Indian Diaspora in Jhumpa Laheri’s A Temporary Matter
Abstract
Indian Diaspora is major thematic preoccupation of Jhumpa Laheri in her first, Pulitzer Prize winner short story collection Interpreter of Maladies. The present paper examines the diasporic elements in the first story of the collection A Temporary Matter, in which culture, traditions, rituals and the memory of the homeland affect the life of the immigrants in alien land.
Keywords: Diaspora, Memory, Traditions, Culture, Homeland, Indianness,
Diaspora as a term concerns not only one dimension but also many like history, geography, sociology, memory, ethnicity, culture, traditions and contemporary factors, and the term implies with all these things. ‘Diaspora’ can be described as:
“... the movement of people from any nation or group away from their own country.” [1]
While commenting on, Julian Wolfreys, diasporic situation makes it more explicit by saying:
“Setting of various peoples away from their homelands; often associated with the notion of the Jewish diaspora in modern Israel, but extended in cultural studies, post – colonial studies and race theory to consider the displacement of peoples by means of force such as slavery.”[2]
The term diaspora suggests one’s own room of his origin, culture, history and tradition in the host country.’ It means a particular or unchanged mental set in a new geographic and social atmosphere of one’s. Bill Ashcroft pines:
“Diaspora, the voluntary or forcible movement of peoples from their homelands into new regions, is a central historical fact of colonization.” [3]
This term is about those people who have left their country physically but they are associated with their own country mentally and are unable to accept the new changes fully or compromise with the old tradition.
There is a specific impression of their own homeland in their narrations of the Indian immigrants’ writers. These writers, who live outside of India carry a small India within themselves. However, we find Indians and Indianness in their work.
These migrated people took with them their own India. Their Dress, Language, Food, etc. made them different in the alien land, far from their homeland. They are also associated with their culture by celebrating all the festivals and following every cultural ethos and rituals. Such migrants are very Indians at home. First generation has their own memory for their homeland while in the case of the second generation is quite different. Their parents tell the second generation about their homeland or they know about their homeland from the books or different resources.
In the first story of the collection Interpreter of Maladies, A Temporary Matter, Jhumpa Laheri depicts the isolated existence and expatriate sensibility of Shobha when she shares her experiences of the responses to the similar situation at the time of power cut in India. However, during the power cut time, the couple transport to India to console themselves from the grief of their lost baby, Shobha recollects her memory of India which reflects her bonds with her born identity. In her memorizing narration of India, she directly compares the situation with her experience of native land from where she is displaced. Moreover, the “Rice Ceremony” depicts the grief of her lost baby. She says to Shukumar, to her husband by recollecting her memory in the following lines:
“Its like India,” Shobha said, watching him tend his makeshift candelabra. “Sometimes the current disappears for hours at a stretch. I once had to attend an entire rice ceremony in the dark. The baby just cried and cried. It must have been so hot.”(IM 11)
Their desires and aspirations of celebrating the rice ceremony of their child in the presence of all the relatives and friends. Rice ceremony is a part of cultural rituals for new-born baby in the family. It binds them together with particular belonging. It clears more her inner emotional integration with her origin culture when she tells about the Rice ceremony in India, which she had attended once.
Darkness during the power cut can be symbolized as it disclosed their inner states of minds by empowering their marginalized psyche and providing them a platform to recollect their past to tackle the problems of the present time and share their grief with each other. In this way, this tale articulates certain family crises and domestic issues of expatriates inside the home. Geographical as well as cultural change can be observed in their lifestyle but through their cultural interaction and cultural assimilation of their ancestry construct their original identity and emotional integration in the alien land which create the differences in their isolated existence.
Constant hankering for the belonging for their homeland and identified as an Indian for the satisfaction of themselves, marginalized community follow the rituals and tradition of their ancestors on the diverse spaces too, as Jhumpa Laheri perfectly and sharply depicts the identification consciousness of expatriates in the story “ A Temporary Matter” :
“Their baby would never have a rice ceremony, even though Shaba had already made the guest list, and decided on which of her three brothers she was going to ask to feed the child its first taste of solid food, at six months if it was a boy, seven if it was a girl.”(IM 11)
Even Shaba finds the remedy to come out from the darkness of power cut as well as the darkness of their relationships which lights in their hearts again. For that, she is informing her husband to follow the Indian way by playing a game during darkness as she has an experience from her grandmother house in India. Shobha suggests:
“I remember during power failures at my grandmother’s house, we all had to say something.”…. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. A little poem. A joke. A fact about the world. For some reason my relatives always wanted me to tell them the names of my friends in America.”(IM 12)
It is narrated in the story that Shukumar doesn't have direct experience of Indian culture while Shobha has her own memory and experience of India and the Indian culture. Being an Indian girl, mother and wife, she knows her responsibilities in the family and all the cultural tradition in the home. Moreover, she is a dutiful wife as well as an obedient daughter who can maintain her original Indianness in the alien land.
Works Cited
Dr. Yatinkumar J. Teraiya, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Kamani Science College & Pratapray Arts College, Amreli (Gujarat) India Email: toyatin@gmail.com