View of DIASPORIC LIVES, MELANCHOLIC SAGE AND CULTURAL ASSIMILATION IN CONTEXT OF JHUMPA LAHIRI’S NOVEL “THE LOWLAND”

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ACCENT JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS ECOLOGY & ENGINEERING Peer Reviewed and Refereed Journal (International Journal) ISSN-2456-1037

Vol.04,Special Issue 05, (ICIR-2019) September 2019, Available Online: www.ajeee.co.in/index.php/AJEEE

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DIASPORIC LIVES, MELANCHOLIC SAGE AND CULTURAL ASSIMILATION IN CONTEXT OF JHUMPA LAHIRI’S NOVEL “THE LOWLAND”

Sheikh Intikhab Alam, Ph. D Research Scholar Department of Comparative Languages and Culture,

Barkatullah University, Bhopal (M.P.)

Abstract – Jumpha Lahiri’s novel “The Lowland” is a narration of the pain and anguish of characters that are underline in the novel. Unexpected alienationand diasporic livesemerge the central key for the in the development of themes narrated by Jumpha Lahiri’s narrated in melancholic saga. Jumpha Lahirieagerly enumerated three generations alienating history. Alienation runs along with their blood circulation. The fractured life of the Mitra family is narrated in such framework; it compels the readers to express their emotional breakdown. In context to same, present study intends to explore diasporic lives, melancholic sage and cultural assimilation in context of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Novel “The Lowland”.

Key words: Diasporic Lives, Melancholic Sage, Cultural Assimilation 1 INTRODUCTION

JhumpaLahiri is one of the recent and internationally recognized second generation emigrant writers belong to this subset. Born to Bengali parents in 1967 in London and grew up in U.S.A., Lahiri has won many awards and prizes. Her latest novel “The Lowland” is shortlisted for Man Booker Prize, 2013. Lahiri has won DSC PRIZE for South Asian Literature in recently held Jaipur Lit fest 2015. Through her writings, Lahiri interprets the diasporic sensibility of the immigrants. Apart from diasporic sensibility, Lahiri has also dealt with human relationship, victimization of helpless women through her writings. Lahiri has convincingly shown the need to go ‘beyond’ the manmade boundaries like culture, religion, race, nation and acknowledge the universal aspect of human through her writings.

Vijay Mishra’s (2014) argued that “all diasporic are unhappy” (1) is one virtually correct. As observed all characters in the novel are emotionally broken. It seems that alienation is part and parcel of their lives. It circulates into their veins constantly. The trio of trauma, exile, and alienation pervades the entire novel.

2 DIASPORIC LIVES REFLECTED IN THE NOVEL

Jhumpa Lahiri in the novel “The Lowland” breathlessly recounts the diasporic lives. She in the novel in fact made us accept the view that alienation-isolation as the necessary qualification fordiasporas. Her women manage the diasporic settings differently compared to that of their partners. Their acculturation looks slightly painful. All diasporas share and carry a common history of unfinished shifting and setting. In most of her writings, she seems to be obsessed with the questions of identity, alienation, and isolation. The psychological dislocation that immigrants often suffer causes even their children to feel a similar sense of alienation. Her writings mostly travel from alienation to isolation. Her character’s role problem is to make a balance between internal and external mental conflicts that the host settings brewed up. The reason for this fascination for the diaspora is the important issue of identity. First underlined in the context of newly-freed nations, the notion was quickly taken up to describe the condition of any minority group pitted against a majority based on different colour, race, sex, etc. In the case of the immigrants in any society, their identity is threatened by the culture of the host country. Besides,

“The trajectory of a migrant follows the pattern of location, dislocation and relocation, each one of these phases being luminal rather than sharply defined ones.

The process of acculturation is a slow one-sided (the minority seeking integration with the majority) process and is not without a sense of loss and exile. It is also not a clear transformation; it gives rise to hybridity marking different stages of acculturation” (Malik 156)

Through her literary works Lahiri has convincingly shown that though nostalgia and memory formed an important part of diasporic sensibility of the first generation, the second generation immigrants were on their way of assimilation and ready to lay roots in the new land. She speaks of the struggle of identity formation, and the gradual process of assimilation among second – generation immigrants. She faithfully captures the essence of

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their diasporic sensibility. Her literary works highlight and exhibit the tendency of these hyphenated children of second generation who move away from the restrictions of their immigrant parents who are often devoted to their community and their responsibility to other immigrants and native place and people. As second generation immigrant she informs her own dilemma that reflects ‘in between' ness experienced by these immigrants that initiates their journey towards transnationalism with formation of cultural hybridity that gives them a new or what is called third space. As Lahiri expresses in an interview;

“When I was growing up in Rhode Island in the 1970s I felt neither Indian nor American. Like many immigrants offspring, I felt intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new, approved of an either side of the hyphen. Looking back, I see that this was the case. But my perception as a young girl was that I fell short of both ends, shutting between two dimensions that had nothing to do with another”. (Lahiri, March 2006)

Through her literary works Jhumpa Lahiri has convincingly shown that immigrant experience and diasporic sensibility is not simple and straight forward but it is disturbing, contradictory and in a state flux. In this age of globalization, it comes a long way from earlier implications of violence and moves towards third space. Her second generation characters faithfully reflect the sensibility of new Hyper Mobile, Techno-Savoy diaspora.

Afshin Assadnassab’s (2012) in “Displacement, an Unknown Freedom: Cultural Identity in Jhumpa Lahiri’s remarked that,

“The Lowland dwells in multifaceted territory. Gauri realizes the Naxals are unaware to a cruelty much closer to residence that of women. Udayan had sought after a revolution, but at home he'd probably to be served; his only bequest to meals was to wait for her and serve him specific concerns to the second generation. The family is split; two are Indians and the other two are born in America. The juxtaposition of the different nationalities creates further tensions for the characters involved. As one sees all through the novel each Ganguli family member is a singular case and unique version who seeks for his or her own real self and tries to answer the question of identity. Although they live together and share much, they still have differences in their life orientation and their experiences with their identities which are mostly related to their Indian-American lives.”

3 THE LOWLAND AS MELANCHOLIC SAGA

The Lowland is a melancholic tale right from the beginning of the novel.The Lowland is a sweeping, ambitious story that examines in intimate detail the intersection of the political and the personal, encompassing nearly 50 years of Indian and American history through the lives of one family.The Lowland dwells in multifaceted territory. Fractured relation is main bridge on which whole novel travel. The novel ripples out from the beginnings of the Naxalite uprising in West Bengal in 1967. Two brothers, Subhash and Udayan Mitra, are attracted by the radical communist movement while at university in Calcutta. But Subhash, the more cautious and sensible of the two, quickly perceives the danger involved and withdraws, leaving to study in the U.S. Udayan, left behind, becomes more entrenched in militant politics, believing that violence against the state is justified in the name of revolution. It's not much of a spoiler to reveal that, early on, he is arrested and executed by the police on the lowland behind their parents' suburban house, supposedly for his part in a violent crime. Lahiri’s writing is notable for its restraint and understatement. She resists lyricism, just as she avoids obvious drama. Until the very end of the book, every major upheaval–death, betrayal, violence–happens offstage and is recounted, second-hand.

Instead, she concentrates on the minutiae of relationships – between brothers, between husband and wife, and between parents and children–and on the deep reverberations these dramatic moments create in ordinary lives. But she also–quietly, without sensationalism- draws attention to the post-independence India in which the Naxalite movement was born:

the desperate poverty that led many young idealists to see revolutionary violence and self- sacrifice as the only solution. In the novel of history overlooked by the west, as Gauri learns when she comes to Rhode Island: "There was nothing about Calcutta. What had consumed the city, what had altered the course of her life and shattered it, was not reported here”.

Thus, the Novel, The lowland is fundamentally based on the tragic relations in which the Gauri plays an important role in entire novel. Although it plays with secrets and emotional turning points (whether Bela will find out about her biological father, whether Udayan was

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a victim of police brutality or a deluded, violent man), it seems to possess no singular trajectory and no dominant idea beyond that of generational drift. Though this is an emotional book it is more balanced, less highly wrought than Interpreter of Maladies or Unaccustomed Earth. In consonance to same TK Pius (2014) observed that

“The Lowland is a melancholic tale narrated with restraint and distance. There are books that depict through gestures, symbolism and impeccable details, the subtlety with which people encounter life. This is one such book. Though stylistically different, parts of it remind readers of The Invisible Bridge that tells the story of a family shattered and remade in history’s darkest hour. As shocking complexities, tragedies, and revelations multiply over the years, Lahiri astutely examines the psychological nuances of conviction, guilt, grief, marriage, and parenthood and delicately but firmly dissects the moral conundrums inherent in violent revolution”.

4 CULTURAL ASSIMILATION

Lahiri takes us into Indian life and custom just enough to have us viscerally feel the clash of cultures that Subhash encounters when he relocates to America. She also deftly limns the gradual assumption of American values that makes him, in the end, very much an American. Juggling ideas and details, abstracts and concretes, from Hindu philosophy to Descartes, Lahiri’s wide-ranging reference points enrich this novel and underscore the university ambience in which much of it is set.Upon entering into a new society, the culture shock takes time to wane which could vary from a few weeks to some years or decades, and in some cases, it may not dissipate at all. In case of Indians migrating to the west, it takes a long time to go and even then, it is a mixed culture which they evolve, after fine-tuning the cultural traits of the host country to their taste. As to why it happens, it can be safely argued that India, being an old civilization, has a very deep impact on its people. Our culture is high on ritualism and symbolism. No day in the calendar goes without the mention of some ritual or the other. However, subtlety and refinement are the hallmarks of Lahiri’s approach so that the reader hardly feels the existence of culture shock. But the cultural difference is surely marked by the characters. Thus, we see in the “The Lowland”, rather a slow demolition of the cultural barrier in Gauri. She does subscribe, in course of time, to American culture, and become fiercely individualistic person, and yet some-thing of the old culture remains in her which takes her back to Calcutta towards the close of the story. The novel does throw subtle hints of cultural difference, as Knopf review states,

“The middle section of The Lowland presents a particularly arid stretch. We know the basic outlines of the assimilation story: the confusion about American customs, the unstaunchable loneliness, the sense of having made a horrible mistake in coming to this brash, cocky country. In The Lowland, though the characters are even more inert to their new home, trapped as they are in their own impenetrable depression.”

5 CONCLUSIONS

Lahiri, Lowland is overtly about immigrants, cultural clashes, assimilation and adaptation and so forth. They disclose how the socio-cultural forces, ethnicity, and genders have influenced the expatriate characters and bring out anxieties, uneasiness, nostalgia, rootlessness and alienation, disconnection in relationship and identity crisis that they have to come to terms with. The vested interests have been shown priority over the most precious blood relation. TK Pius (2014) observed that “The Lowland is a melancholic tale narrated with restraint and distance. There are books that depict through gestures, symbolism and impeccable details, the subtlety with which people encounter life. This is one such book.

Though stylistically different, parts of it remind readers of The Invisible Bridge that tells the story of a family shattered and remade in history’s darkest hour. As shocking complexities, tragedies, and revelations multiply over the years, Lahiri astutely examines the psychological nuances of conviction, guilt, grief, marriage, and parenthood and delicately but firmly dissects the moral conundrums inherent in violent revolution”.

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