she is no longer terrified. Vol. II. Issue. IV Th e C rit 6 er io n December 2011 www. the-criterion. com The Criterion An International Journal in English ISSN-0976-8165 It is the last Christmas party at Pemberton Road after the terminal of Ashoke. Gogol, Sonia and her fiance Ben, and other guests gather around Ashima to enjoy this moment.Gogol goes to get his fathers camera and finds the book, which his father had given him on his birthday and which he had never bothered to open and read. As the party goes on downstairs, he sits on his bed and begins to read the book. The first generation migrants face cultural dilemma but do their best to retain their cultural identity and cultural practices in their beliefs, values, cloths and eating habits. These beliefs, traditions, customs, behaviours and values along with their possessions and belongs are carried by migrants with them when they arrive in new places.The children of the migrants do not face the same problems because of their parents living here now. Thus Lahiri has shown dynamically the alter concepts of home and displacement in the successive generations of migrants. Lahiri uses her own craft , technique, style, format and structure. Her narrative voice is elegant, bitter sweet and gentle. Her novel talks of Indian culture, traditions, including food and festival, clothes and customs. Her novel, The Namesake, exhibits her signature style and in it she revisits issues that she knows well, those of cultural displacement, sense of identity, and belonging with one foot in two words.Lahiri gracefully shifts the narrative focus from the Ganguli parents to Gogol as he reaches school age. Gogol struggles with his name, which he regards as absurd and inappropriate. The issue of culture permeates the novel, from the early dislocation of immigration in the first half of the novel to Gogols departure from home to Yale University. This transition is marked by Gogols decision to change his name to Nikhil. Gogols college experience in one way resembles what might be called typical he move in love he discovers architecture he begins to assert, against his parents desires, his independe nce and individuality.And yet his experiences are always complicated by the particular, as in any life. Gogol can never, even when he moves to New York to work in a large architecture firm, shake his past, his culture or his name as he wishes to do. The novel exposes the fallacy of the American figment of selfcreation. Gogol grows up, moves out and goes through life suffering personal tragedies that also public figure his identity. The novel ends with Gogol in his early thirties. Although the novel never feels busy or hectic, the characters are always in transit. America and the west have always been idealized by the Indians.But when qualified Indian migrate to America then the adjustment problems begin between the traditions, one has inherited and the day to day life one encounters there. There is a gradual adjustment, and assimilation and then a hybrid culture comes to the fore. Gradually one develops a respect for other cultures even though ones own culture remains ingrained wi thin oneself. Culture is not defined now-a-days by a place, it is defined by time the now. As identity becomes the core issue, names become quite significant. The expressive function of a name varies from culture to culture.In Lahiris novel, Indian names, the Indian identity of her characters become potent symbols and pricks to highlight the immigrant identity. Lahiris works are scattered with expound of Vol. II. Issue. IV Th e C rit 7 er io n December 2011 www. the-criterion. com The Criterion An International Journal in English ISSN-0976-8165 deeds Cited Bhadur, Gaiutra. An interview with Jhumpa Lahiri www. citypaper. net Bhagava, Rajul, ed. , Indian writing in English The stomach Decade. Rawat Publications New Delhi. , 2002 Dodiya, Jaydipsinh, K, ed. Critical Essays on Indian writing in English. New Delhi Sarup & Sons. 2006 Edwards, Paul. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy 8 Vols. New York. Macmillan Publishing co. , Jha, Gaurishankar, ed. , flowing Perspectives in Indian Engl ish Literature. New Delhi Atlantic Publishers & Distributors. , 2006 Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Namesake. New Delhi harper Collins Publishers Ltd. , 2007. Vol. II. Issue. IV Th traditional Indian names, food items, prep details and wardrobe lists providing the Indian an ethnic touch. In Lahiris novel The Namesake the role of memory in a process of change is often used by the writer in an effective way. Memory plays tricks on all of us.Memory often idealises its perception of a place to convince oneself that there is one entity which remained constant in world of flux. Food in the novel is a talisman, a reassuring bit of the homeland to cling to. Spices and relish waft through like themes in a piece of music as evidenced by the following passage. with the samosas, there are breaded chicken, cutlets, chickpeas with tamarind tree sauce, lamb biriyani, chutney made with tomatoes from the garden. (The Namesake 148) Lahiri uses food as a tool to explain Bengali culture and also tries to dis tinguish it from other cultures.For example . Gogols annaprasan, his rice ceremony thre is no baptism for Bengali babies, No ritualistic naming in the eyes of God. Instead, the first formal ceremony of their lives centers around the consumption of Solid food. (The Namesake 38) Ashima is shocked to see whiskey and wine bottles instead of cereals and tea on top of the refrigerator in Judys house. here(predicate) Lahiri emphasizes cultural difference through food. Lahiri is keenly sensitive to the fine ruptures and sharp disjunctures which make the familiar alien, which delink one from the ies of humanity, family kin leaving one with the smashing sense of being alone. She maps the emotional lines of her characters. Lahiris elegant prose guides us through their lives. Toward the end of the novel Gogols mother, Ashima, thinks, They are not willing to accept, to adjust, to settle for something less than their ideal of happiness That pressure has given way, in the case of the subsequen t generation, to American common sense. The perpetual tensions between cultures, between individual minds, between the mind and the world beyond it, runs through this empathetic, beautiful novel. eC rit 8 er io n December 2011 www. the-criterion. com The Criterion An International Journal in English ISSN-0976-8165 Naikar, Basavaraj, ed. Indian English Literature. Vol. 2 New Delhi Atlantic Publisher & Distributors. , 2002. Patel, Vibhuti. Interview The Maladies of Belonging. Newsweek International, 20 Sep 1999. Prasad, Amarnath, and bum Peter Joseph. Indian Writing in English Critical Ruminations. New Delhi Sarup & Sons. , 2006 Shankar, Radhika. A writer Free to write All Day . http. //www. rediff. com/ discussion/1999/aug23 Vol. II. Issue. IV Th 9 e C rit December 2011 er io n