Diasporic Consciousness in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni`s Sister of

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Diasporic Consciousness in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Sister of My Heart
Neeraj Agnihotri
Professor & Head
Department of Post Graduate Studies in English
Institute for Excellence in Higher Education, Bhopal, India
The term ‘Diaspora’ was initially used for scattering and exile of Jews from their
homeland. In other words a space changed with the possibilities of multiple challenges.
According to Robert Cohen;
From 1960s and 1970s the classical meaning of diaspora was description of dispersion of
Africans, Armenians and Irish. 1980s onwards the term diaspora was deployed as expatriates,
expels, political refugees, alien residents, immigrants and racial minorities. From mid 1990s
diaspora stands for the people who live outside their national territories.1
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin in their book Key concepts in
Postcolonial Studies define ‘diaspora’ as “The voluntary or forcible movement of people from
their homelands into new regions”. 2
The exile or displacement is mainly based on three types of phenomena, namely forced,
half forced or half willed and willed consequences. The Jewish community was forced to exile,
whereas during the colonial period people were uprooted to serve the British Empire in different
parts of the world and their settlement in alien country was half forced. The third dimension of
expatriation is the willed choice of migrants from the third world countries for greener postures
in the developed countries.
To be in diaspora means to be in an unbelonging room. Diasporic communities do not
split their association with their homelands, but erect different relations. Their sense of yearning
for the homeland, a curious attachment to its traditions, religions and languages give birth to
diasporic literature. This type of literature is primarily concerned with the individual’s or
community’s attachment to the homeland. The migrants have a strong attachment to the custom
and traditions of their homelands. That’s why they fail to fabricate a home in the new home
which is finely reflected in literature and art. The migrants cross the boundaries of time, memory
and history with the vision and dreams of returning homeland. The longing for the homeland is
countered by the desire to belong to the new home. Avtar Brah argues that “The diaspora
communities are forged out of multiple imaginative journeys between the old country and the
new. These spaces are both physical and emotional, yet at the heart of the diasporic experience
there is always the image of journey, a movement away and dispersal from, a dislocation to”. 3
Diasporic literature is the product of sensibilities and foregrounds of the life and
experiences of this ‘Trishanku’ community belonging to nowhere. Diaspora fiction lingers over
alienation, loneliness, homelessness, existential rootlessness, nostalgia, questioning, protest
assertions, quest and identity. It also addresses issues related to amalgamation of cultures. Here
lies the clash between the past and the present, between two generation, concern for root and
rootlessness, native land and new land, singular culture and multiculture. Such trends continue to
occur in all the diasporic writings.
Diasporic fiction contains the maladies and experience of diasporas in their various tinges
and symptoms and explains them with the new potentials, new directions and new approaches of
idea. Some diasporic writers are Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, V.S. Naipaul, Bharti
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Mukherjee, Jhumpa Lahiri, Anita Desai, Chitra B. Divakaruni, Meera Sayal who secured a
credible place in this area of fiction. Their works are replete with the diasporic consciousness,
which strongly witness social realities, longings and feelings in addition to the creativity of the
writers. They experience diasporic problems are portray different aspects of sensibilities and
concerns, although these vary as per their generations, perceptions, attitudes and specific
identities. Many writers write in their mother tongue, producing literature primarily for the
reading public in Middle East or diaspora community while others switch over themselves to
write in the language of host country. In both the cases, the distance from the homeland often
encourages these writers to tread new grounds, experimenting and exploring with new themes
and forms, breaking taboos prevailing in their countries and developing new ideas.
Noted writer Uma Parmeshwaran has discussed diasporic consciousness in her writings
and observes,
The first is nostalgia for the homeland, left behind mingled with fear in strange land. The
second is a phase in which one is so busy in adjusting to the new environment that there is little
creative output. The third phase is shaping of diaspora existence by involving themselves in
ethno-culture issues. The fourth is when they have arrived and started participating in the larger
world of politics and national issues. 4
Frederick Monika has named the diasporic community as Trishanku. This word she has
taken from Indian mythology. To her this uneasy pull between two cultures is just like
Trishanku’s curse.
Trishanku wanted to reach heaven in his mortal state. He enlisted the aid of sage Viswamitra
who propelled him skyward with his yogic powers. But Heaven refused him to enter, saying that
only those who have left their body can enter heaven. He was sent back, but earth refuses to
accept him now, saying she would grant entry to no-one once they left the earth. Viswamitra,
meanwhile seeing this as a challenge to his own yogic powers, kept Trishanku in motion … 5
For diaspora community it is very hard to leave the country behind even though one has
left it in a conspicuous sense. The immigration becomes the major motif in post colonial
literature across the world but it is looked at from different perspectives along with its some of
the related issues. Firstly, it is a very personal experience, secondly, sometimes immigrants are
unhappy of having to ‘settle down’ in the adopted land which seems more like ‘settling for’ that
land, sometimes at the cost of their sensibilities. One is entirely cut off from one’s family and has
an existence with total lack of direction. One may also experience cultural shock, constant
pressure which leads to emotional stress.
In the last few decades of 20th century migration to the west has increased because of
professional interest of both the genders. The members of middle and upper class populations of
Indian origin now marry across the borders. These are the factors that generate many authors of
Indian origin in English and affect their writings. To retain the values of homeland in the new
atmosphere of the adopted land which has its own values creates particular kind of
consciousness. This consciousness involves mental clashes, unresolved dilemmas, unsettled
conflicts, unread complexities, and unanswered questions.
Women’s life in diasporic situations can be doubly painful- struggling with the material
and spiritual insecurities of exile, with the demands of family and work with the claims of old
and new patriarchies. Consequently, the women in South Asian women’s literature question their
identity. This self evaluation is a preoccupation for diasporic women writers, but written in a
different context rather different conclusions. What comes out of their writings is a combination
of concerns with migration and diaspora for the new woman. The journey of immigration of
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women writers is closely followed by the journey into settlement and the journey into self.
Women writers present the dilemmas which women are facing in the alien land. Liberal and
unconventional ways of life are desired to avoid the problems within traditional society. Thus
self-willed and individualistic women often face suffering caused by broken relationships. The
new woman that emerges out of women’s writings is not necessarily a revolutionary
transformation of the convention but who gives literary expression to changes and challenges
arising in the real social world. The diasporic women writings represent the women who are
forms of cultural hybridization that reflect the experience and social positioning of the authors
themselves. These women in diasporic literature show an inexorable awakening of identity in
relation to western values of individuality and independence. The women go on to asserting and
exploring their own identity, even when it reverts back to traditional concept.
Chitra Divakaruni Banerjee’s first collection of stories Arranged Marriage, won
an American Book Award, a PEN Josephine Miles Award and a Bay Area Book Reviewers
Award. Her major novels include The Mistress of Spices, Sister of My Heart and Queen of
Dreams. In her works, the hybridization gradually starts, Americanization creeps in and cultural
indicators have no distinct mark. Transformation in characterization becomes clear; then there is
a time when she wants to forget her past and questions its being. Mukherjee’s focus continues to
be immigrant women and their freedom from relationships to become individuals. Her short
story collections depict the same feminine image, whether it is Panna in short story A Wife or the
bored wife in The Lady from Lucknow. Both the characters learn that it is an opportunity as well
as curse to have to remake their lives and their personal identities. Most of her characters are
adventures and explorers rather than refugees and outcasts. One hears echoes of Mukherjee’s
statement about America being a place where one can choose to discard history and invent a new
history. Her stories reflect loneliness and unsuccessful relationship as the part of immigrant
women’s life. These women though ready to play an active part in the new culture still peep alive
their old tradition in their dressing of food habits or even home decor.
One of the commonest problems faced by the immigrants is racial discrimination. One
may find Banerjee’s protagonists attacked by the whites who resent the browned-skinned people
who, the whites think, are over-crowding their land. Violence or verbal abuse turns out to be an
intrinsic part of the life of the expatriates.
Divakaruni’s Sister of My Heart is an expanded version of her earlier short story
‘Ultrasound’ in the Arranged Marriage. This novel spins around two cousins Anju and Sudha
Chatterjee who are born few hours apart from each other on the same day. Since the day they
were born, Sudha and Anju have been bonded in ways even their mothers cannot comprehend.
Urged into marriages, their lives take sudden opposite turns with Anju in India and Sudha in
America. But the women discover that, despite the distance that has grown between them, they
have only each other to turn to. They grow up in a very conservative upper-middle class home
consisting solely of women-mothers, aunts and the maid. Although their personalities and
ambitions are in contrast, they are intensely close friends and soul mates. Sudha, the beautiful
girl dreams of a romantic marriage and motherhood based on Hindu fables and legends. On the
other hand, Anju is somewhat physically unattractive, a book worm and a rebel who dreams of
higher education. Both of them lost their fathers on a ruby-hunting expedition which was
planned by Sudha’s father. Sudha feels guilty for her father’s actions. In turn she compromises
her love for Ashoke. She drops the idea of her elopement with Ashoke because it might break
Anju’s marriage. Sudha renounces herself to an arranged marriage with a weak willed man, who
is dominated by his widow mother. Anju gets married to a computer scientist Sunil who is
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working in America. The string of the bond of both the sisters is somewhat stretched when Anju
finds that Sunil feels attracted towards the beautiful Sudha.
Earlier in the work, Sunil arrives directly to Anju’s book-store to see her (for the purpose
of a proposed marriage) in an informal surrounding which is a typical American influence. At
Chatterjee’s house too, his taking cups of tea around to everyone, shaking hands with Sudha and
a clear refusal to his father for dowry are something that appear wholly non-Indian about him.
These reflections in the story indicate that the change of geographical boundaries can intensely
affect the mind set-up which was rooted deeply in the traditions of native country.
Though miles apart, both the girls face the same loneliness in their marriages. Sudha is
desperate for a child, just to call someone as her love. In America, Anju feels Sunil as a
mysterious person. He seeks for his privacy and does not tell her about his whereabouts. There is
a sharp contrast between the lives of both the cousins. On the one hand Sudha spends her whole
day in performing household duties while Anju drives freely; performing outdoor works on her
own, studies her favourite subject in college. But still the dissatisfaction in Anju’s life makes her
think, “It’s not what I imagined my American life would be like”. 6
Life brings them to the same stage f life when they both become pregnant. Sudha’s
mother-in-law forces her to abort the female child foetus and no reaction of her husband against
it, shatters her. She decides to keep the child and moves to America, since the life as a single
mother and a divorcee would be easier for her in California. Anju starts collecting money
through a job for air ticket of Sudha. This job makes her feel the power of economic
independence.
Due to physical exhaustion and mental stress Anju suffers a miscarriage. Sudha and her
daughter Dayita is the only hope that would give her energy to forget the loss of her baby. On the
way to liberty, Sudha once again refuses Ashoke and his love because now she is not sure if she
would be happy in trying herself to a man’s whims again. She becomes a rebel in the world of
man. She finally prefers “A future built by women out of their own wits, their own hands”. 7
While Anju and Sudha begin to seek ways of fulfilling their dreams of self reliance in
America, the new setting creates major rifts in relationships. Sudha could feel the silence
between Sunil and Anju. There is exchange of only a few sentences between them and that too
about Dayita. Sudha’s daughter Dayita’s presence somewhat helps Anju to diminish the
memories of Prem (her unborn child). Sunil avoids confronting Sudha to control his desperate
passion for her since his marriage. Sudha with the fire of independence inside her asks a girl
Sara, whom she meets in a garden, to find a job for her. Sara was an Indian and believed in
highly self centered thoughts which inspire Sudha. Sudha startles with her decision of
cancelation of her marriage only because she could not lose her privacy. She frankly accepts in
front of Sudha that, “In-laws, kids, servants, you know how it is in India …. So I bought myself a
bus ticket to California”.8 Sara promises Sudha her entry into real American life which would be
a great help none-the-less attempt to escape from herself.
Few years in America transform Anju in her usage of peculiar words and interests. Her
shrinking memories of India make Sudha realize that even their memories are marooned on
separate islands. The alien land seems to create the need of assimilation and transformation for
the immigrants. But behavioural changes are hardly acceptable in accordance with the new
culture. As Sunil, though outwardly assimilated could not tolerate Lalit’s intimacy either with
Sudha or with Anju. His rage in turn targets a fight with a valet who comments over the Indians
in the party, “Fucking Indians, showing off”. 9
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The deep seated love of both the cousins develops a rift now, perhaps because of the one
year of separation in separate lands or because of one man between them. Anju feels insecure
with Sudha’s presence in her house and Sudha hides dislike for the purposeless hours she spends
working in Anju’s house. The trio suffers a disastrous situation when Sudha abandons Anju’s
house after hours of physical intimacy with Sunil. Her guilt compels her to move out of her
friend’s married life.
Sudha now realizes that she cannot go back to the old restricted ways of Indian life. She
somehow feels secure for the impersonal customs of America to start a new life. She thinks
standing at the corner of a road, “I must be emanating some type of distress signal, because
passerby stares at me strangely. If this were India, at least half of them would know me. They’d
ask me a thousand questions, offer to help, give advice, may be even escort me back home”. 10
Not only Sudha but Anju and Sunil also trace new paths for them after deciding for a divorce.
Anju begins her self-searching journey keeping distance with all closed ones. She shares
room with one of her friends from writer’s club but their belonging to different lands could not
make a comfortable companionship between them. She always wants Sudha close to her to share
and understand her fully. Anju feels like tingles in fingertips like pins and needles when any of
her American friends criticizes about the heritage which she loves a lot. Even their everyday
talks are so different that she feels lonely among them. She understands that, “…large chunks of
herself will always be unintelligible to them: the joint family she grew up in, her arranged
marriage, the way she fell in love with her husband, the tension in her household, that ménage a
trios Indian style”. 11
Sudha becomes a caretaker of an old Indian man who is living with his son and his
American wife. He suffers more from mental sickness than physical. He wants to return to his
own land (India). The foreign land has badly affected his health. Sudha understands his pain and
promise him to take him to India. She cooks Indian dishes for him, calls him Baba and leaves
Dayita to play with him. Subsequently this improves the old man’s health. She is excited with
her own bank account but leaving the old relations is the only regret.
Sudha’s clear refusal to Ashoke, friendship with Lalit, leaving Sunil and decision of
returning India with the old and with a deal of serving him in turn for a good school for her
daughter are surely the characteristics of the changed ‘self’ in America, a place where “in a
minute you might be pulled up into it, released of gravity. One can take a new body here, shrug
off old identities”. 12
Having gone through the story of two sisters it can be said that whatever may be the
cause of immigration; diasporic community faces the problem of displacement, rootlessness,
discrimination and marginalization in the migrated country. The women, who are migrated, feel
the displacement intensely more in comparison to men, but also they use migration as a step
towards their freedom and individuality. Though it is troublesome for them to detach themselves
from the native country and customs but still they adapt the new culture and try to create a
harmony with the new surroundings. America offers freedom but at the price of losing a stable,
perhaps privileged identity.
Banerjee’s writing affirms that diaspora is not merely a scattering or dispersion but an
experience made up of collectivities and multiple journeys. It’s an experience that is determined
by who travels, where, how and under what circumstances. Almost all the expatriates who
emigrated from India to America face the clash of opposing cultures, a feeling of alienation
which is followed by the attempts to adjust, to adopt and to accept. Only the degree of this
adaptation differs according to the generations. Banerjee had moved away from her location,
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Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research journal
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through this work she recollects her homeland, and as an outsider observes details with
objectivity. It reflects as a reminder of her identity. Chitra Banerjee thus analyses the relationship
of women with universal problems of discrimination, displacement, disturbance and disorder
thus articulating the diasporic consciousness in this work.
Works Cited:
1. Cohen, Robert. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Scattle, W.A.: University of Washington
Press, 1977.p 9.
2. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths & Helen Tiffin, eds. Key Concepts in Post Colonial
Studies. New York: Routledge, 1998. p.68.
3. Brah, Avtar. Cartographics of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. 1997. P.183.
4. Parmeswaran, U. “Trishanku and Other Writings.” Current Perspectives in Indian English
Literature. Ed. Gauri Shankar Jha. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1998. p 108..
5. Frederick, Monika. Diaspora & Multiculturalism: Common Traditions & New Developments.
New York: Rodopi, 2003. p. 14.
6. Banerjee Divakaruni, Chitra. Sister of My Heart. New York: Anchor Books, 2000.
p.186.
7. Ibid. p.294.
8. Ibid. p.83.
9. Ibid. p. 130.
10. Ibid. p. 204.
11. Ibid. p. 124.
12. Ibid. p.293.
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