Cọp trắng / Aravind Adiga ; người dịch, Thi Trúc
Adiga, Aravind
The Travels of Dean MahometAn Eighteenth-Century Journey Through Indiahttp://www.scribd.com/doc/179221894/Anita-Desai-In-Custody-pdf#scribd. Read this and 80 million more documents for $8.99 per month. Anita Desai -InCustody.pdf |
From Manil Suri
The Death of Vishnu is the first in a trilogy of novels I plan to write.
As I mention in the front pages of the novel, The Death of Vishnu started with the death of an actual man named Vishnu, who lived on the steps of the building in which I grew up. I began it in 1995, and soon after took my first writing workshop, at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, MD with Jane Bradley, author of the searing works "Power Lines" and "Living Doll." Jane was the one who told me that I could not call a character "Vishnu" without connecting him somehow to the God Vishnu -- it was too potent a name. That's when I started reading up on Hindu mythology and using it in my fiction -- it was really the title that fueled the story.
Sometime after finishing the third chapter, it suddenly struck me. The Hindu trinity, known as "Trimurti" (or "three forms") consisted of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer. With it were the three ingredients of the cycle of existence: life, death and birth. Matching them gave three titles, so that the next two books could be The Life of Shiva and The Birth of Brahma.
So now I have two more titles, that have both sprung up from the original event of Vishnu's death, and are waiting to generate stories of their own. The goal will be not to write treatises on Hinduism, but create narratives and characters that throb with the spirit of what each deity represents. Shiva, for instance, is not only the destroyer, but also the ascetic, and since he is unattainable, this asceticism makes him an erotic figure. The second novel will therefore involve characters who experience unrequited attraction, set against the backdrop of Shiva exercising his tremendous powers of purification. To renew the cycle will be regeneration, as represented by Brahma. This will be the opportunity to explore the process of creation -- not only in a cosmic sense, but also by ordinary flesh and blood characters, whether they be artists or writers or scientists, or (dare I say) mathematicians.
PS: I could, of course, have called the other two books The Birth of Shiva and The Life of Brahma -- but I think it's Shiva's life as an ascetic that is more interesting, and the moment of Brahma's birth that resonates most with the idea of creation.
The Death of Vishnu
For those who claim that the finest contemporary writers in English are ones whose mother tongue is another language,The Death of Vishnu provides spectacular confirmation of their theory. With this first novel, Manil Suri places himself in the company of Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Anita Desai, Bapsi Sidhwa, Gita Mehta, Arundhati Roy, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and others in the great post-independence Indian and Pakistani literary flowering. In a beautifully structured effort (Suri is a professional mathematician), he links and overlays a half dozen tales, using the “pathetic” figure of Vishnu as his organizing device. In the process, he permits his readers to experience the explosive fullness of contemporary Indian life—its sensuality and asceticism; passion for food, scents, music, and film; love for the gods, holidays, and ceremony; the viciousness of Hindu-Muslim enmity; and intellectuality and devotion.
More remarkably, the book can be read with pleasure by those who know nothing of Hindu mythology and philosophy, despite the fact that Suri embeds his narrative in some of the deepest features of that religion. Vishnu’s landing is part of a staircase, which Vishnu gradually ascends to meet that great god’s daughter, Lakshmi, and be taken up in the great cycle of birth and rebirth. Both Mr. Jalal and Vinod Taneja recapitulate the classic Hindu stages of life (student, householder, ascetic). The staircase, grimy and bug-ridden, places all life on the same ladder of being; even the ants have their stories and cry out in anguish. India is radically modern and ancient at the same time, so the staircase represents the DNA double helix and the hierarchies of caste, color, and class introduced by Aryan warriors circa 1500 b.c.e.
All of this, however, is in the deep structure of the novel. In many ways, the surface is all action, resembling the plots of the movies and soap operas so loved by Indian audiences. On the first floor, the Pathaks and Asranis move from crisis to crisis in their long rivalry. The wives spar over the use of the four kerosene stoves in the hot common kitchen. The husbands—both cowed by their more forceful spouses—vainly try to patch things up. A huge dispute erupts over who is to clean up Vishnu’s area, pay for an ambulance, and handle medical costs. Neither family really cares for him—emotionally or responsibly—for he is completely beneath them in station. On the other hand, he has a genuine squatter’s right to be there and no one is about to turn him out.
Meanwhile, an absorbing “upstairs/downstairs” drama is unfolding, as the Asrani’s beautiful and movie-struck eighteen-year-old daughter, Kavita, has fallen in love with Salim Jalal. Before he fell ill, Vishnu helped them (for a price) pull off their trysts in dark recesses of the building. Disregarding the disaster they will surely cause, the Hindu-Muslim lovebirds elope. In their absence, the underlying religious hostility breaks out with unimaginable viciousness. The rumor spreads that Kavita has been kidnapped and despoiled. A vicious crowd gathers at the Jalals’ door.
Paradoxically, Salim’s father, after years as a critical skeptic, has already started an inward journey that would have made conversion to Hinduism inevitable. In the book’s choicest scene, he speaks fearlessly to the mob, describing a great vision of the deity he has had while sleeping next to Vishnu on the landing. He believes this to be the first sermon in what will become a world-saving ministry. What the crowd immediately notices is that he is paraphrasing the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavad Gita (which he had once read). Now he is not only guilty of “dacoity” (gang-style robbery), but also of blasphemy. As they beat him into semi-consciousness, he notices a Christian cross on a church near the apartment. This reminds him that all religious innovators must suffer for the message they bear the world. The incident is both harsh and comic at the same time—a combination that Suri seems to want his readers to understand as fundamental to Indian life.
Oblivious to what is happening below him, yet absorbed in the meditations so characteristic of the philosophical side of Hinduism, Vinod Taneja has the third floor to himself. After seventeen years of grieving the death of his wife, Sheetal, he has begun to find some peace. Whereas he once found sterile the basic teachings about the stages of life necessary to prepare one for liberation from desire and attachment, their truth now provides him with a way to continue. Drifting about the city, he learns of an ashram where a certain “Swamiji” presides. He attends sessions there, sitting on the outer edge of the gathering. Finally the teacher approaches him, asking why he is there. Calling himself “just an observer,” Taneja is shocked to learn...(The entire section is 1963words.)
http://www.enotes.com/topics/death-vishnu.
For those who claim that the finest contemporary writers in English are ones whose mother tongue is another language,The Death of Vishnu provides spectacular confirmation of their theory. With this first novel, Manil Suri places himself in the company of Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Anita Desai, Bapsi Sidhwa, Gita Mehta, Arundhati Roy, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and others in the great post-independence Indian and Pakistani literary flowering. In a beautifully structured effort (Suri is a professional mathematician), he links and overlays a half dozen tales, using the “pathetic” figure of Vishnu as his organizing device. In the process, he permits his readers to experience the explosive fullness of contemporary Indian life—its sensuality and asceticism; passion for food, scents, music, and film; love for the gods, holidays, and ceremony; the viciousness of Hindu-Muslim enmity; and intellectuality and devotion.
More remarkably, the book can be read with pleasure by those who know nothing of Hindu mythology and philosophy, despite the fact that Suri embeds his narrative in some of the deepest features of that religion. Vishnu’s landing is part of a staircase, which Vishnu gradually ascends to meet that great god’s daughter, Lakshmi, and be taken up in the great cycle of birth and rebirth. Both Mr. Jalal and Vinod Taneja recapitulate the classic Hindu stages of life (student, householder, ascetic). The staircase, grimy and bug-ridden, places all life on the same ladder of being; even the ants have their stories and cry out in anguish. India is radically modern and ancient at the same time, so the staircase represents the DNA double helix and the hierarchies of caste, color, and class introduced by Aryan warriors circa 1500 b.c.e.
All of this, however, is in the deep structure of the novel. In many ways, the surface is all action, resembling the plots of the movies and soap operas so loved by Indian audiences. On the first floor, the Pathaks and Asranis move from crisis to crisis in their long rivalry. The wives spar over the use of the four kerosene stoves in the hot common kitchen. The husbands—both cowed by their more forceful spouses—vainly try to patch things up. A huge dispute erupts over who is to clean up Vishnu’s area, pay for an ambulance, and handle medical costs. Neither family really cares for him—emotionally or responsibly—for he is completely beneath them in station. On the other hand, he has a genuine squatter’s right to be there and no one is about to turn him out.
Meanwhile, an absorbing “upstairs/downstairs” drama is unfolding, as the Asrani’s beautiful and movie-struck eighteen-year-old daughter, Kavita, has fallen in love with Salim Jalal. Before he fell ill, Vishnu helped them (for a price) pull off their trysts in dark recesses of the building. Disregarding the disaster they will surely cause, the Hindu-Muslim lovebirds elope. In their absence, the underlying religious hostility breaks out with unimaginable viciousness. The rumor spreads that Kavita has been kidnapped and despoiled. A vicious crowd gathers at the Jalals’ door.
Paradoxically, Salim’s father, after years as a critical skeptic, has already started an inward journey that would have made conversion to Hinduism inevitable. In the book’s choicest scene, he speaks fearlessly to the mob, describing a great vision of the deity he has had while sleeping next to Vishnu on the landing. He believes this to be the first sermon in what will become a world-saving ministry. What the crowd immediately notices is that he is paraphrasing the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavad Gita (which he had once read). Now he is not only guilty of “dacoity” (gang-style robbery), but also of blasphemy. As they beat him into semi-consciousness, he notices a Christian cross on a church near the apartment. This reminds him that all religious innovators must suffer for the message they bear the world. The incident is both harsh and comic at the same time—a combination that Suri seems to want his readers to understand as fundamental to Indian life.
Oblivious to what is happening below him, yet absorbed in the meditations so characteristic of the philosophical side of Hinduism, Vinod Taneja has the third floor to himself. After seventeen years of grieving the death of his wife, Sheetal, he has begun to find some peace. Whereas he once found sterile the basic teachings about the stages of life necessary to prepare one for liberation from desire and attachment, their truth now provides him with a way to continue. Drifting about the city, he learns of an ashram where a certain “Swamiji” presides. He attends sessions there, sitting on the outer edge of the gathering. Finally the teacher approaches him, asking why he is there. Calling himself “just an observer,” Taneja is shocked to learn...(The entire section is 1963words.)
http://www.enotes.com/topics/death-vishnu.
http://www.enotes.com/topics/death-vishnu.
A Suitable Boy (A Suitable Boy #1)
by Vikram Seth.
Vikram Seth's novel is, at its core, a love story: Lata and her mother, Mrs. Rupa Mehra, are both trying to find -- through love or through exacting maternal appraisal -- a suitable boy for Lata to marry. Set in the early 1950s, in an India newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis, A Suitable Boy takes us into the richly imagined world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale of their lives and loves. A sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multi ethnic society in flux, A Suitable Boy remains the story of ordinary people caught up in a web of love and ambition, humor and sadness, prejudice and reconciliation, the most delicate social etiquette and the most appalling violence. (less)
THE SHADOW LINES
E-Zine The Reviewer
(The review appeared first in the E-Zine, "The Reviewer" On 26 September 1999)
Such moments are rare indeed these days when one takes a book in the hand and is completely captivated by it after reading the first few pages. That happened to me recently when I started reading "The Shadow Lines" by Amitav Ghosh. "The Shadow Lines," Ghosh's second novel, was published in 1988, four years after the sectarian violence that shook New Delhi in the aftermath of the Prime minister, Indira Gandhi's assassination. Written when the homes of the Sikhs were still smouldering, some of the most important questions the novel probes are the various faces of violence and the extent to which its fiery arms reach under the guise of fighting for freedom. Ghosh's treatment of violence in Calcutta and in Dhaka is valid even today, more than ten years after its publication. What has happened recently in Kosovo and in East Timor show that answers still evade the questions which Ghosh poses about freedom, about the very real yet non-existing lines which divide nations, people, and families.
Much has been written about Amitav Ghosh's novels. "The Novels of Amitav Ghosh", edited by R. K. Dhawan was published this year by Prestige Books, New Delhi. If I find it necessary to say something more about Ghosh's writing it is because this novel moved me as none other did in the recent times. The Shadow Lines is the story of the family and friends of the nameless narrator who for all his anonymity comes across as if he is the person looking at you quietly from across the table by the time the story telling is over and silence descends. Before that stage arrives the reader is catapulted to different places and times at breath taking tempo. The past, present and future combine and melt together erasing any kind of line of demarcation. Such lines are present mainly in the shadows they cast. There is no point of reference to hold on to. Thus the going away - the title of the first section of the novel - becomes coming home - the title of the second section. These two titles could easily have been exchanged.
The narrator is very much like the chronicler Pimen in Pushkin's drama Boris Godonow. But unlike Pushkin's Pimen this one is not a passive witness to all that happens in his presence, and absence. The very soul of the happenings, he is the comma which separates yet connects the various clauses of life lived in Calcuttta, London, Dhaka and elsewhere. The story starts about thirteen years before the birth of the narrator and ends on the night preceding his departure from London back to Delhi. He spends less than a year in London, researching for his doctorate work, but it is a London he knew very well even before he puts a step on its pavements.Two people have made London so very real to him - Tridib, the second son of his father's aunt, his real mentor and inspirer, and Ila his beautiful cousin who has travelled all over the world but has seen little compared to what the narrator has seen through his mental eye. London is also a very real place because of Tridib's and Ila's friends - Mrs. Price, her daughter May, and son Nick. Like London comes alive due to the stories related by Ila and Tridib, Dhaka comes alive because of all the stories of her childhood told to him by his incomparable grandmother who was born there. The tragedy is that though the narrator spends almost a year in London and thus has ample opportunity to come to terms with its role in his life, it is Dhaka which he never visits that affects him most by the violent drama that takes place on its roads, taking Tridib away as one of its most unfortunate victims. Violence has many faces in this novel - it is as much present in the marriage of Ila to Nick doomed to failure even before the "yes" word was spoken, as it is present on the riot torn streets of Calcutta or Dhaka. But the speciality of this novel is that this violence is very subtle till almost the end. When violence is dealt with, the idea is not to describe it explicitly like a voyeur but to look at it to comprehend its total senselessness.
Thus the way "violence" is brought into the pictueis extraordinarily sensitive: The narrator says, talking of the day riots tore Calcutta apart in 1964, "I opened my mouth to answer and found I had nothing to say. All I could have told them was of the sound of voices running past the walls of my school, and of a glimpse of a mob in Park Circus." I have never experienced such a sound, but God, how these sentences get under the skin, how easy it is to hear that sound, how the heart beats faster on reading these sentences! There are many other reasons why "The Shadow Lines" is so special a book. It has many of the characteristics that elevate a book to the level of unforgettable literature.
First of all there is this simple language. These days when doing acrobatics with words and language has become equivalent to paving new directions in the literary scene, it is heart warming to read a book in which straight forward language is used to convey what the author wants to say. And what messages are conveyed, what new ideas are unearthed! I am one of those readers who likes reading because of the power inherent in words. Whenever I read a new book, I always hope that the book contains sentences and words - at least a couple of them - that illuminate the heart and mind for a long time after reading, sentences which simply make life easier to live. There is a treasure of such sentences to be discovered in "The Shadow Lines". For example, look at what Ghosh says about knowledge and ignorance: "...he knew the clarity of that image in his mind was merely the seductive clarity of ignorance; an illusion of knowledge created by a deceptive weight of remembered detail." And there is this most beautiful of all sentences I have read for a long, long time - "And yet, when I look at her (the grandmother), lying crumpled in front of me, her white thinning hair matted with her invalid's sweat, my heart fills with love for her - love and that other thing, which is not pity but something else, something the English language knows only in its absence - ruth - a tenderness which is not merely pity and not only love." It is this tenderness of feeling, this feeling of "ruth" of which the novel is so full of, which moves me. For all the violence that plays the central role in the novel, it is this abundant feeling of tenderness in the novel that the narrator feels for the people, for Tridib, for Ila, for the grandmother, for May, for Robi, that has remained with me. Ghosh is also a humorous writer. It is serious humour. Single words hide a wealth of meaning, for example, the way Tridib's father is always referred to as Shaheb, Ila's mother as Queen Victoria, or the way the grandmother's sister always remains Mayadebi without any suffix denoting the relationship. Also look at this passage that describes how the grandmother reacts on discovering that her old Jethamoshai is living with a Muslim family in Dhaka. "She exchanged a look of amazement with Mayadebi. Do you know, she whispered to Robi, there was a time when that old man was so orthodox that he wouldn't let a Muslim's shadow pass within ten feet of his food? And look at him now, paying the price of his sins."
"Ten feet! Robi explained to May in hushed whisper, marvelling at the precision of the measurement. How did he measure? he whispered back at my grandmother. Did he keep a tape in his pocket when he ate?"
"No, no", my grandmother said impatiently. "In those days many people followed rules like that; they had an instinct".
"Trignometry!", Robi cried in a triumphant aside to May. "They must have known Trignometry. They probably worked it out like a sum: if the Muslim is standing under a twenty-two foot bulding, how far is his shadow? You see, we're much cleverer than you: bet your grandfather couldn't tell when a German's shadow was passing within ten feet of his food."
As I read Robi's comments, I laughed, at first. Then I had to swallow hard at centuries old injustice these words were trying to hint at. Finally, another important reason the novel succeeds is because the main characters are very real, almost perfectly rounded. I specially love the grandmother. She is the grandmother many of us recognise. In her fierce moral standards, spartan outlook of life, intolerance of any nonsense - real and imagined, she is as real as any patriarch or matriarch worth the name. And there is this very loveable character of the narrator. It is that of a boy who warms your heart, it is that of a man who knows and has lost love - more than once in his life - and thus makes you feel like hugging him close to your heart. On all scores Amitav Ghosh's "The Shadow Lines" is a novel which must be read and re-read, thought about and discussed upon. It is a book that stays with the reader long after the last page has been turned and the light has been switched off.
Delhi
I return to Delhi as I return to my mistress Bhagmati when I have had my fill of whoring in foreign lands.
Thus begins Khushwant Singh's vast, erotic, irrelevant magnum opus on the city of Delhi. The principal narrator of the saga, which extends over six hundred years, is a bawdy, ageing reprobate who loves Delhi as much as he does the hijra whore Bhagmati - half man, half woman with sexual inventiveness and energy of both the sexes. Travelling through time, space and history to 'discover' his beloved city, the narrator meets a myriad of people-poets and princes, saints and sultans, temptresses and traitors, emperors and eunuchs - who have shaped and endowed Delhi with its very special mystique And as we accompany the narrator on his epic journey we find the city of emperors transformed and immortalized in our minds for ever. (less)
Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine A Paradigm of Psychic Disintegration and Regeneration Mythili, M., M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Research Scholar Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 Vol. 13:3 March 2013 Bharati Mukherjee Courtesy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharati_Mukherjee Abstract The term Diaspora refers to the dispersion of religious or ethnic groups from their established homeland either forced or voluntary. Initially this word was used for the dispersal of Jews when they were forced into exile to Babylonia. However, today it has come to mean any sizeable community of a particular nation or region living outside its own country and sharing some common bonds that give them an ethnic identity and consequent bonding. The contribution of Indian Diaspora to the world literature cannot be denied. The diasporic writers belong to different category; they have Indian origins, but live in the west, mainly England, Canada and the U.S.A. A large number of these diasporic writers have given expression to their creative urge and have brought credit to the Indian English Fiction as a Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 13:3 March 2013 Mythili, M., M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Research Scholar Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine - A Paradigm of Psychic Disintegration and Regeneration 527 distinctive force. The phenomenon of migration of Indian people to U.S.A. and other countries, their status there, and their nostalgic feelings for the mother country as well as their alienation to the new one is the major subject dealt by the Diasporic writers. The Indian-born American writer Bharati Mukherjee is one of the prominent novelists of Indian Diaspora. She has created a fair place for herself in the literary circle abroad, by her contribution to Indian English writing. Her commendable works place her in the class of great diasporic writers like Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Jhumpa Lahiri, Bernard Malmud, Issac Babel, and Yashmine Gunratne. The traumas and the agonies that people of Indian Diaspora face, in fulfilling their dreams, constitute the prime concern of Mukherjee’s literary oeuvre. She mainly focuses on her diasporic women characters, their struggle for identity, their bitter experiences, and their final emergence as self- assertive individuals, free from the bondages imposed on them. Hence, this paper is intended to explore the series of transformations that the protagonist of Bharati Mukherjee’s novel Jasmine undergoes, as an illegal immigrant to America and her regeneration after many transformations with disintegration. Key Words: Immigration, alienation, Transformation, disintegration, regeneration, and assimilation Modern Indian Diaspora The Modern Indian Diaspora began during the colonial period when the British Empire had spread its tentacles around the globe and the red stain of imperialism had leaked into diverse land masses. The Diaspora could be classified as colonial and post-colonial. In the colonial category there was first the labourer and then the entrepreneur Diaspora. In the post colonial the trajectory of migrants takes in education as well as employment opportunities. Most of the Diasporas have been well represented in creative writing. Diasporic writing, born out of the dialectic between displacement and relocation raises theoretical formulations which provide fresh perspective to creative works. Bharati Mukherjee Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 13:3 March 2013 Mythili, M., M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Research Scholar Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine - A Paradigm of Psychic Disintegration and Regeneration 528 Among the fascinating diasporic voices Bharati Mukherjee stands apart by the virtue of representing Immigrant issues. She is an Award winning Indian born American writer. Bharati Mukherjee, born in a period of transition was a sensitive observant of the then sociopolitical condition. She is a writer who is at her best when she draws on her experiences of the old world while writing with insight about the New World to which now she belongs. This versatile and renowned novelist describes herself as, A writer from the Third World I left India by choice to settle in the U.S. I have adopted this country as my home. I view myself as an American author in the tradition of other American authors whose ancestors arrived at Ellis Island (Carb, The Massachusetts Review 29.4: 650). Her most remarkable works reflect not only her pride in her Indian heritage, but also her celebration of embracing America. Her writing has gained significant recognition because she depicts the immigrant experiences, particularly that of the South Asian Diaspora in North America. In her writings she voices her own experiences to show the changing shape of American society. She describes herself as unhyphenated American and not the hyphenated Indian- American title: I maintain that I am an American writer of Indian origin, not because I'm ashamed of my past, not because I'm betraying or distorting my past, but because my whole adult life has been lived here, and I write about the people who are immigrants going through the process of making a home here..(Carb, The Massachusetts Review 29.4: 645) On New Pioneers Bharati Mukherjee has written about a small minority group ‘the new pioneers’ that tries to adapt itself to the patterns of ‘dominant American Culture.’ This group has to assimilate the two hundred old years of American history and get adjusted to the newly adopted society. Her main theme throughout her writing discusses the condition of Asian immigrants in North America, with particular awareness towards the changes taking place in Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 13:3 March 2013 Mythili, M., M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Research Scholar Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine - A Paradigm of Psychic Disintegration and Regeneration 529 South Asian women in a new world. Her protagonists are well-aware of the brutality and antagonism that surround them and are often made victims by various forms of social restraint; she characterizes them as survivors. The phenomenon of migration, the condition of new immigrants, and the sensitivity of estrangement and alienation often experienced by expatriates and the struggle of Indian women as immigrants are the major themes of her novels. Jasmine Bharati Mukherjee’s popular novel Jasmine is basically the story of transformation with disintegration and regeneration. The protagonist of the novel is an Indian peasant woman whose journey takes her from the village Hasnapur, Punjab, to Florida, to New York, to Iowa and as the novel comes to a close she is about to set off to California. Jasmine metamorphoses herself constantly during this journey, which starts from Jyoti the village girl in Hasnapur, to Jasmine, the city woman, to Jazzy, the undocumented immigrant, to Jase, the Manhattan Nanny, to Jane, the Iowan woman who enters the story. It is a story of dislocation and relocation, as the protagonist continually sheds her existing role to move into other roles. In this novel, the author expresses the idea of assimilation and makes it clear that Jasmine, the central character needs to travel to America to achieve something significant of her life, Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 13:3 March 2013 Mythili, M., M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Research Scholar Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine - A Paradigm of Psychic Disintegration and Regeneration 530 because in the third world she encountered only desolation and loss. In the beginning, the central character is immersed in the prejudices, exploitation and violence of migration- but it allows her to overcome these difficulties by internalizing the very tactics used against her. Journey Metaphor In Jasmine, journey is a metaphor that advocates the ever-moving, regenerating process of life itself. In India, as Jyoti, Jasmine is seen against the backdrop of the rigid and patriarchal Indian society. In America, her self-awareness is reflected in the relationships with Bud, Taylor, and Du. However, her first husband Prakash initiates her transformation from traditional Jyoti to self assured emancipated American women, Jane. Jasmine was born in a rural village, Hasnapur. She tells the story as a twenty-fouryear-old pregnant widow, living in Iowa with her crippled lover, Bud Ripplemeyer. Jasmine juxtaposes in her memory each of her identities- as Jyoti, Jasmine, Kali, Jazzy, Jase and Jane, implying that she evokes and revises her past in articulating her identities. The author depicts this transformation and regeneration as a positive and optimistic journey. Jasmine creates a new world consisting of new ideas and values, constantly unmasking her past. She tries to establish a new cultural identity by integrating new desires, skills and habits. This regeneration is defined more significantly in the changes in her attitude. The Protagonist Jyoti, the protagonist of Jasmine being “the fifth daughter, seventh of nine children” (Mukherjee, Jasmine: 39) is literally strangled to death by her grandmother is a survivor and fighter from the beginning. Jasmine survives the infanticide only to become a rebellious child who stands apart from other traditional women in words and actions. From the very beginning Bharati Mukherjee has delineated Jyoti as a rebel against blind beliefs and superstitions. Early in the novel Jyoti tries to raise herself above such blind belief in Fate which is predicted by the astrologer thus: Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 13:3 March 2013 Mythili, M., M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Research Scholar Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine - A Paradigm of Psychic Disintegration and Regeneration 531 Fate is Fate. When Behula’s bridegroom was fated to die of snakebite on their wedding night, did building a steel fortress prevent his death? A magic snake will penetrate solid walls when necessary (Mukherjee, Jasmine:2) Break from the Tradition Breaking from the usual tradition she chooses Prakash Vijh, an educated, intelligent young man, who renames and reshapes her Jasmine. The renaming is to continue every time she becomes a new woman. He supports her and nurtures her spirits instead of suppressing them. She confesses, Pygmalion wasn’t a play I’d seen or read then, but realize now how much of Professor Higgins there was in my husband. He wanted to break down the Jyoti I’d been in Hasnapur and made me a new kind of city woman (Mukherjee, Jasmine:77) Jasmine appears to be jubilant sharing the ambition of her husband, intent to go to America, a land of her dreams and opportunities. But the fate snatches her husband from her when she had just started her life, leaving her shattered and heartbroken at the age of seventeen. Prakash is killed in a bomb blast on the eve of their departure to America. Grief stricken after his death, Jasmine hears his voice exhorting her from every corner of her room: There is no dying, there is only an ascending or a descending, a moving on to other Planes. Don’t crawl back to Hasnapur and feudalism. That Jyoti is dead (Mukherjee, Jasmine: 86) Journey of Transformation So, instead of succumbing to fate and leading a life of widowhood she decides to set off for America, of course with the help of her brothers. “Prakash had taken Jyoti and created Jasmine, and Jasmine would complete the mission of Prakash” (Mukherjee, Jasmine: 63). Mukherjee here sets her free from the claustrophobic and culturally absurd native place. She sets off for America with forged documents. Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 13:3 March 2013 Mythili, M., M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Research Scholar Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine - A Paradigm of Psychic Disintegration and Regeneration 532 Brutal Raping Thus begins her journey of transformation with disintegration and regeneration in the alien land. As an attractive young girl, who arrives alone and unescorted on alien shores, Jasmine come across a series of shattering incidents during the adventurous journey. She meets Half-Face, the captain of the trawler in which she crosses over to Florida. Half-Face had “lost an eye and ear and most of his cheek in a paddy field in Vietnam.”(Mukherjee, Jasmine: 104). She is brutally raped by Half-Face in a motel. She disintegrates and becomes heart-broken at this incident and decides to commit suicide but at another moment American outlook redeems her and is enlivened with the spirit to survive through eliminating the American evil and is mad to emerge like Indian goddess Kali to slit the throat of her rapist as a symbol of complete eradication of evil of consumerist culture. Jasmine’s full transformation, from the victim into a vengeful Goddess, seems to be reinforced by imagining herself as the reincarnation of Kali. Will and Desire to Survive Jasmine is surprised at her own desire for survival; she wipes out the finger prints, burns the unwanted luggage and walks into the streets of the American dawn. Her progress is marked by supreme confidence: With the first streaks of dawn, my first full American day, I walked out the front drive of the motel to the highway and began my journey, travelling light (Mukherjee, Jasmine: 121) Her Indian identity leaves her at this point; the desire to fulfil a mission which had seen her through the difficult passages to America is abandoned. The body becomes a mere shell, soon to be discarded and what she discards is her Indian psyche and is reborn in America as Jase and Jane. Shuttling between the past and the present, the first-person narrative reaches its turning point. She is reborn several times. Hence Jasmine’s transformation of identity occurs not only through construction, but also by the destruction of her existing self. Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 13:3 March 2013 Mythili, M., M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Research Scholar Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine - A Paradigm of Psychic Disintegration and Regeneration 533 Transformation It is strange to note that an incident of violence and disintegration is associated with each transformation in Jasmine. First, at her early age, as Jyoti at Hasnapur, her father is gored to death by a bull and her masterji is killed by terrorists. Next as Jasmine, she encounters an incident which shattered her into pieces, that is death of her beloved husband Prakash Vijh, who is killed in a terrorist bomb attack. Next during her immigration to America, as an illegal immigrant, she is exploited by Half-Face who rapes her repeatedly and whom she kills that very night itself. Fourth as Jase to Taylor, while leading a life as a ‘caregiver’, she meets Sukhwinder Singh who reminds her of the death of her beloved husband. Then as she is leading a happy life with Bud, unexpectedly bud is severely injured in shooting incident and his legs are paralysed. Darrel’s suicide is another incident of disintegration associated with Jane Ripplemayer. Despite of these shattering incidents, Jasmine, through her undaunted spirit rises as a powerful figure capable of struggling for survival and proved her affability. Many Rescuers Lillian Gordan, the first among Jasmine’s many rescuers, introduces Jasmine to the first concept of American life. Lillian bestows upon her the nick name ‘Jazzy’, a symbol of her entrance into and acceptance of American culture which she welcomes gladly. While staying with Lillian; she begins her process of assimilation by learning how to become American. Lillian exhorts her: Now remember, if you walk and talk American, they’ll think you were born here. Most Americans can’t imagine anything else (Mukherjee, Jasmine: 134-35) Then, Jasmine lodges with Prakash’s Professor, Mr. Vadhera. But she feels uncomfortable in Professorji’s house which they have converted into a Punjabi ghetto. She wants to get away from the traditional ‘Indianness’ and Bharati Mukherjee brings out this contrast between tradition and modernity through the contrast between Professorji’s wife Nirmala and the protagonist, Jasmine: Nirmala only takes, Jasmine not only takes and but also gives. Jasmine in a state of utmost frustration because of the Indian ghetto in Flushing, Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 13:3 March 2013 Mythili, M., M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Research Scholar Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine - A Paradigm of Psychic Disintegration and Regeneration 534 decides to run away from another claustrophobic atmosphere at Prof.Vadehra to join the lonely and empty people of American consumerist society and culture. Undaunted Spirit Jasmine is not feeble and timid to accept all whatever comes on her way, instead her undaunted spirit to survive and her valour helps her to adapt herself to the new situation. She confesses, “I survived the sniping. My grandmother may have named me Jyoti, Light, but in surviving I was already Jane, a fighter and adapter” (Mukherjee, Jasmine:40).As a fighter and adapter, she survives, regenerates even after so many transformations and disintegrations. But still she is in a dilemma that who she is. Off to a City Jasmine moves to Manhattan, New York to join a glamorous and emancipated couple, Taylor and Wylie Hayes and their adopted daughter Duff as a Caregiver. Jasmine is renamed as Jase by Taylor and strarts her transformations into a sophisticated American women. Jasmine transforms but this time the change is not from a reaction, but rather from her very own yearning for personal change. In becoming Jase, Jasmine gets increasingly comfortable with her sexuality which she always tried to repress earlier, more so, after her traumatic experience. Here Jasmine boldly asserts, I changed because I wanted to. To bunker oneself inside nostalgia, to sheathe the heart in a bulletproof vest, was to be a coward. On Claremont Avenue, in the Hayeses’ big, clean, brightly lit apartment, I bloomed from a diffident alien with forged documents into adventurous Jase (Mukherjee, Jasmine:185- 186). A New Identity Though Jasmine creates a new identity for every new situation, her former identities are never completely erased. They emerge in specific moments and aggravate the tension which results in disintegration, thereby causing Jasmine to create another more dominant identity, different from all those that came before. Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 13:3 March 2013 Mythili, M., M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Research Scholar Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine - A Paradigm of Psychic Disintegration and Regeneration 535 Taylor becomes Jase’s American instructor; he teaches her about all the advantages of democracy. He helps her transform herself from a diffident alien with forged documents into adventurous Jase. Taylor feels desolate when Wylie moves out of the family to move in with the wealthy Stuart Eschelman. Here Bharati Mukherjee registers her comments on the uncertainties in America, where nothing lasts for a long time, not even a human relationship. She says, In America, nothing lasts. I can say that now and it doesn’t shock me, but I think it was the hardest lesson of all for me to learn. We arrive so eager to learn, to adjust, to participate, only to find the monuments are plastic, agreements are annulled. Nothing is forever, nothing is so terrible, or so wonderful, that it won’t disintegrate (Mukherjee, Jasmine: 181) Taylor and Jasmine Taylor gets romantically involved with Jasmine and embraces her different ethnicity without orientalising her into an exotic fantasy. At long last, Jasmine feels that she has landed and is rooted. But her fate never leaves and the romantic life between Taylor and Jasmine ends abruptly when the past creeps upon her once again manifested in the form of Sukhwinder, the murderer of her husband. When she saw Sukhwinder, she becomes restless for the security of Taylor and Duff and recedes to Jyoti culturally for the safety of her beloved and his child and instantly decides to run away from their life for their betterment and for herself. Personal Continuum Jasmine enters a personal continuum of time where events swing backwards and forwards from place to place and from childhood to adult, from despair to hope, compassion and love. The inescapability of memory, and the boundless nature of time is stressed here and Jasmine finds her life distorted by the different consciousness through which now she experiences the world. She loses even her sense of self expression. Unable to live with this plethora of conflicting identities she flees to Baden County, Iowa to give her life a new Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 13:3 March 2013 Mythili, M., M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Research Scholar Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine - A Paradigm of Psychic Disintegration and Regeneration 536 beginning. She prepared herself physically and psychologically for another transformation of identity. Bharati Mukherjee, through this affirmative novel, presents Jasmine as a Phoenix who rises from her ashes. Jasmine can face all challenges, whether it is killing a mad dog in Hasnapur, or travelling round the world as an illegal immigrant, being repeatedly raped, without suffering any bad consequences she calmly takes on a new name for each role. In this novel the womanhood has been depicted not as an incarnation of weakness but as a personification of strength. Another opportunity after bidding impermanent farewell to Taylor knocks at in the form of Mother Ripplemeyer, whose kind offer of finding employment for Jasmine in the bank owned by her son, ends in Bud’s falling in love with her. Here she becomes Jane and tries hard to settle down to a peaceful life in Bud’s house but her inherited sense of reliability and dutifulness doesn’t set her completely free. She is completely contented with her new life as a step mother to Du, a sixteen year old Vietnam War victim adopted by Bud, the estranged husband from his sons and wife, Karin. Here again it happens her to disintegrate, because Bud’s legs are injured and paralysed in a shooting incident. Bud’s miserable condition makes Jane to render wifely devotion in order to comfort him, which ought to have been done by his wife, Karin. Assimilation of Immigrants Bharati Mukherjee has carved out the assimilation of Third World immigrants into the American ‘melting pot’ which is enriched by those, she describes as pioneers. Jasmine is one of these pioneers, a survivor with courage. The protagonists of her first two novels Tara and Dimple are completely dislocated both in India and in America, whereas Jasmine survives and reinstates herself to a new life. Finally she makes an outcry like her author, who defiantly announces to her American readers, “I am one of you” and in this assertion she has declared herself as an American in the immigrant tradition. The exuberance of immigration, which comes with the acquisition of Americanness and the immigrant Indianness as a sort of fluid identities to be celebrated, does not come easily. Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 13:3 March 2013 Mythili, M., M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Research Scholar Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine - A Paradigm of Psychic Disintegration and Regeneration 537 Jane becomes pregnant and her inherited value compels her to be engrossed by the guilty consciousness. She feels that she is prompting the break-up of Bud and Karin relationship. Meanwhile, Jasmine receives a letter from Taylor that he would be calling her shortly; perhaps she is also waiting for, because she wants to get rid of her sense of guilt. But she feels for Bud’s loneliness, as Du goes to California and stays with his sister. Jane also feels sorry for young Darrel, their next door neighbour in rejecting his love proposal and his unexpected suicide shatters the plan of Bud and Jane to legalize their relationship. Taylor’s arrival at this juncture makes the situation more complex as she is caught between the old world dutifulness for the Bud and her affection for Taylor and Duff. Both of them are equally important as per her innate and native values which could not have been eliminated in her professed transformation. With half hearted, she accepts to go with Taylor and Duff but it has been very difficult for her to leave Bud lonely. Her bidding farewell to Bud’s life is not a wanton act of utter selfishness rather it presents her in a state of confusion as she is dangling between the morality of India and the practicality of America. The following excerpt focuses her pathetic condition: “I am not choosing between two men. I am caught between the promise of America and old world dutifulness” (Mukherjee, Jasmine: 240). Restless Search of a Rootless Person In Jasmine, the protagonist’s struggle symbolizes the restless search of a rootless person irked by a depressing sense of isolation all around. Her journey through life leads Jasmine through many transformations in various locations. In her ‘Land of Opportunity’, Jasmine is thrown from one state of insecurity to another and she lets go all her hold on things which she would have held dear in India. She realizes that she has become a drifter moving in a world of uncertainties: I feel at times like a stone hurtling through diaphanous mist, unable to grab hold, unable to slow myself, yet unwilling to abandon the ride I’m on. Down and down I go, where I’ll stop, God only knows ( Mukherjee, Jasmine :139) Bharati Mukherjee ends the book on a novel note, and re-emphasizes the complex and alternating nature of identity of a woman in exile, Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 13:3 March 2013 Mythili, M., M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Research Scholar Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine - A Paradigm of Psychic Disintegration and Regeneration 538 Then there nothing I can do. Time will tell if I am tornado, rubble maker, arising from nowhere and disappearing into a cloud. I am out the door and in the potholed and rutted driveway, scrambling ahead of Taylor, greedy with wants and reckless hope. (Mukherjee, Jasmine: 241) Disruption, Change and Survival It is explicit that Jasmine cannot remain in a stable life because disruption and change are the means of her survival. Jasmine is always disrupted, for destruction is the manner in which she ultimately transforms and recreates herself. Thus, in this text, agency is not equated with the individual’s total power to transform herself, but rather it is the ability to develop an identity that is based upon the perceptions and desires of others as well as the destruction of the existing aspects of one’s identity. The surrounding environments influence her formation of her identities and she navigates through various locations, her perception of herself changes, thereby resulting in a multiplicity of consciousness. These create a tension within her and she feels the need to reconcile these conflicting perceptions, so that they do not wage a psychological war within her. Thus she reinvents her identity completely. Jasmine has achieved a proper identity and balance between and modernity in the concluding part of the novel. The transformation of the heroine from tradition to modernity satisfied her inner self rather than the society. This change in her is a proof to picturize courageous nature of the heroine who acts according to the self consciousness. In Jasmine, the life of Jyoti is glorified by herself and her inner consciousness which made her act according to her own wish. Mukherjee’s novel finally attains the theme of fulfilment within the inner self. Thus, Bharati Mukherjee’s masterpiece Jasmine reveals that the protagonist, Jasmine is a survivor, fighter and a trend setter. The protagonist Jasmine is a ‘wily participant’ in the dominant culture. The potential of fluidity which Bharati Mukherjee attributes to American culture is epitomized with the main character’s metamorphosis from Jyoti to Jasmine, Jasmine to Jazzy, Jazzy to Jase and finally to Jane. Each of these character transformations is marked Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 13:3 March 2013 Mythili, M., M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Research Scholar Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine - A Paradigm of Psychic Disintegration and Regeneration 539 by changes in behaviour and personality. Through her various transformations, Jasmine sets herself to be a best example for the girls in rustic areas in overcoming various stumbling blocks despite difficulties. The transformation of Jasmine is full of violence with disintegration which brings tremendous changes in her in all respects such as psychologically, emotionally and physically. In this process she emerges victoriously self- assertive. Thus Jasmine succeeds in her attempt to regenerate herself through various transformations with disintegration.
References 1. Agarwal, Malti. English Literature Voices of Indian Diaspora. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors Private Limited, 2009. Print. 2. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London:Routledge, 1994.Print. 3. Bhavani, Shakuntala, “Jasmine: An Immigrant Experience.”Indian Women Novelist. Set I.Vol.5.Ed.R.K.Dhawan, New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1991.Print. 4. Carb, Alison B. “An Interview with Bharati Mukherjee” The Massachusetts Review 29.4,1988. 5. Mukherjee, Bharati. Jasmine New York: Grove Press, 1989. Print. 6. Nelson, Emmanuel, ed.Bharati Mukherjee: Critical Perspectives. New York: Garland, 1993.Print. 7. Tandon, Sushma. Bharati Mukherjee’s Fiction: A perspective. New Delhi: Sarup, 2004.Print.
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