Diasporic Consciousness: A Comparative Study of Jhumpa Lahiri and Kiran Desai

Diasporic Consciousness is a complex term as it encompasses ideas including exilic existence, a sense of loss, consciousness of being an outsider, yearning for home, burden of exile, dispossession and relocation. The lives of immigrants do not have straight lines. They live centuries of history in a life lifetime and have several lives and roles. They experience a sense of uprootedness in the host countries. Inspite of their attempts of acculturation, they do remain at the periphery and are treated as others. “Migrants,” says Salman Rushdie, “…straddle two cultures … fall between two stools” and they suffer “a triple disruption” comprising the loss of roots, the linguistic and also the social dislocation.” (279) Trishanku, the character from the Indian epic Ramayana, who went embodied to heaven but had to settle at a place midway between the earth and the paradise, serves as metaphor for the modern expatriate inhabiting the contested global local space.

For a comparative study, on the treatment of the theme of diasporic consciousness in both these novels, the paper portrays the differences present in the novels regarding the setting and background, types and phases of migration and the techniques employed by the novelists.

“Boast of Quietness”, a poem by Jorge Luis Borges serves as a fitting epigraph for The Inheritance of Loss. The poem speaks of loss, of universal human feelings and of the difficulties in achieving self- contentment. The novel also meditates on loss as an emotional location. A retired, reclusive Judge, Jemubhai Patel lives with his orphaned granddaughter Sai, his beloved dog Mutt and his cook Panna Lal in Cho Oyu, a crumbling house in Kalimpong. Lack of human warmth, love of family is the loss in the Jemu’s l...

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...novelists have presented a realistic and touching picture of the palpable life of the Diasporas, who are on a river with a foot each in two different boats, and each boat trying to pull them in separate directions. But every coin has two sides to it. It is an enriching experience if taken in a positive way. Being an immigrant teaches them much about the world and about human beings. It enlarges their consciousness about things which they would never have understood if born and raised in one place. It enables them to speak concretely on a subject of universal significance and appeal.

Works Cited

Desai, Kiran. The Inheritance of Loss. New Delhi: Penguin, 2006.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Namesake. NewDelhi: HarperCollins, 2003.

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Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism London : Granta, 1991.