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Struggle to Acculturate and the Problem of Self-Identity in Jhumpa
Lahiri’s The Namesake and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss
Shrikant Jitendra Jadhav
Assistant Professor, Dept. of English,
Sant Dnyaneshwar Mahavidyalaya, Soegaon, Aurangabad (MS)
Research Paper :
Introduction:
Etymologically, the term „Diaspora‟ coined from the Greek word „Diaspeirein‟ “to scatter about,
disperse”, from „Dia‟ means “about, across” and „Speirein‟ means “to scatter”. It was used by
the ancient Greeks to refer to citizens of a dominant city-state who emigrated to conquer and
with the purpose of colonization, to assimilate the territory into the empire.
In his excellent book Global Diaspora: An Introduction, Robin Cohen tentatively describes
Diasporas as communities of people living together in one country who acknowledge
that “the old country” a nation often buried deep in language, religious, customs or
folklore always has some claim on their loyalty and emotions.
Cohen continues that
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a member adherence to a Diasporic community demonstrated by acceptance of an
inescapable link with their past migration history.
The literature produced by Diasporas writers such as Amitav Ghosh, Hanif Kureishi, Bharati
Mukherjee, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri and Ben Zephaniah have proved
immensely popular in western literary criticism. Similarly work of academics such as Homi K.
Bhabha, Avtar Brah, Ray Chaow, Carole Boyce Davies, Paul Gilroy and Start Hall.
Let us begin by analyzing Jhumpa Lahiri‟s The Namesake where Ashima and Ashoke experience
a sense of alienation in America. In spite of their attempts of acculturation, they do remain at the
periphery and are treated as others. Ashoke and Ashima‟s travails and triumphs in America
stand for the pioneering struggle of the immigrants in that country. The fragments of their initial
efforts ceaselessly encompass their memory and consciousness.
What the first generation
immigrants missed when they arrived in a new country is seen through Ashima‟s memories of
her homeland. The absence of familiar faces and things makes every presence in the new
country seem alien. So, it is through her that we can really come to understand the feeling of
alienation, culture-shock and homesickness.
The concept of „home‟ often performs an important function in our lives. It is important what
happens to the idea of home for migrants who live far from the lands of their birth. For example,
Salman Rushdie in his essay “Imaginary Homelands” reflects upon the process of writing his
novel Midnight’s Children which is set in India and Pakistan while living in north London. He
records that on the wall of his London study was a black and white photograph of his childhood
home, distant in both time and space, to the present. But it proved an impossible task to „return
home‟ via the process of writing.
Ashima misses her life back in Kolkata terribly and has troubled settling in to her new American
life. The narrator tells us, “On more than one occasion (Ashoke) has come home from the
university to find her morose in bed, rereading her parents’ letters.” Unlike Ashoke, who is
attending graduate school, Ashima is isolated in Cambridge, with no friends of her own. In
Kolkata, she would have had the company of siblings, parents, cousins, grandparents, aunts and
uncles, but now they are thousands of miles away. A typical Indian housewife expects nothing
but love from her husband. Ashoke, who is Ashima‟s husband, not only loves her but also takes
care and tries to fulfill her every expectations. Nevertheless, Ashima‟s life is so isolated that she
cannot enjoy her married life due to the memories of her homeland. In Cambridge, Ashima is
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surrounded by strangers, and she does not quite feel that she fits in. There are new customs to
learn, new ways of doing thing.
For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort lifelong pregnancy-a perpetual
wait, constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a
parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that the previous life has
vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding.
Again the solitary atmosphere in the hospital makes her recapture the particular moments of the
domestic life of the Kolkata. Had the delivery taken place in Kolkata, she would have had her
baby at home surrounded by family. Ashima‟s anxiety over giving birth and rearing up the child
in the alien land is poignantly revealed…
It was happening so far from home, unmonitored and unobserved by those she
loved, had made it more miraculous still.
One more character that is Ashoke in the novel struggles to acculturate in America. Though he,
like his wife, tries to hold on to Bengali traditions, he also wants very much to make their
American life work, and he tries hard to fit in some ways. Ashoke knows his family will not
make it in America if they do not make effort to assimilate. As the family‟s breadwinner, it is
possible that he more than anyone else, struggles assimilating into American culture and holding
on to his own. Nevertheless, there are some incidents through which we can see how Ashoke
struggles to acculturate in America and one of them is his superstitious nature like eastern
peoples. For example, he names his son „Gogol‟ after the book that saved his life from the train
accident.
Another example can be seen when Gogol, his son, brings his girlfriend for
introducing her to his parents. Ashoke gets surprised when the girl greets by kissing him as
western people do usually when they greet one another.
Gogol, son of Ashoke and Ashima, is a second generation immigrant in the novel. Unlike his
parents, he is fascinated by western culture and tries to adopt it, which compels him to make a
frantic search for his personal and psychological identity. For Gogol the idea of „Mother
County‟ is almost burden. From his position, the novel raises important questions: “The issue of
culture-what constitutes it? Who is part of which culture? Is Gogol Bengali, American or Bengali
American? Gogol falls under the label of ABCD (American Born Confused Deshi). In short
Gogol demonstrates the hybridity of a second generation immigrant in a couple of ways. On one
hand, he is intensely „Western‟ as seen I the start of the narrative. Yet, when his father dies, he
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shows a great deal of fluidity in embracing his own family and his own sense of identity from a
cultural point of view. Being able to go back to India and engage in a marriage that is reflective
of tradition is also another example of the hybrid element of second generation immigrant.
Homi Bhabha in his The Location of Culture says the concept of hybridity has proved very
important for Diaspora people and indeed many others too, as a way of based on ideas of
rootlessness purity. Hybrid identities are never complete in themselves. Instead they remain
perpetually in motion, pursuing errant and unpredictable routes open to change and reinscription.
The struggle of acculturation and the problem of self identity can be seen in Kiran Deasai‟s The
Inheritance of Loss too through the characters like Biju and The retired judge, Jemubhai Patel.
Biju is a typical Indian immigrant who gets a visa to the U.S. and stays illegally, working for
slaves wages in the kitchen basements of New York City. There he is used and abused by his
bosses and is run ragged by one in particular, who also happens to be Indian. Kiran Desai‟s
description of Biju‟s life in America is interspersed with moments of tender and lyrical nostalgic
reflection of home back in the mountains of Kalimpong. Lying in his basement bed Biju dreams
of home, of his village, of his father, of his grandmother and the sound that the grass made as the
breeze wafted through them, of the way the stream meandered, of the buffaloes in the river.
Biju, of course, forgets the harsh life that he had to lead in his small village. When talking to his
father over the telephone, Biju is almost able to feel his homeThe atmosphere of Kalimpong reached Biju all the way in New York; it swelled
densely on the line…he could hear the croak trrr wonk, wee wee butt ock butt ock
of frogs in the spinach, the rising note welding imperceptibly with the evening…
In the both novels The Namesake and The Inheritance of Loss the characters Ashoke, Ashima
and Biju struggle to survive and acculturate in America. Ashima struggles because of her deep
attachment with family and homeland. Before her marriage she has never been to away from her
family and homeland and that is why she is isolated and feels lonely despite having her caring
husband with her in America. But the reason of Biju‟s struggle to acculturate in America is
different than Ashima. He goes to America for the settlement and the better life but only after
few days when his bosses started to use and abuse him, he realizes that he is isolated in the new
country and it is impossible for him to survive and acculturate there.
There is another interesting character in the novel anglophile Jemubhai Patel who is a retired
judge. Jemubhai Patel faces the same problem as Gogol faces in The Namesake that is the
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problem of self identity. The judge, who always identified himself with the British, stands in the
width of shade of the knife. The shadows of the nights chomped as if like his memories of past.
This man, Jemubhai, who dressed for dinner, even in the jungle, later, remains without socks all
the time. The physical identified seemed to have gone crossed too along with the inner recesses.
He has just one friend in his world, Boss. His constant lonely companionship with chess without
a dual player reminds and signifies the white British Empire, which ruled many parts of the
world without a competitor at par. It was almost a one sided kingship and domination. This kind
of representation coincides with any contemporary age, where there might be just one or a few
leaders to follow. The life of the judge is so lonely that only a pet dog fit is his solitude. This
also echoes the common Cliché that one who thinks and behaves as superior is likely to be left
alone. The signs of loss of self identity and loneliness are seen in the life of the judge.
Works Cited:
Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Namesake. New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2003.
Desai, Kiran. The Inheritance of Loss. New Delhi: Penguin, 2006.
Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An introduction. New York: Routledge, 2008.
References:
Rushdie, Salman. “Imaginary Homelands”. Essays and Criticism London: Grata, 1991.
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