LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 16:3 March 2016
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.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Conflicts of Experience and Memory in Jumpha Lahiri’s
The Namesake

C. Radhakrishnan, Research Scholar


Abstract

This paper focuses on one particular migrant family settled in United States; describing hardships of a lonely Indian woman became adapted to her life in the foreign culture. As each one of the family feels about his or her own identity as an Indian, American, or Indian-American affects their idealistic decision making. The Namesake reflects the perspectives and changing family ties of the Gangulis, who are Indian in an arrange marriage and they relocate to America, in search of American dream of wealth and success. The novel expresses about how the family stand alienated from their own culture along with practices they cherished in previous years. And also the novel is an autobiographical in portraying repercussions of what the children of immigrants have to experience when they are intended to born in a country which does not belong to their parents, which bear the burden of individual conflicts.

Keywords: Alienation, Autobiographical, Culture, Migration, Namesake

Introduction

Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London to Indian born Bengali parents in 1967. Her family moved to Rode Island when she was a child, she spends her adolescent there. She graduated from Barnard College and later she attended Boston University. Initially she worked for a short time teaching creative writing at Boston University and Rhode Island school of Design. She has traveled extensively to India and has experienced of colonialism there as well as experienced the issues of the ‘Diaspora’ as it exists. Lahiri has strong enough to her parents’ homeland (India) as well as the United States and England. The voices of Indian writing in English, the contemporary novelists approach new paths and this shows the variety of Indian fiction. Khushwant Singh, Salman Rushdie, Arun Joshi and Vickram Seth depict the Indian Social scene, the theme of alienation, social and psychological problems of modern society. Lahiri can be rightly classified as an immigrant novelist as she could be identified with the writers of the ‘Indian Diaspora’. The dictionary meaning of the word diaspora comes from an ancient Greek word meaning “to scatter about”. And that is exactly what the people of a diaspora do- they scatter from their homeland to places across the world, spreading their culture as they visit.

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


C. Radhakrishnan
Research Scholar
Bharathiar University
Coimbatore – 641046
Tamilnadu
India
rkradhakrishnan6@gmail.com
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