LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 15:1 January 2015
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Diasporic Experiences in Jhumpa Lahiri’s
Interpreter of Maladies and Unaccustomed Earth

C. G. Karthikadevi, M.A., M.Phil., M.Ed.

Interpreter of Maladies

Abstract

Indian writing in English has acquired a great significance in recent years, not only in India but all over the world. Short story is obviously the most popular literary form. The short story writers in English come from different parts of the country and they have diverse social, cultural and family backgrounds but what unites them is the use of English as their mode of expression. The short story genre is highly favoured by women writers of the South Asian diaspora. Jhumpa Lahiri, through her short stories addresses sensitive dilemmas in the lives of Indians or Indian immigrants with themes such as marital difficulties, miscarriages and the disconnection among the immigrants. Interpreter of Maladies is a collection of nine short stories. It is about the experiences of Indians who live in an alien country and how they are deeply crushed under the burden of alienation and rootlessness. The collection attempts to be simultaneously both an anthology of outstanding short stories and virtually a casebook on relationship between the sexes. Lahiri has been acclaimed a dominant diaspora writer depicting the complexities of immigrant experience in diaspora in her Unaccustomed Earth. This collection of stories is a well thought-out addition to her oeuvre of fiction writing. The stories depict different aspects of the Bengali migrant experience. The eight stories in the collection revolve around quest for identity in relationships. The stories examine the difficulties the central characters have in integrating and relocating their identities beyond their familial homes.

Key words: Short stories, Indian Writing in English, Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies, Unaccustomed Earth, Indian diaspora, relationship between sexes

Short Stories

The short story genre is highly favoured by women writers of the South Asian diaspora. The short stories by women of South Asian diaspora are often located in the present and they deal with immediate social realities, but they also contain personal memories or they traverse the space between the homeland and the diasporic location. In the evocative and poignant instances of female oppression narrated in these stories, a transnational resonance is evident. Not only are there similarities between women from different South Asian diasporic locations, but also many patterns of subjugation and gender discrimination common to other cultures and nation is apparent. The plurality and specificity of lived moments and everyday reality are captured in these stories. Much of the literature by women of the South Asian diaspora is drawn from personal experiences and deeply intimate concerns. Thus it often relies on personal memory, and sometimes on the synthesizing of facts, events, people, settings from the author’s own life, with imagined characters and events.

Themes Adopted by Expatriate Writers

The expatriate writer undergoes the pain of homelessness, alienation, and loss of belongingness. He struggles between two ways of life, which leads to the feeling of depression and frustration. The loss of homeland is the consequence of consciously opting a new home in a foreign or, an alien land. The old memories keep on hovering in his mind and the new land and unfriendly surrounding leads to the feeling of frustration and depression. It is a complex state of mind and emotion, which includes strong craving and longing for homeland or the past. When a person leaves his own homeland and enters another, his old values comes in conflict with the new one, which he has adopted. Thus ‘Diaspora’ is a dislocation from a geographical location of origin and relocation in another territory or country. A number of Indian English Writers can be recognized under such category of expatriate writers: Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, V.S.Naipaul, Rohintan Mistry, Abraham Varghese, Amitav Ghosh, Hanif Kureishi, Ved Mehta, Meera Syal, Bharati Mukherjee, Jhumpa Lahiri, etc.

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

C. G. Karthikadevi, M.A., M.Phil., M.Ed.
7/76, North Mariamman Kovil Street
Rayagiri 627757
Tirunelveli District
Tamil Nadu
India
karthikapushpa90@gmail.com

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