Diaspora experience

Quest International Multidisciplinary Research Journal Volume – I , Issue – II December – 2012 ISSN : 2278 – 4497

Available online at www.mahidachintan.com

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Diaspora Experience between the creation and the creator : A closer look at the Diaspora connected character in Anita Desai’s “Fasting, Feasting” Arul Gaspar Assistant Professor of English Christ University Bangalore -560029 Karnataka (India) Abstract This article addresses the diasporic experiences of the immigrants embarking upon their desire in a new land or nation. This paper intends to focus on Indianness or Indian consciousness as a continual expression in a new land. It also discusses the inbetweenness, homelessness and hope for establishing a portion of carried culture and homeland setup in a foreign land.

The idea of immigrants' struggle to get over the strangeness, alienation within and without and aspiration for grappling with a new culture are explored through the concept of Diaspora and Diasporic Experience. Thus I examine the Indian boy's conscious move from India to the United States of America and his stay between his past pleasant memories and desire for a new exposure to new land filled with new culture.

Keywords: indianness, diaspora/diasporic experience, new homeland, displacement Introduction The term “Indianness” which is always tugging in every heart of Indian who either living in own homeland or new homelands should be given intellectual, cultural, political and social spaces to ponder over in academic milieu. When Uma talks about ‘that brown shawl Mama bought in Kashmir Emporium for Arun who receives the

parcel later in Mrs. Patton’s house and leaves not just the Indian shawl but ‘Indianness’ behind him among Mr. and Mrs. Patton, Rod and Melanie (a typical American family) and Papa’s conscious cry ‘Post? Post? No, no, no. Very costly, too costly vividly brings to light Indianness subtly (Desai 4&228). Through this novel Anita Desai expresses her unhappy, bitter tone from Uma, the first spinster daughter who is alienated within and entrapped at home to serve self-righteous and self-obssessed parents to Melanie, the Pattons’ daughter who is selfindulgent and totally carefree and tucks herself in the world of sugar candies.

As Rana Dasgupta puts it Anita Desai who was born in 1937 to a German mother and an Indian father has always tried to paint the picture of displaced human beings in her writings. She has written about travelers and exiles, people who lived out of time and space, people who got obsessed with a sort of inability to understand each other in terms of culture, human beings with steely determination to carry their past or innate history form one place to another and their impossibility in that endeavor.

Furthermore, this novel ‘Fasting, Feasting’ took a comprehensive shape after her considerable

Copyright © 2012. Arul Gaspar. This is an open access refereed article distributed under the Creative Common Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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years of stay in Massachusettes, USA. It also throws light on how Desai left behind her Indian consciousness and native India to teach and write in the United States of America (Dasgupta). Thus, this situation has given her a great boost to present aspects of diaspora life and diaspora experience through her creation ‘Arun’ in her novel.

The twentieth century literature gave importance to the intention of author rather than just his or her writing. Its chief concern was to examine the author’s life to understand what the author concerned meant to communicate – his or her crux of the matter, theme or message – which is called authorial intention (Tyson 2).

And here we are called to analyze the text or read this literary work ‘with the grain’ in which the text takes us through the diasporic journey explaining all thoughts and feelings of Anita Desai. In this novel, Anita Deasai as a domicile of different country, living in America feels bound by threads of memory and affection to her mother-land and writes her diaspora experience from her new homeland (Parameswaran).

What is Diaspora? And what does this term ‘Diaspora’ mean to the Computer Age student or scholar of English or Cultural Studies? The answer reads that it is traditionally the continuing cultural and religious links between Jewish peoples despite their common experience of exile from their God given, old homeland. In postcolonial studies, it has been described as cultural affiliations connecting the dispersed or migrated people to make them feel tethered together to wear their identities (Gilroy) (Parameswaran 207). Furthermore, Brooker opines that the ethnic groups are connected in a diasporic network via family ties, morality, manners, sporting and artistic traditions to a homeland, or to an idea of a homeland (Brooker 74). So, we see in the text that Anita Desai reveals shifting and unfinished history of displacement and settlement, original homeland or essential identity and the condition and experience of hybridity through her diaspora connected character ‘Arun’ or ‘Ahroon’.

Secondly Diaspora is both ‘a geographical phenomenon- crossing an area of land or water by an individual or a group as well and as an abstract idea: a way of thinking, or of representing the world’ (Procter 151-59).

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Thirdly, the term ‘diaspora’ describes communities moulded by histories of displacement and migration between or within continents but for whom an affection and attachment to the homeland, real and imagined, continues to give a mark of identification (Cohen 2008). Therefore, this diasporic or diaspora experience mirrors the dispersed or displaced ones’ deep desire for holding on to the homeland’s culture, history, religious and sociocultural thoughts and feelings. And the dispersed spend the rest of their lives in their new homeland with strong nostalgic tendencies in which they always relive their past in the present. It is very much present in the novel ‘Fasting, Feasting’.

Coming back to the character ‘Arun’ in India and ‘Ahroon’ in America, we observe the reality that his life in India with his parents is completely controlled and guided. He always receives do’s and don’t’s from his parents. He is not able to move an inch to breathe in and breathe out the way he wants to do. On the contrary, he finds it very difficult to exercise his sense of freedom in the US, when no is there with him especially his parents. He feels timid, controlled and subdued by the new environment.

Anita Desai clearly pictures this situation telling how Arun’s father’s authority is ‘unchallenged and unshaken’ at home and the children don’t question their choice now (9-10). Here Papa decides what Arun should get in life. Papa becomes a remote control in Arun’s life. Arun should study or go to the ground and play according to his instruction and time(119). It is more evident when Anita describes the way Papa didn’t even bother to counter Mama’s argumet and didn’t expect her to understand the importance of foreign education, the value of a foreign degree and the openings this would create later in life. Papa literally brushed aside the entire household’s ideas and outlooks(120).

This shows the Indian way of conditioning young ones’ lives in India. And still in most of the Indian families, children are brought up the way parents want them to see. Parents literally press their children into their mould. This situation leads Arun with no choice and Papa decides Arun’s future or prosperous life. Arun is not able to decide anything by himself and this condition is very well reflected upon his stay in the university hostel. When the students ask him

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to join them for the summer stay, Arun pretends to have other plans. In fact, he does not have any plan and he seems indecisive. He is not able to speak up what he thinks(172). Furthermore, Arun feels isolated from the rest of the student body and he feels lonely in the new homeland.

Arun’s happy-go-lucky living with MamaPapa, his sisters: Uma and Aruna, the neighbourhood of old bunglows, dusty gardens and strggling hedges where he had grown up and the only town with a few shops in the bazzar(172) has been now replaced by a room on the fifth floor of a fourteen-storey block in which a silent student from Louisiana will always smoke cigarettes. His room is neatly decorated by graffiti. On Friday nights, students throw empty beer bottles out of the windows. They hear loud music to pass their night. It seems totally an another civilization for Arun(169). This complete, strange fiasco separates him from other students. Thus diaspora experience makes feel lonely and friendless in the new homeland.

Uma Parameswar in her collection of poems entitled ‘Trishanku’presents immigrant experience of the Diaspora in Canada. Through this collection, she states four phases of immigrant settlement at individual and collective level: The first phase is one’s nostalgic feelings for the homeland left behind mixed with fear in a new homeland or a strange land. The second phase is being completely occupied in adjusting to the new environment where suffrage is immense devoid of little output. And the third phase is starting to take part in the shaping of Diaspora existence and the fourth phase participating in the larger spectrum of politics and national issues (Parameswaran 305). But in this novel, the first and the second phases play a pivotal role in Arun’s life. When Arun is not able to get any room to spend his summer vacation, he receives a letter from his Papa and this letter takes him back home where he is completely guided once again like ‘his family laying its hands upon him, pushing him down into a chair at his desk, shoving a textbook under his nose, catching that nose and making him swallow cold liver oil, spooning food into him, telling him: Arun, this, Arun, that, Arun, nothing but …’(175). This situation vividly shows us that how morally Arun is guided by his parents from the old

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homeland just by his recollection of past pleasant or bitter memories. When Mrs. Patton and Arun visit a supermarket, they pick up a few cans and cartons. When they pick up, Arun is so conscious about the price as Papa was inclined to do whereas Mrs. Patton is worried about the food value and calorific content(183). And here also we see Arun going back to his past practice in life and repeats the same practice in the strange land. It shows that he can not get rid of his old custom that learnt at one point of time.

He carries the past with him and lives with the past in the present, a new homeland.

As Parameswaran puts it, in the second phase of immigrant experience, we see Arun slowly gets acclamatised and becomes familiar to the motion of American life style. He adjusts to the new environment in which he has to sacrifice certain personal things in life. And we see Arun obediently following Mrs. Patton to the cans and cartons of different brands not for their varied prices but for their food vaue and calorific content(183). This is absolutely new for him and he has to change his attitude toward purchasing canned foods here after. At another occasion, Mr. Patton gives Arun a paper bag contain red meat for grilling. Arun as a vegetarian receives the red meat and leaves it in the kitchen(202).

This another instance that reveals the fact that he has to adjust to the new environment.

As a diasporic experience, Arun also becomes a victim of Melanie’s contemptous look and scorn. The moment Melanie faces Arun, she hates him and tries to insult him in every way.

Melanie repeatedly uses a phrase ‘Go away’.

Here Arun is hated by an American girl of his age for no reason. This event helps us understand the scorn of the native, the immigrants encounter in a strange land or a new homeland. Melanie’s contempt reaches to the extent where she is lying in her vomit, her hair streaked with it and still she is vomiting. Arun watches her pathetic and helpless condition and offers her help but she bursts out shouting ‘Go. Go’way’(223). This sad situation pictures the natives’ sense of hatred toward the immigrants and the immigrants’ helpless situation in a new homeland.

Diaspora experience also refers to a way of thinking or of representing the world. Arun’s

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way of thinking and the new situation he encounters in Massachusettes are extremely different. Arun’s way of representing the world is MamaPapa especially Papa with absolute power and glory. It is a patriarchal world completely filled with male dominance.

Whatever Papa says it is by order and everybody should obey his command. Daughters are raised for a marriage and sons are born to get educated and become a head of the family. Uma, his eldest sister was not allowed to leave the house for any reason. She was not allowed to go out without papa’s permission. She was not even allowed to the telephone. She should always be at home and serving MamaPapa. And Uma also did not learn to go out alone and working outside home is a foreign concept for her. This is Arun’s world.

On the contrary, he meets an older woman giving paramount importance to education telling ‘I don’t care about all that, looking glamorous and such. What I care about is getting me an education’(171). At this juncture, we are able to realize two significant truths. One Uma could not get married to anybody because she is simple and homely with less color and also she wears thick glasses. To help her get married to somebody, parents are willing to spend so much money as dowry. They are not bothered about her education, career and sense of independence.

All they want is to get rid of her. But here Arun witnesses an older woman who is afflicted by cervical cancer still pursuing her education to make her identity visible in the society where she lives in. Arun as a new immigrant is torn apart between two worlds- Uma like women in India are raised only for marriages and made captive for life and the older woman with cervical cancer in the US is absolutely free to pursue what she wants in life(170-171).As mentioned earlier, the term ‘diaspora’ describes communities moulded by histories of displacement and migration between or within continents but for whom an affection and attachment to the homeland, real and imagined, continues to give a mark of identification (Cohen 2008). Arun is identified as a week young man who is small, underdeveloped and asthmatic boy from the Gangetic plains, nourished on curried vegetables and stewed

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lentils. He is compared to Rod who is represented like one of gladiatorial species of northen power(191).

Conclusion Anita Desai as a postcolonial writer beautifully presents diasporic formations or diaspora experiences through the Indian customs, faith, religion, manners and socio-cultural attitude.

She skillfully uses the character Arun to reveal his loneliness, indecisiveness, allegiance to his past or old practice and his inclination to his specific mark of identification in the new homeland. However he receives foreign education for a better opportunity in the global market and his mind set is rooted back to Indianness. As an immigrant, he wants to be identified as Indian in every way. Arun’s food habit has changed but not his inner man and this makes him stand out of the crowd in the new homeland. Feasting and just feasting! From whose perspective – the creator or the creation?

Reference 1) Brooker, Peter. A Glossary of Cultural Theory.

London: Arnold, a member of the Hodder Headline Group, 2003. 74.Print.

2) Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas - An Introduction (Second Edition). London: Routledge, 2008. Page.

Print.

3) Dasgupta, Rana. Introduction to Anita Desai's Fasting, Feasting. Monday September 22 2008.

Monday April 4 2011 <http://www.ranadasgupta.com/texts.asp?text_id=4 4) Desai, Anita. Fasting and Feasting. London: Chatto & Windus, 1999. 4-224. Print.

5) Gilroy, Paul. "The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness." Brooker, Peter. A Glossary of Cultural Theory. London: Arnold, a member of the Hodder Headline Group, 2003. 74. Print.

6) J, Procter. The Routledge Companion to Poscolonial Studies. NewYork: Routledge, 2007.

151-59. Print.

7) Parameswaran, Uma. "Diaspora Consciousness Going Beyond the Hyphen without Erasing it."

Parameswaran, Uma. Writing the Diaspora:Essays on Culture and Identity. Eastern Book Corporation, 2007. 207, 305. Print.

8.) Tyson, Lois. critical theory today A User-Friendly Guide. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2006. 2. Print.

Please Cite this Article as : Gaspar, Arul. “Diaspora Experience between the creation and the creator :A closer look at the Diaspora connected character in Anita Desai’s “Fasting, Feasting”.” Quest International Multidisciplinary Research Journal 1.2 (2012) : 83 – 86. <www.mahidachintan.com>.

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