New generation of writers in the West, also known as “Expatriate”, who comprise the whole

panel of first and second generation writers, displaying diasporic sensibility in full bloom include

Vikram Chandra, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Bharti Mukherjee, Jhumpa Lahiri, Amit

Chowdhury, Amitav ghosh, Rohinton Mistry, Kiran Desai, Kiran Nagarkar, C.R. Krishnan and

the likes are ruling the contemporary Indian English literary scene. Allan Sealy and his Trotter-

Nama have presented relevant materials that molded up details for Anglo-Indian Fiction. The

novel covers seven generation of Trotters. About this work U.M. Nanavati and Prafulla C. Kar

observe: By employing various kinds of narrative devices such as pastiche, burlesque, lucid

humour impressionistic vignettes told through chronicles, letters interspersed through narrative

strands, literary allusions sprinkled liberally across the narrative, Sealy simultaneously

establishes a distinctive fictional genre reminiscent of Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel and

Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy and subverts that mode by playful mockery and extravaganza.

(18) 25 Many novelists took inspiration from Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children in dealing

with national issues and the individual. So was Amitav Ghosh who is chiefly concerned with

individual quest for his personal meaning and existential problems. Ghosh published his first

novel The Circle of Reason in 1986 while teaching as a lecturer in Delhi School of Economics,

University of Delhi. The book gained pride of place in the literary circle as it showed deviation
from traditional themes of Indian novels. It got translated into many Indian languages including

French, Italian and German. Ghosh found a solid position as a master craftsman in the art of

fiction. In 1988, his second novel The Shadow Lines was published. This is considered to be his

masterpiece which is a family saga covering large span of period of three generations, story

ranging from one country to another. His other prominent works are In an Antique Land (1993),

The Calcutta Chromosome (1996). The Glass Palace (2000) has remained a bestseller book in

Germany. Ghosh is considered to be the most prolific writer of the last decades of twentieth

century. He bagged many prestigious awards. The French version of his first novel, The Circle of

Reason received the Prix- Medici-Estranger Award in France in 1997; The Shadow Lines was

coveted Sahitya Akademi award in1989, Pushcart prize for two essays “The March of Novel

through History” and “The Testimony of My Grandfather’s Book Case”. Being friends with

renowned thinkers like Gautam Mukhopadhyay, Ranjeet Guha, Dipesh Chakraborthy and Partha

Chatterjee, his thinking about present and past have been pretty much influenced. He is also

fluent in many languages like English, Bengali, Hindi, French and Arabic. His peripatetic life has

taken him from India to England and finally to America. He has sound and affluent command

and control on the English Language. Though his mother tongue is Bengali, he chose the English

Language as medium of his literary expression. About his English, Indira Bhatt and 26 Indira

Nityanandam, editors of The Fiction of Amitav Ghosh, mention in its introduction: “He uses the

English language skillfully and artistically. His style can be compared to flowing river with all its

mood.” (11) Another prominent star in the diasporic fiction is V.S. Naipaul. Indian by descent,

Trinidadian by birth and British by choice; Naipaul started his literary career in 1950s. His early

novels The Mystic Masseur (1957), A House for Mr. Biswas (1961) and In a Free State (1971)

helped him establish himself as a reputed novelist. He was awarded Booker Prize for In a Free
State (1971). His unsentimental approach and insensitivity towards the post colonial cultures of

Carribean countries, Africa and India have stirred controversy and therefore fails to reside in the

good books of critics. He was Knighted in 1990 and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001.

The Enigma of Arrival (1987), A Way in the World (1994), Half a Life (2001) and Magic Seeds

(2003) are his other novels. His travel writings include The Middle Passage (1962), An Area of

Darkness (1964) etc. but overall his entire oeuvre of literary creation consists of harsh criticism

on culture. The continuation of immigration deepened the theme of east west encounter resulting

in a sustained and incisive treatment of the psychic state of alienation, rootlessness, or loss of

identity. Bharati Mukherjee’s two novels, Tiger’s Daughter (1973) and Wife (1976), deal chiefly

with what is known as the problem of multinationality and crossculturalism. Moreover, it is here

and in this phase that we get notion of terms as ‘exile’, ‘immigrants’, ‘émigré’, ‘the outsider-

insider’, ‘the insider-outsider’, ‘loneliness’, ‘aloneness’, ‘alienation’, ‘rootedness’,

‘uprootedness’ and ‘diaspora’ all manifesting the complexities of displacement. These diasporic

writers also known as NRI writers display a whole gamut of characters suffering the 27 pangs of

hyphenated existence. They most of the time love and cherish an elevated living standard in a

foreign land and sometime lament for the long lost native land aspiring to return to the roots.

Viney Kirpal opines: There are NRI writers whose aim is to celebrate internationalism but whose

texts betray the eternal longing for the lost land-India. Rushdie, Mukherjee, Mistry and almost all

the migrant writers including Farukh Dhondy and Marorama Mathais give negative

representations of the hybrid persona, much as they set out to foreground it as their ideal.

Everywhere the Third World person is marginalized; the promise of internationalism invariably

seems to collapse in self-inflicted violence or in a bitter and bleak all-pervasive cynicism. (60)

Novels such as Kiran Desai’s Booker Prize-winning novel, The Inheritance of Loss (2006),
Arvind Adiga’s The White Tiger (2008), Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2004) and Sea of

Poppies (2008), Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake (2003), Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The

Palace of Illusions (2008) and One Amazing Thing (2010), Upamanyu Chatterji’s Weight Loss

(2006), Amit Chaudhary ‘s The Immoratls (2009), Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters (2002),

Manju Kapoor’s A Married Woman (2002) and Home (2006), Shashi Despande’s Moving On

(2004) and In a Country of Deceit (2010) are worth mentioning. Chetan Bhagat and Amish

Tripathy are the two novelists who have just stepped into the world of fiction writing and have

yet a long path to tread. Chetan Bhagat is the one writer who has probably storm-swept the hearts

of the young generation of readers. Though his novels are quite shallow in content but with the

28 usage of a kind of English language, more often used in university canteens has made his

novels extremely popular among the college goers. Seven novels to his credit in just ten years,

makes him a rapacious writer. Some of his novels worked as base for some motion pictures in

Hindi Cinema. His works include Five Point Someone (2004), One Night at a Call Centre

(2005), 3 Mistakes of My Life (2008), Two States: The Story of My Marriage (2009),

Revolution 2020 (2011), Half Girlfriend (2014) and One Indian Girl (2016). Comparatively

Amish Tripathy seems to be a mature writer. The three novels The Immortals of Meluha (2010),

The Secret of The Nagas (2011) and The oath of the Vayuputras (2013) collectively known as

Shiva Trilogy is a fine experiment and analysis of Hindu mythology. His Ramchandra series

consists of another three novels namely Ram: Scion of Ikshvaku (2015), Sita: Warrior of Mithila

(2017) and Ravan: Orphan of Aryavarta (2018). Tripathy won Communicator of the Year Award

in 2014.

Indian writings in English, especially the diasporic writings have gained a distinctive and

vigorous identity with the works of Jhumpa Lahiri. Born to Bengali parents but outside Bengal
and by large India, she bears the seed of immigration that had dispersed twice. She was born in

London on July 11, 1967 to mother Tapati and father Amar Lahiri. This Bengali couple

immigrated to the United Kingdom from Calcutta. When Jhumpa was just two years old, the

family decided to relocate to the United States for work. They settled down in Kingstown, Rhode

Island where Jhumpa grew up. Lahiri’s father was a librarian by profession in the University of

Rhode Island whilst her mother worked as a school teacher. Thus the family belongs to a class of

largely successful Indian Americans and it is this segment of society which Lahiri chronicles in

her fiction 29 Lahiri was named Nilanjana Sudeshna by her parents. Jhumpa was just her

nickname or as it is called ‘daak naam’ in Bengali. But when admitted to the school; she refused

to respond to her proper name and answered only when called by her nickname. Her teachers

also preferred to call her by that as they found it easier to pronounce. Thus she remained

‘Jhumpa’. This anecdote serves as a raw material to her first novel The Namesake. From then,

like the protagonist Gogol, her nickname became her official name. She tells us that “many of

my relatives think that it’s odd and inappropriate that I’m known as Jhumpa in an official, public

context.”(Houghton, 13 Aug, 2008) This she feels is something that simply goes against Bengali

nomenclature. She expresses her view in The Namesake: “Pet names are a persistent remnant of

childhood; a reminder that childhood is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They

are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.” (26) Lahiri went to attend Bernard

College in New York. She chose to study English Literature and received her B.A. degree in

1989. She then joined the student body of Boston University earning three literary masters

degree that is M.A. in English, M.A. in Creative Writing and M.A. in Comparative Literature.

She received doctorate in Renaissance studies. She took fellowship at Provincetown’s Fine Arts

work Centre, which lasted for next two years (1997-1998). She started writing when she was in
elementary school. At the age of seven, she coauthored her classroom friend “during recess…

and busied herself with the school newspaper” (Patel, 80). It was then the seed of writing started

germinating in her when she composed 10 page “novels”.(Patel, 80) While working on her

doctoral thesis in 1997, Lahiri did her internship with Boston Magazine, But she was not

considered ‘as a real writer”(Flynn, 173) In 1999, her debut work Interpreter of Maladies: Stories

from Bengal, Boston and Beyond was published. It is a collection of nine short stories. The

longest story extends to twenty eight paperback pages and the shortest covers mere thirteen

pages. She actually wrote some of the stories for her creative writing class out of which three of

them were published in The New Yorker. Her stories were also published simultaneously in

AGNI, Salamander, The Louisville Review, The Havard Review, Story Quarterly and Epoch.

The title story “Interpreter of Maladies” brought her the O’ Henry Award. After the book saw the

light of the day, it received instant recognition in the literary world and earned plenty of

accolades and for her exceptional and extraordinary contribution to the world of fiction,

innumerable number of prestigious awards started being conferred on her.

They are as follows:

1. Trans-Atlantic Award from Hen field Foundation. (1993)

2. O’ Henry Award for the short story “Interpreter of Maladies”. (1999)

3. PEN/Hemingway Award (Best Fiction Debut of the Year). (1999)

4. Addison Metcalf Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters.(2000)

5. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. (2000)

6. M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award from the James Beard Foundation. (2000)
7. The American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. (2000)

8. Guggenheim Fellowship. (2002)

The book took the world by storm so much so that it “… stayed for a long time on many best-

seller list, was translated into more than 29 languages…”(Nityanandam, 31 12) across the globe,

including Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Italian, Dutch, Danish, and Japanese. In 2001, she married

Alberto Vourvolias Bush of Guatemalan descent, who was then deputy editor of Time Latin

America. She then lived in Brooklyn with her husband and two children Octavio and Noor. The

names of their children indicate their different ethnic identities .In 2003, four years after her first

publication, Lahiri ventured into novel writing and her first novel, The Namesake was published

and was further developed into a full- fledged motion picture, under the same title, directed by

Mira Nair with veteran actors like Irrfan Khan and Tabu in the lead from Bollywood and some

minor actors from Hollywood. The film was released in March, 2007. In 2008, came her third

work, Unaccustomed Earth. With this she returned to her forte of short story. She vividly shared

her experience on the book stating: I've been writing long enough to feel like I have never left

one form for another. Some of these stories were written during pauses when I was working on

The Namesake, and I started up a few more after the novel was published. I wrote them when I

was in a different point in my life, when there was no doubt that I was an adult [laughs]. I'd had

new experiences: being married, having children, having a mortgage, the experience of death.

My mother-in-law and my father-in-law both died within four years of each other. So this is a

different book for me. (Bookforum, 2008) She met with favorable reviews and the book became

the best seller. She topped the New York Times best seller list and the same year the book was

awarded Frank O Connor International Short Story Award and Asian American Literary 32

Award. Her latest follow up is her second novel The Lowland that saw the light of the day in
2013, had been short listed for Man Booker Prize but couldn’t achieve it. Recently, she

triumphed Indian author Shamsur Rehman Faruqui, Pakistani writers Kamila Shamsie and Bilal

Tanweer and Srilankan author Romesh Gumesekara and won the prestigious DSC prize for

Literature, one of South Asia’s top literary awards. About her achievement she told PTI over the

phone “This is an enormous honour for ‘Lowland’ and for me personally.” (PTI, 2015) She also

tried hands in non-fictions like Cooking Lessons: The Long Way Home, Improvisations: Rice

and Reflections: Notes from a Literary Apprenticeship all published in the New Yorker on 6

September, 2004; 23 November, 2009 and 13 June, 2011 respectively. Apart from these some of

her works remained unpublished. They are A Real Durwan and Other Stories, Only an Adress:

Six Stories by Ashapurna Devi introduced, translated and with critical commentary by Lahiri and

Accursed Palace: The Italian Palazzo on the Jacobean Stage (1603-1625). The first two were

written as her M.A. thesis and the third her Ph.D. thesis. She has also offered her contributions to

different works and they are as follows. 1. (Introduction) The Magic Barrel: Stories by Bernard

Malamud, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. July, 2003. 2. (Introduction) Malgudi Days by R.K.

Narayan, Penguin Classics, August, 2006. 3. “Rhode Island” (essay) State by State: A Panoramic

Portrait of America edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wisley, 16 September, 2008. 33 4. Essay,

the Suspension of Time: Reflections on Simon Dinnerstein and the Fulbright Tryptich edited by

Daniel Slager, Milkweed Editions, 14 June, 2011. Embarking on her geographical experiment,

Lahiri moved to Trastevere, Rome with her family. She has now engrossed herself with Italian

language and literature. On being asked about her decision to take a sojourn to Rome, in an

exclusive interview by Anindita Ghose, for Vogue she stated: I write a lot about people who

leave one place behind and go to another—that’s been my work from the beginning—but I

personally never really experienced that. I came to the U.S. when I was two years old, and while
I’ve observed close at hand what it means to be an immigrant, I’ve never had to get to know

another country in which I clearly don’t belong and to speak in a second language and to do all

of those things that my characters do and that my parents did and that my husband, Alberto, has

done. I felt that there was something missing. So I convinced him to quit his job and off we went.

And it’s been the most incredible year of my life. (1) She is currently working on her new

venture which she says would be scooped out of fictitious people and places and all the real

geographical place and time will be obliquely referred. A second generation immigrant, Jhumpa

Lahiri is a multi-talented and multifaceted writer and a master story teller. With her perception of

cross cultural experiences, she has reached a new paradigm of multicultural know-how. She 34

manifests focus and concern regarding transnational identities and their cultural acclimatization.

In another perspective, though considered the stellar-queen among the group of writers

expressing immigrant experiences and dilemma, her capacity to reach the deep and darker alleys

of the mind especially of her female characters is absolutely praiseworthy. Being a woman writer

herself, she writes with a malelanguage, and it seems astounding how beautifully she expresses

the psychological upheavals of her characters irrespective of gender. Therefore her works can be

looked at from multiple perspectives and I intend to do so in the following pages.

A well-known name in multi-cultural fiction, Jhumpa Lahiri is based in Newyork City. She

began her literary career with the publication of 'Interpreter of Maladies’. Nilanjana

Sudeshna,her real name was born in London on July11, 1967 but raised in South Kingstown,

Rhode Island as in 1969, the family, moved to America. Her father's name was Amar K. Lahiri.
He was a librarian in America. Her mother, Tapati Lahiri, was a teacher.Jhumpa Lahiripassed

B.A. in English literature. She got M.A. (English) in creative writing and comparative literature

and Ph. D in Renaissance Studies. She also took fellowship at Provincetown’s Fine Arts Work

center in 1997- 98. In 2001 she married Alberto Vourvoulias Bush, a Guatamalian- American

Journalist who was then Deputy Editor of 'Time Latin American'. Now she lives in Brooklyn

with her husband and two children. At present, she is a member of the President’s committee.

Jhumpa Lahiri can be considered post-colonial, diasporic, South Asian American woman writer.

She has written about what she has experienced. She has travelled several times to India which

helps heralot in her writing. She began writing at the age of ten by which times she had

understood that she had a divided identity-- one is of Indian and second is of American.This isa

irony that her parents lived for 35-40 years in America and yet they longed for their home land.

This irony is not of her parents only but every other Indian, living in America, who is still

connected with their roots. She has taken the same subject for her novel that she has known

through her parents. She admits that her mother wants that her children know the Indian way and

follow the customs. 2 After living so many years in America, first generation immigrantshold on

India and its tradition in which they raised. American culture is far advance that gives much

freedom to its people, but in India through customs and tradition they try to save their moral

values. They want their children to learn Indian ways so that they remain unaffected by the

western culture. So it seems that she is inspired by the ideology of her parents and later, it

becomes her theory of writing, as the subject of her novel is very much influenced by the same

theory as people who migrate from India to United State of America linked to their roots that are

in India. They impose Indian culture and its ways on their children as in 'The Namesake' she

writes that Gogol's parents want him to learn Bengali language. So, they sent him to Bengali
classes where Gogol has no interest in it, instead of it he wants to do otherthings that American

students of his age do. Besides it, Ashima alwayswears Indian dresses throughout her stay

inUnited State of America. She attends Indian music programs there. Naturally, her writing

focuses on the warm links that converts her to three countries and makes her feel homeless. She

is considered an outsider in America and at the same time she feels equally like a stranger in

India just like her second generation characters. During her school days, she likes reading stories.

Her introvert nature makes her uncomfortable in groups so, she is prone to penning. I was a shy

child, uncomfortable in groups, so I sought out those with a similar sensibility- quite girls who

liked stories…, I started writing ten page “novels”, during recess, with my friends.(qtd. in

Das12) 3 Her interest was in reading stories then she got opportunity to know great authors.

Those authors became her inspiration and a shy girl started taking interest in writing. She says as

Das quoted her: If itweren’t for the example of other writers I would never have written a word.

When I first begin writing seriously I studied stories by James Joyce, Anton Chekhov, Flannery

O’ Conner, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.(qtd. in Das 12) Her strong desire had given wings to

her imagination whereas her interest inspired her reading the books of famous authors. So, the

combination of the two made her a talented author. Before the publication of 'Interpreter of

Maladies'. Jhumpa Lahiri had published a few stories in 'The New Yorker, Agni, Story

Quarterly', etc. This book became very popular and was translated in more than 29 languages. It

stayed for a long time on many bestseller lists. She won awards like Addison Metcalf Award,

O’Henry Award and Louisiana Review Award. The first edition of her book, published by

Harper Collins, was sold out in a record time. All the nine stories in this collection are simple

and touching, beautifully crafted around common themes. Most of the stories revolve around

individuals who are divided into two cultures. Her stories are mainly on familial relationships in
which she has taken the relationship like husband wife, father daughter. She does not think a

message before writing. The themes that she chooses for her stories, are marital discord, extra-

marital affairs and communication gap, through these she presents the complexities in the lives

of immigrants. 4 She has perfectly blended the subject of Indian and American experience. Her

characters are related to both the culture in one way or the other. Her writing is a flow of emotion

in which first and second generation immigrants float. She writes in a simple language and her

characters are Indian immigrants who settle America with their cultural values. Her fiction shows

impression of experience ofthe people living around her, in one way or the other. Lahiri

elaborates the struggle andanxieties of the characters who are caught between two worlds and

both of the worlds are drawing towards them as it has become a tug of war.Jhumpa Lahiri’s

experience is different as she is a second generation immigrant. First generation immigrants are

very much more related to their roots, those are in their homeland where they are born and

raised. But she feels that she belongs to nowhere. Jagdish Batra writes: Lahiri feels that her

childhood was not happy. Her experience differed from her parents because they belonged to

India. Their experience as immigrants in other countries was not a happy one but then they could

think of their home and find support in those musings. On the other hand, she comments, “Me

and my sister’s upbringing was almost hydroponic because our roots had nowhere to cling.

(Batra 10) 'The Namesake' is published in 2003. This novel has been written from a male point

of view. This book comes with the huge popularity. It becomes just like a treasure hunt for the

Indian and foreign readers as their curiosity and eagerness get the wings to imagine Bengal, a

state of India, its social setup, its customs and its perspective. Whereas Indian readers discover

America, its life style, its modernity 5 and life of Indian immigrants there; how they feel after

leaving their own country, and about their survival, all they see through the glance of the writer.
So it becomes the informative source with the amusement. As its first generation woman

character is inspired by her mother and she gives the honest account of her experience to readers.

Her true attempt is taken hand to hand by readers. The 'Namesake' deals with the life of an Indian

immigrant family. It has been adapted into a Hollywood movie directed by Mira Nair. It is a

matter of pride for a writer whose work has been chosen for the art work in form of a movie

without losing its originality. Mira Nair has kept her promise and this movie proves to be

excellent on the parameter of viewers. Jhumpa Lahiri’s stories return to the past through

memory. It is the emotional journey of thecharacters who nostalgically remember their culture

and country. Her first generation characters are often think of the past with the sense of the

belongingness. But her second generation Indian American characters that are born and raised in

America think of future to the concerns. Her children characters are the second generation

immigrants, who are free from the feeling nostalgia. In 2008 'Unaccustomed Earth', her another

collection of short stories, has been published. With this book, Lahiri has returned to the short

story form. She again talks about the Bengali-American experience exploring the second

generation immigrants.This book is considered in 'The'New York Times' best-seller list.

'Unaccustomed Earth'also covers a wide area from America to India. Her first story of this

collection, deals with a woman who is worried about her father after the death of her mother.

Lahiri’s presentation of human experience, their despair, loss and nostalgia among various

cultures and characters shows her 6 selection of subject. Her choice of subject matter has an

immediate appeal for the readers. Her concentration on the life and experiences of people whom

she presents totally free from geographical and national boundaries marks the global impact on

her concerns. She talks of different human experiences of different cultures and contemporary

reality which don’t have limitations, no regional boundaries. Jhumpa Lahiri shows her characters
in certain situations in order to grasp the depth and complexity of human life. She reveals the

thought of her characters. She uses simple incidents and happenings to create meaningful

situations. Her achievements lie in the presentation of the varieties of experiences and

complexities of human life. In this way the reader can understand the dilemmas of human life.

Her works show an individual’s struggle to overcome the change, insecurities within affairs

which are disturbing. The complex nature of human behaviour and interpersonal relationship

marks an interesting and significant feature of her fictional art. She presents human behaviour on

the basis of moral values. Her stories mark a shift from the traditional understanding of life and

experiences. Her works bring out different shades of human behaviour rather than putting it in a

set category. She depicts different kinds of characters. In "The Third and Final Continent", the

details about Mrs. Croft’s life and behaviour help create an interesting and meaningful narrative

situation when a contrast is built through the narrator’s details about his own mother, who has

been lived in India throughout her life but human emotions remains same when the situation

presents the same circumstances as loneliness is everywhere painful what Lahiri suggests

through her work. 7 It was widowhood that had driven my own mother insane... My mother

refused to adjust to life without him; instead she sank deeper into a world of darkness from

which neither I, nor my brother, nor concerned relatives, nor psychiatric clinics on Rashbihari

Avenue could save her. (IM 187) These details express certain situations and cultural

peculiarities. She provides minute details about people and places. These minute descriptions add

new dimensions to fictional arts and they can provide certain hints about the behaviour of certain

characters. These fictional elements point out the shallow nature of the people’s understanding of

culture. She depicts the description of small activities, behaviour of characters and their

reactions. It shows writer’s keen observation of different forms of life. Her descriptions about
minute aspects of gestures, scenes related to life around, and building of a particular atmosphere

result in the slow moving pace of the narrative. As in "A Temporary Matter"Shoba’s appearance

and cosmetic looks have been presented through carefully details: Her cranberry lipstick was

visible only on the outer reaches of her mouth, and her eye liner had left charcoal patches

beneath her lower lashes.(IM 1) The precise, concrete nature of these descriptions, however brief

they may be, creates an effective image of certain characters. As the details about Mr. Pirzada

with his insulated ears, gray hair, bring this character alive before the readers. He had thickly

lashed eyes shaded with a trace of camphor, a generous moustache that turned up playfully at the

ends, and a mole 8 shaped like a flattened raisin in the very centre of his left cheek.(IM 28)

Jhumpa Lahiri attempts to present the characters freed from theoretical, political and gender

hierarchy and this element enriches the fictional discourse in her works. An interesting aspect of

her work involves the depiction of man-woman relationship in contemporary society. In her

stories man-woman relationship finds expression at the individual level instead of marking a grip

of specific cultural and social norms. The conflict informing these relationships is related to

personal whims of the characters instead of social or moral dogmas. As the story,"A Temporary

Matter"tells about the marital discord that is the result of difference in nature and thoughts of the

people. Their individual whims make their behaviour incompatible for each other. The narrator’s

words reveal this in a very subtle but effective way in "The Blessed House", these objects mean

something to Twinkle, but they mean nothing to Sanjeev. Apparently, he behaves like a good

husband but his dislike for his wife, can be ensured from these words also that most of all he

hates it because he knows that Twinkle likes it. It shows how the relationship which seems

smooth hides perpetual unease and turmoil. Mrs. Das's, given birth to a illegitimate child

questions the concept of marriage based on faith, trust and loyalty. It brings out the functional
and pragmatic nature of man-woman relationship makes Jhumpa Lahiri's stories thematically

rich and multidimensional. She has written particularly right about the psychological and

physical deprivation of Ashima when she becomes pregnant. It does not mean that being a

woman writer, she has written that perfectly because here, the experiences of her acquaintances

have been asked by her to create the real situation and vividness to her work. She writes equally

good to her male 9 characters, when she creates the inner conflicts in the heart of Sanjeev in

"The Blessed House," when he thinks if he has done right marrying a girl like Twinkle. So in the

both the perspective, she is a amazing writer. This shows that she has penetrating insight. That is

why her second creation 'The Namesake' has also contributed to make her a successful writer.

Jhumpa Lahiri gets success in her short stories, as well as in her novel. She tries out both the

forms of literature. She writes short stories for the interest of the readers who like the short form.

The novel needs a broad canvas. Writing a novel needs more attention than writing a story as it

presents the minute description of the character. In her fiction, Indianness is an important

characteristic. After coming back from India she writes "A Real Durwan". This story and the

other one, "The Treatment of Bibi Haldar"have the setting in India. These storiesexpress a

narrowness of the Bengalis. This is strictly based on her experiences of her stay in Calcutta

during vacations. At that time she has observed only the confined area and its people, their mind

sets, their day to day behaviour and the locality. So, these stories of her present the small canvas.

The social system of typical Bengali families has been presented. She writes about the problems

and struggles of diaspora for the Indian readers at the same time she writes about immigrants to

tempt US readers. Lahiri’s own life, living within culture of her parents and a new land, make

her conscious of her Indian diasporic identity. She is quite comfortable while writing about the

American culture but a bit confusing about Indian culture. Being a second generation immigrant
she is close to American culture. 10 Jaydeep Chakrabarty’s article “Diasporic Dynamism in

RepresentingIndia: The Narrative World of Jhumpa Lahiri” reflects how she writes about India

and its people. He writes: The picture ofIndia that comes out in the story is very different from

the one in the "Interpreter of Maladies". This knitted-togetherness of Indian life is the back drop

of two other stories, “A Real Durwan” and “The Treatment of Bibi Haldar"– these are

exclusively set in India (Kolkata) and are quite monocultural in ethos. (28) About 'The

Namesake'he writes: It is a noticeable that the major incidents in 'The Namesake' which have

shaping power over its characters are directly or unobtrusively related to the Diaspora problem.

A striking feature of the novel is its commitment to the chronological mode of narration in an

age when the post modernist techniques of fiction writing are more fashionable. (Das 29)

Though tied to the same themes her approach and perspective are different from others. Each of

her stories involves people of Indian decent but in different circumstances. Her characters are

from different societies and cultures that for various reasons they have migrated from their land

and now struggle to adjust. She does not advocate message through her stories but presents the

real life situation. The themes which arise most frequently in her stories are marriage and discord

in their relations, but each of the stories has distinct qualities as in “Interpreter of Maladies” the

distance between Mr. and Mrs. Das is because of lack of communication that leads to untold

dissension. In “A Temporary Matter” Shoba and 11 Shukumar are facing the passiveness in their

relation since Shoba has delivered the still born child but all she writes about is not only about

single theme. In the second story of her collection “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine" is about

nostalgia of Mr. Pirzada who worries about her family, about them he thinks, may be in trouble

in Pakistan. Her deep psychological insight reveals the inner world of her characters that makes

her fiction more interesting. Characters' inner conflict, their loneliness come out ordinary but in
an impressive style. According to Suman Bala in Jhumpa Lahiri: The Master Storyteller:

JhumpaLahiri, like Bharti Mukherjee, Uma Parameswaran and Meena Abdullah, may be

regarded as a significant short story writer. Her work exemplifies the role that Diaspora plays in

shaping an artist’s imagination. Her anthology has an interesting subtitle “Stories from Bengal,

Boston and Beyond.”Her range is really wide. Spanning three continents, moving effortlessly

from Boston to London, to Calcutta, and even Dhaka, her stories tell us about the lives of Indian

immigrants, of people navigating between the strict traditions they have inherited and the

baffling New world theyencounter everyday.(Suman Bala 14) Her stories have been written in

both of the voices. But in “Sexy” and in “A Temporary Matter” readers are not able to know

about the narrator. In the story "The Treatment of Bibi Haldar", the neighbours of Bibi who are

the benevolent ladies do the work of the narrator. This experiment of Jhumpa Lahiri makes her

story more meaningful, creating vividness in the story . Through this, area becomesmore wide.

12 Her style of writing is different that leads her work to owe so many awards. Nila Das says in

her article "Crossing Cultural Borders : New Voices in Indian American Literature." The

anthology, Our Feet Walk the Sky,that I came across at the University of Lowe, brought me

close to the writers I had been looking for. I took up their poems, short stories, essays, as I did

Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, expecting, perhaps too

idealistically, that their literature is different from that of cultural and political diasporas, having

a character and quality of its own, fostered by both Indian and American value systems and

cultural presumptions, crossing borders at both ends, yet well within the borders. I searched for

the “cultural bridge” that can widen and accommodate the creative mind to relocate culture in its

own terms. (Suman Bala47) Jhumpa Lahiri has written about the lives of expatriate communities.

Actually she also belongs to the same community so, her background helps her writing because
she has experienced what she writes. As a second generation immigrant, her experience help her

in her writing. What she has faced in course of her life, during school days, her experience as

well as her friend's experience have come to her help while writing. Her skill of fabrication of the

fiction reveals through apparently divergent stories. Her writing is based on real life situation in

which characters find themselves sometimes in a confused state of mind and seeking for the

solution but she never imposes such solutions or climax to the reader that is unable to digest in

13 that situation. She leaves it open for the readers. G. Dominic Savio writes in his article

"Between the Two Worlds: A Critique of Interpreter of Maladies", about the characters of

Jhumpa Lahiri: Deep down in them we find that each character feels that he or she is alone,

misunderstood or at best only partially understood, drifting along the current of life like a

flotsam. It is the subtlety of Lahiri’s vision that she uses only suggestions and not statements in

her observations. Her Indian American characters live in the New World surrounded by all forms

of luxury, which is still an envy of their counterpart in India. (147) Generally, she stresses on the

traditions that she inherits from her parents. It seems that these traditions, customs and the way

of living support her characters in the foreign land in which they are searching for their space.

The identity that is related to their homeland strengthens their mind and heart and makes them

feel the very existence in this alien land. Away from home, these inherited thoughts become the

reason of uniting the same community, is the real and main themes of Lahiri’s fiction. As in

“When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” she creates a loveable character in form of Lilia’s mother

who invites South Asian people to her house to dine, that shows the love and care for people of

their origin. She feels in them a sense of belongingness that satisfies her need of craving to be

loved and cared. Jhumpa Lahiri feels the emotional deprivation of the people who migrate from

other countries to live in another for whatever reason they have left their country. They suffer
from loneliness. She has been successful to weave the mental status of her characters. Many

other writers have also written about the diasporic 14 experience but her natural descriptive flow

differentiates her feelings to them. She writes about the quite routine and everyday moves that

create the movement in the life of her characters. In some of her stories she has used flashback

technique that doesn’t create confusion but makes the story more interesting having the element

of interest provoking. She doesn’t stress on the one way solution to the characters when they

stand on the road of misunderstanding or confusion. Her suggestion advocates the modern

thought of a person in which they can start a better life again and event of their past does not

becomes the larger than life though it has changed their whole life existence or life as the life of

Mr. and Mrs. Das in “Interpreter of Maladies.” She has used Indian symbols in order to provide

the Indian touch to their characters so that reader feels connection with the character and some

other motives are also solved as the language is rich enough to create vividness. As

SuneetaPatnayak writes in her article “Jhumpa Lahiri’s for identity through interpreter of

Maladies." She allows the chiffon sari theory of FerozaJussawalla to gain weight and then proves

with her narrative that chiffon saris, which are a metaphor for the confused exile or immigrant,

are in fact much sought after because of their flexibility and adaptability to all occasions. Thus,

she finds her identity through her protagonists who do look back but pick and choose the best of

both the cultures, that of their homeland and of their host country. (163) In her stories “A Real

Durwan” and “The Treatment of Bibi Haldar”, she presents the helpless ladies who are also

living their lives on the mercy of others, but their desire to live life is painted magnificently.

Their emotional trauma and 15 loneliness shows her craftiness of words. Parmanand Jha has

quoted Gaiutra Bahadur, an interview with Jhumpa Lahiri in which she says: Both of these

characters came out of observation of people when I was there (in Calcutta). What drew me to
writing about them was partly a projection of my own feelings of being marginal when there, of

not being a part of the culture, of feeling, foreign even when this was a place my parents call.

(Suman Bala 112) ‘The Namesake’ isa diasporic irony, the people who are living in the U.S. for

thirty years, still feel alone. The distance can’t break the cord that is attached to their native city

of Calcutta. They have no place there to live in except their relatives’ but they still call that city

their home. Jhumpa Lahiri has created Indian characters Ashoke and Ashima, through them, she

shows the diasporic experience of first generation immigrants. The novel also compares first and

second generation immigrants how they feel differently in the same atmosphere. Ashoke and

Ashima feel alienated but their children feel related to this city that is called the land of

opportunities. In this way, the parents seem to echo the words. Lahiri speaks out the dilemma of

the diasporic people who have lost their moorings. She goes through the psyche of her characters

and depicts beautifully the conflicts and confusion among different characters. Her deep delve

thinking comes with the theme of involvement and attachment towards people and the native

country. The mental status of the diasporic people whether they are forced to live in the alien

land or come here by choice, does not matter a lot because one of the reasons of migrating in the

U.S. is economic gain so, they have to stay there to get all those. They have to control their

emotion and memory but fact is quite opposite. 16 People who have spent so many years in

America feel nostalgic. This feeling of people is more strongly depicted in the Namesake

Jhumpa Lahiri knows very much about Bengali culture as she depicts beautifully the ‘annaprasan

ceremony’ of Gogol in which she depicts through Ashima, a wish of a mother who is living in

another country that this ceremony should be according to Bengali customs as her brother were

there to feed him and her own parents to bless the child. Lahiri centers around the hidden deposit

of the consciousness and confusion of the characters who find themselves trapped between
eastern and western culture. Her characters try to make sense of their living in an alien land.

Their sufferings due to cultural differences are presented through the different situations. The

alienation and emotional pain are described through Ashima and Ashoke. When she talks about

the relationship or marriage issues she takes care of the people if they are first generation

immigrants or second generation immigrants. Both have different point of view about the

relationship. Because first generation immigrants, in her stories are much more follow the Indian

tradition of marriage in which they try to live in a single bond whether they are happy or have

complaints with the behaviour or thinking of each other because for them marriage is a lifelong

relationship. But when she writes about the second generation immigrants who believe in

openness, do not have views like this as once they are married then they have to burden it for

lifelong. In this context, Moushumi and Gogol can be named who take divorce when they feel

uncomfortable with each other. But in case of Shoba and Shukumar, Mr. and Mrs. Sen, Sanjeev,

Mr. Kapasi and his wife,in spite of their 17 marital discord do not think of divorce. Some of

these stories end with all happy that ends happy note that is the quality of almost Hindi films.

Almost readers want their dear characters happy at the end whatever they tolerate in course of

their life. As everything well that ends well and Jhumpa Lahiri has taken care of this taste of

readers. She has also taken up the point of arrange marriage that happens in India. In form of

Ashima and Ashoke she has mirrored the Indian lifestyle that shows the real worth of marriage.

It shows that love may exist in their life after marriage also. Ashoke and Ashima represent the

most of the Indian couples, who have much care about their relations, respect feelings, share

important decisions with their spouses but do not show off their love openly or publicly. This

quality of theirs, separates them from the people of foreign countries. Readers searches

something unknown or unfamiliar things what they have not experienced yet. In this case, Indian
people are interested to know about American culturewho are still in India and want to know

western culture. They know the limitations of Indian culture, so they are anxious to know the

reality of the Indians living there whether they have totally mingled in that culture and become a

part of it or still they are connected with their roots in India and these wishes are fulfilled by

Jhumpa Lahiri to her foreign readers also who are curious to know about the other culture as

literature is considered the mirror of the society that is described efficiently. In her writings, the

voice of second generation is also echoed when they are caught between two cultures and none

of them consider them of their own. As in America they are asked as from which country they

belong and in India they themselves not feel belongingness as the culture in which they are born

and raised, 18 is quite different. Their peer group attracts them, but their parents wants them to

teach Indian ways. Jhumpa Lahiri has fabricated the story behind the name of Gogol that is

interest provoking. As Ashoke keeps his child’s name after an author, whose book has come to

his rescue. She writes when Ashoke is going to his grandparents’ home by train, the train is

crashed. Ashoke, who is lying wounded on the ground and rescue team thinks him dead, but just

then a page of Nikolai Gogol’s ‘Overcoat’ that he was reading at the time of accident, is

crumpled. The rescue team finds some movement there and he is rescued. He considers it his

second birth that becomes possible only because of Nikolai Gogol. So to pay gratitude to his

favorite author, he tells the doctor to name his son ‘Gogol.’ This technique of writing thrills

readers and readers waits to know how and when it is happened.Jhumpa Lahiri personally feels

connected with Gogol as she has become the victim of the same, then what she has felt in course

of her life, writes in her novel. When anecdote is inspired by personal life it creates real

emotions. As she has also passed through the same anxiety from that Gogol has passed. So her

nick name Jhumpa, is also easy to pronounce to her teacher so she starts calling her by this name.
so it because her name and her real name Nilanjana Sudeshna has remained behind. In her

writings children have great significance. Children make a family complete. Jhumpa Lahiri

writes the family writing in which every one finds oneself involves. Today’s world is a

marketing world, in this, marketing strategy has to be owned. This depends on the minds what

capability one can have. People have emotions but in today’s materialistic world everyone

remains busy in one’s own way. Nobody can be forced to read a book. The book should have the

elements that 19 make readers feel connecting with them. Jhumpa Lahiri is well read and well

educated second generation immigrant, knows every necessity of the readers. In the story "Mr.

Pirzada Comes to Dine" has been written to the child's perspective. Lilia is the narrator of the

story. So the experimental nature of Jhumpa Lahiri is shown here. She shows the thing from

Lilia's point of view. Unlike many of other female writers of Indian origin, she does not talk

about gender discrimination. None of her stories shows a little about the difference in male or

female. But she has tried the theory of patriarchy in the some of her works that seems necessary

to the mindset of the people in India Her female characters do not suffer from their male

counterparts just because she is a woman. This social problem is away from her writing. In her

writing, both genders have equal rights what they suffer from not because of their sex but

because of the circumstances that create due to their personal relations. She talks of human

relations and man woman relationships, but in these relationships female characters do not feel

inferior to their male counterparts. Jhumpa Lahiri speaks of contemporary reality that has a vast

area to pen- up. People about she writes are free from boundaries of continents as well as religion

and culture. She is globally accepted writer whose achievement lies in presentation of variety of

experiences through displaced and dislocated characters. Her subject matter and understanding

about relations have an immediate appeal for the reader. The expressive style of presenting
husband-wife relationship marks a significant of her art of writing.Inspite of being a writer of

recent times, Jhumpa Lahiri has received much attention. There are some studies by Indian

scholars, both long and short. As Indira Nityanandam in 'Jhumpa Lahiri: The Tale of the

Diaspora' writes 20 about diasporic experience of the people who have come from their

homeland to foreign countries. In this book the writer has analysed her two books- 'Interpreter of

Maladies'and 'TheNamesake'in the context of expatriate writing. Diaspora in the last century is

mainly a personal choice of individuals, particularly for academic pursuits or economic gain. The

people of host country reacts differently to their migration. Sometime they become indifferent

but sometime their behaviour become unfavourable. As in case of Ashima when she gives birth

to Gogol in 'The Namesake' the native people help her a lot but in case of Mrs. Sen in "Mrs. Sen"

Eliot's mother behaves differently as she does not want to have relation with her except the

professional relation as she does babysitting for Eliot. So every type of people and their

behaviour can be seen in her work.The native residents in each of these countries reacted

differently to the waves of immigrants but in almost all the cases the expatriate did face a clash

of opposing cultures, a feeling of alienation which is then followed by the attempts to adjust, to

adopt, to adapt, to accept. In this way she has taken the problems of Indian immigrants. Jaydeep

Chakrabarty’s article “Diasporic Dynamism in RepresentingIndia: The Narrative World of

Jhumpa Lahiri” reflects how she writes about India and its people. Then there is a comparison

between “A RealDurban” and Rajee Seth’s “Baahree Log” by RajiNarasimhan .Some stories

have been taken for critical study on diasporic experience from 'Interpreter of Maladies',Binda

Shah writes about the trauma of diasporic existence in 'The Namesake' and matrix of sexuality in

'Interpreter of Maladies'. Buddhadeb Roy Choudhury’s “The Metaphor Of Pain: Reflection on

Interpreter ofMaladies” andDebarti Bandyopadhyay’s research paper “Negotiating: Borders of

America, their straggle to adjust and keep their position secure in the alien land.

BaharehBahmanpour in his article “Female Subject and Negotiating Identitiesin Jhumpa Lahiri’s

Interpreter of Maladies” writes about the problemsrelated to the existence of the migrating

people. The process of identity change of the first generation people including the female

characters who are suffering from identity loss.AshutoshDubey in his research paper “Immigrant

Experience in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies”writes about the experience and problems

of Indian immigrants. Smita Mohanty in “Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake: A Study of Ethical

Consciousnessin Immigrants Sensibility”talks about the ethical aspect of Indian Immigrants.

These critical writings are stereotype and saying the same thing again and again, as the first

generation immigrants certainly face the same problem of culture but all these interpretations are

theory based. All critics have generalized all the characters. Every person who has gone to

foreign land, has his own goals and purposes. All first generation immigrants don’t have same

problems because they are from different regions. In India there is the variety of cultures. When

an individual moves away from his place, he has some problems regarding adjustment. In the

new atmosphere, he takes time to adjust and understand the surroundings. Every individual has

his own characteristics. He is different from any other one. So this is not right to judge every

character with the same theory. It is injustice to the author. Characters are from different origins

as Mr. Pirzada is from Bangladesh and Mrs. Sen is from India. In the same way they are from

different age group, different economic conditions and different type of situations. All these facts

and factors 22 make different attitude. Apart from this, everyone acts differently, may be the

situation is the same. It is individual difference. Everyone is other for everyone.