httpl/ /www.rockpebbles.inlISSNt 2230 - 8954

DIASPORIC SENSIBILITY IN THE NOVEL *THE NAMESAKE"BY]UMPHA LAHIRI

x Prakash Bhadury

Abstract:

The word 'Diaspora', etymologically means'dispersal', and involves, at least

two countries, two cultures, which are embedded in the mind of the

migrants, side by side. Although the past is invoked now and then, the focus

is persistently on the 'moment'. The past is invoked to indicate a certain

contrast, wliich must be incorporated, and controlled in the present life in

order to negotiate the network of social relations in the immediate world. My

paper explores the lived experience of the diasporic subjects as represented

in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake'(2003). It demonstrates how an individual

life gets inevitably mixed up and messed up with those of others in different

spaces, which lie in proximity to each other and contribute to his/her identity

formation. Hybridization, Tran cultural dilemma and diasporic sensibility are

explored through the characters and setting of the Novel. Language carries

the culture and the skillful use of language brings home the heightened

sense of homecoming, The protagonists Ashima and Gogol at different

stages become obsessed to absorb the world inherited and finally in the

process of assimilation they long for belonging.A balance is finally struck in

their lives.

Introduction: The Namesake is the cross cultural multigenerational story of

a Hindu Bengali family's journey to self acceptance in Boston, The story

takes the Ganguli family from their tradition bound life in Calcutta to their

alien setting in America. Ashok and Ashima get the first shock with the

change of the geographical location after their arrival in the USA. Amid the

"heaps of broken snow,"(Jhumpa Lahiri 30) "the frigid New England chill"

(ibid) "leafless trees with ice covered branches "(ibid) "not a soul on the

street" (ibid) etc. Ashima realizes the intensity of the loss of the family and

community support. Her pregnancy in the new space brings her the Trans-

cultural dilemma as it signals the entry of a member of the second

generation who will represent a hybrid generationa. Between 1968 and

2000, Ashok and Ashima make some progress regarding their acculturation

with the U.S, but they could not move beyond the Indian frame of mind.

Being unable to settle down mentally they think that one way of finding

connectedness is to purchase a house which becomes a symbol of belonging.

This reminds us the dilemma of V.S Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas in

which Biswas Longs for a permanent home but ends up realizing that there

is no permanent home.

The act of Ashok and Ashima of owning a home is indication enough of their

acceptance in the secular space. In the meantime, their ties with the

ancestral land begin to weaken. "As their lives in New England swell with

fellow Bengali friends, the member of that other, former life slowly

dwindle"(Lahiri-63). They are therefore forced to distance themselves from

the endearing, fictional family and community back 'home'. They slowly but

surely allow themselves to move towards a hybrid cultural location,

Hybridization: Gogol, the protagonist, having been named after a Russian

writer in memory of a catastrophe years turns out to the reader as

Hybridized identity. Ashima and Ashok make peace with their pasts, but

their son, Gogol, attempts to eradicate his heritage. This becomes evident

when Lahiri describes how Gogol and his sister resent childhood trips to

India during which they are forced to interact with family and give up the

material comforts of American life. Unlike his parents, Gogol does not see

himself as a stranger living in a foreign land. He wants to be seen as

American, free of the expectations of foreign land. Gogol's rebels against his

pastas he feels uncomfortable with his name. He often wonders how he can

truly fit with his American friends or American girls with strange name like

Gogol. In his early romances, he is careful to avoid any contact with his past

or upbringing. India is rarely discussed and his girl friends are not allowed to

meet his parents. With one woman named Maxine, in fact Gogol attempts to

become an entirely different person. He adopts Maxine's carefree lifestyle;

he listens to Maxine's music, drinks her wine and even for a while he lives in

Maxine's house, all in an effort to build a wall between his parents and his

past. The novel, thus dramatizes the generation gap and cultural conflict of

two generations of Indian family in America and neither of them could fully

accept or reject the cultures hitherto. Hybridization has never been a

pleasurable experience for Indian community in the USA. Lahiri never

becomes judgmental in her delineation of the characters. The throes of

hybridized identity are dug deep and writ large by her small patches. The

comparison of other characters like 'shobha' in A Temporary Matter, or Boori

Ma in A Reat Dawn with Gogol show that all are caught in a maze of culture

from where they long for a breather. The author herself speaks through her

characters as she feels: "I always find myself in exile which ever country I

travel to, that is why I was tempted to write about those living their lives in

exile".(Bookbrowse.com/authorinterviews/=929)7'Thequestionofidentity

has been a difficult one for the culturally displaced immigrants or for those

who grow up in two cultures anywhere simultaneously. The sense of an

exile, loneliness, and a longing for belonging is more prominent for the first

generations as the second generation is more acculturate to the new nation.

On the other hand, the second generation feels the absence of any cultural

moorings , for they belong to none. This has even been the author's own

experience in America. Divided identity always vexes an individual as s/he

has to act in duality, one to satisfy the parents and their culture and the

other to the peers of the land of immigration.

Trans - cultural dilemma: The family traverses a long journey where all

the characters encounter difficulties in different spaces and undergo

transformation of identities through the drama of cultural conflicts that

create pain and passiveness and anxieties and alienation. Transculturation

begins with Ashoke and Ashima and shifts to their next generation. Ashima

attempts to cope in the alien culture by reading the Bengali novels she

brought with her or retreating with her familiar world, The dilemma becomes

acute when her son Gogol is born for the difficulty of raising the child there.

They adopt first the process of acculturation for the sake of their child and

simultaneously start losing many of their own thus undergoing a process of

transition, hybridization and the conditions of diasporas there of all at a

time. Gogol too in his career suffers bears the brunt of cultural alienation

and identity crisis. His very name epitomizes the confusion of cross-cultural

dilemma. Just to fit into the American culture he not only adopted their

culture but also started hating his own name, culture and roots. He distances

himself from his family, Indian acquaintances and values. He takes India not

as his homeland but as a country the way other Americans view it to be.

While he tries to become more an American, dates with American girl

Maxine, adopts her lifestyle and changes his own name little does he realize

that it is difficult to realize fully the alien culture, The name still remains of

Indian origin. Further, he fails to understand that an identity is not in change

of llfestyle or name; it's something more than that

Gogol though reacts against the parental influences but he seems to be

more balanced than Moushumi whose Hybridization is evident in her

disintegrating personality. Moshumi's attempt to 'reinvent herself without

misgivings, without guilt' (Jhumpa Lahiri-233) finds parallel with Chitra

Banarjee or Bharati Mukherjee who love to celebrate their Hybrid identity.

Even in an award winning ceremony Chitra Banerjee declares the world of

her pleasure of being awarded the coveted Prize as an American. Jhumpa

Lahiri is herself suspended between two cultures and attempts to find the

interrelation of the world in a post modern and post colonial situations. Both

post modernity and post colonialism share a common concern of the

sentence of history on common man, the distinction of centre and periphery.

Ashima could never settle to her hybridized identity in her attempt to belong

to an alien culture. She found herself to belong nowhere, This sense of non

belongingness is rooted into the deep psyche of the protagonist. Ashima

tries to set back to her own culture. Hera love of family, for instance,

influenced her to create a close-knit web of immigrant friends. This group

practices Indian custom, speaks the Bengali language, and in many respect

become a substitute family for the vast collection of relatives back in India.

To a large degree her life is consumed by recreating indian culture in

America. Ashima's Calcutta linage constantly haunts her and makes her a

sojourner in America. Her home is a meta-American home from the outside,

but typically Bengali from inside. She remains typical Bengali lady in spite of

her physical location in Cambridge, or Massachusetts for so many years.

Diasporic Consciousness: Second generation protagonist Gogol Ganguli

struggles with a sense of namelessness. His struggle with naming is

emblematic of the nominal crisis that pervades in the diasporic community.

In an act of self definition he abandons the name Gogol and tries to become

Nikhil, the conventional Hindu name that was given to him late. Gogol's new

name is a salute to his future, a future without having to justify or explain

his confusing name, Gogol, it seems, believes that switching his name can

erase the complications of his past. Gogol cannot ignore the memories of his

past- his name, his parents, and his Indian heritage. They have shaped his

character and defined him as a human being. Gogol slowly begins to realize

that he cannot after all resist the pull of the family. He realized that he

cannot simply walk away from who he is. For better or for worse, he loves

his family and their Indian customs, He even begins to realize that his

passionate efforts to create an entirely new person are ultimately just

reactions against his past. He slowly becomes the student of his past, and he

learns to discover a peaceful future which is extremely Diasporic in nature.

Jumpha Lahiri throughout her novel looks at her Indian counter parts, from

her own diasporic lenses. The characters, in a trans- cultural situation,

attempt to belong while celebrating their roots. Sometimes the attempts to

erase the history are discursively found in literary text but the author could

drive the reader's attention to the fact that the history is inerasable,

something permanent.

The characters struggle with the memory of their homeland as it happens for

the author herself or many other diasporic authors, like Rushdie and Naipaull

as India is a homeland in their imagination. Rushdie in his Imaginary

Homeland has shown the vexed issue of cultural displacement when he says:

"A full migrant suffers, traditionally a triple disruption. He loses place. He

enters into alien language...what makes immigrants such a pathetic figure."

(Imaginary Homeland-Rushdie) It is diasporic Consciousness of the

protagonist hat their memories engage them in a struggle against forgetting.

Conclusion: Gogol accepts the destiny, his own unique roots and turns

more emotionally balanced and matured. Ashima and Gogol occupy different

geographical spaces, away from their roots and attempt to assimilate the

alien culture at different stages. In other words they move from an

epistemological situation i.e. understanding their two worlds to the

postmodern trend of fragmentary experiences. But they find meaning and

belonging in their diasporic situation with the amalgamations of Indian roots.

Work Cited:

1. Appiah, Kwame Anthony and Henry Louis Gates, )r., Eds. TheDictionary of Global Culture. New York: Alfred A.Knof, 1996.

2. Foucault, Michel. *Of other Spaces. Heterotopias'(1976) (trans. Jay \Miskowiec).3&6 .

3. Field, Robin E. writing the Second Generation: Negotiating CulturalBorderlands in Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies and TheNamesake. South Asian Review XXV.2 (2004):165-77.Print

4. Ashcroft, Bill, Griffith and Helen Tiffin. Key Concepts in Post-ColonialStudies. London and New York: Routledge, 1998.Print

5. Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Namesake. New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2OO4.print6. Encyclopedia of Virginia. New York: Somerset, 1993. Print.

Barnet, Sylvan. The Practical Guide to Writing. Toronto: Longman,2003. Print.

7. Boo kb rowse. com/a uthor_i nterviews/fu I l/i ndex. cfm ?a uthor-n u m ber= 929.web.28 Feb'11

Copyright @ 2011 Rock pebbles