LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 23:4 April 2023
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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Routes to Roots and Roots to Routes:
A Study of Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost

Vandana Sukheeja, M.Phil., Ph.D. Research Scholar
JapPreet Kaur Bhangu, Professor of English


Courtesy: www.amazon.com

Abstract

In the present times, mobility opens up new paths to humanity. On the one hand, it brings new opportunities and a sense of achievement for migrants in foreign lands; on the other there is an earnest desire to keep the bond with the birth land. This desire let them take the back routes to homeland. However returning to home and to one’s roots entails changing notions of identity construction, citizenship and home. Political, economic and social scenario of the homeland forces a migrant back to the host land feeling safe, secure and established there instead of sticking to the roots. This article traces the journey of Anil to her roots in the homeland and her efforts to identify herself to the roots as portrayed in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost. It also examines the causes that force her to take routes back to the host land and how back and forth mobility affects the identity of migrants in the present transcultural times. While examining this journey, this article also explores the civil war of Sri Lanka and its effects on the migrants.

Keywords: Michael Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost, civil war of Sri Lanka, identity of migrants

Introduction

Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan born Canadian novelist, essayist, poet, dramatist, and non-fiction writer who moved to England in 1954 and to Canada in 1964. Canada becomes his country of destination where he has been living since then and at the same time travelling throughout the world. He has seven novels to his credit - Coming Through Slaughter (1976), In the Skin of a Lion (1987), The English Patient (1992), Anil's Ghost (2000), Divisadero (2007), The Cat's Table (2011), Warlight (2018) - along with several poetry collections. He is a winner of several prizes such as Giller Prize (Canada) (2000), Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction (Canada) (2000), Man Booker International Prize (2007), Commonwealth Writers Prize (2008). The English Patient is his most celebrated novel which was also adapted into a film in 1996.

Anil's Ghost is a story of violence and traumatic homecoming and is told from the perspective of Anil Tissera, the female protagonist of the novel, a fully westernized character who returns to a civil-war ridden country, Sri Lanka, her birthplace after her fifteen-year long stay in England and America. She comes to her homeland as forensic anthropologist on a seven-week long project for an international human rights group in Geneva unwelcomed by the local government. Her assimilation in the foreign culture is to such an extent that she forgets Sinhala language, a common link between her and her country of birth without which she often feels herself a handicap whether it is to understand the local people or to convey her thoughts to them. However, now a completely transformed individual, she finds herself to be an outsider for the natives and is unable to identify herself as Sri Lankan. She has neither been accepted by the people nor by the government and ultimately, she has to leave the country.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Vandana Sukheeja, M.Phil., Ph.D. Research Scholar
Dept. of Management & Humanities, SLIET, Longowal, Sangrur
Punjab-148106
9914150650
vandanasukheeja@sliet.ac.in

JapPreet Kaur Bhangu, Professor of English
Dept. of Management & Humanities, SLIET, Longowal, Sangrur
Punjab-148106
9815980299
jappreetkaurbhangu@sliet.ac.in
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