Manhattan Music Analysis

Surviving as an Immigrant
Meena Alexannder in her novel Manhattan Music says, "Immigrants are like that - our spiritual flesh scooped up from here and there. All our memories are sizzling. But we need another. Another is for the electricity. So we can live."(154)
The concept of 'home' has become a question for immigrants. They have an experience of leaving home and how leaving home changes them. This program from the known habitation to the unknown place contains many difficulties. The immigrants sway between the host land and homeland in the awareness of their gender habits, identity, custom, politics and culture which are psychological, sociological, cultural and political. The Traditional ancestral responsibilities and roles are often exacerbated

and challenged by the sociocultural differences and insufficient understanding between the new arrivals and the host country. They don't adopt automatically the culture of the host country as they cross the border. They learn the ways of their new life on new place slowly and gradually. The first step as an immigrant is always less complicated. Starting a whole new life is always exciting because traveling into another reign or country is a great opportunity to learn more things, many culture and many people. But later on, every immigrant starts feeling nostalgia, isolation, separation, solitude, homesickness etc. Although for other these feelings can be different. In a conversation with Brati Biswas, Lahiri explicates the inner turmoil of immigrants:
For immigrants, the challenges of exile, the loneliness, the constant sense of alienation, the knowledge of and longing for a lost world, are more explicit and distressing than their children. On the other hand, the problem for the children of immigrants, those with strong ties to the country of origin, is that they feel neither one thing nor the other. The feeling that there was no place to which i fully belonged bothered me growing up.(187-188)
Indian diaspora has observed a huge migration of people of their own decision from Indian subcontinent to the urban centers of America, Australia, Canada and Europe etc. In the beginning, the term Diaspora was used by Greeks to refer to people who migrated to another land assimilate that territory into the empire. But this original meaning is different from the present meaning. Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur in Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader write
Etymologically derived from the Greek term diasperien, from dia-across and speirien, 'to sow or scatter seeds,' diaspora can be seen as a naming of the other which has historically referred to displaced communities of people who have been dislocated from their native homeland through the movements of migration, immigration or exile.(1)
They further add that it is a term
which literally (and on an historical level, negatively) denotes communities of people dislocated from their native homelands through migration, immigration, or exile as a consequence of colonial expansion, but etymologically suggests the (more positive) fertility of dispersion, dissemination, and the scattering of seeds(4).
So this is a term for mass migration and for the people away from their homelands. However, the term diaspora and diasporic communities today are increasingly being used as an allegorical definition for refugees, displaced communities and immigrants. The Indian Diaspora has become a part of the English and American literary tradition. Many of Indian English writers e.g. Raja Rao, Bharati Mukherjee, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Jhumpa Lahiri, Vikram Seth have made their names by their writings about immigrants and diasporic people. Their concerns are serious about immigrants because today's world is suffering with the issues and problems of refugees and immigrants. The atmosphere and culture of the host country put impact on the minds of immigrants either directly or indirectly. They can blame someone if they are compelled to go there. But if they have gone there only for their own pleasure, then they can blame themselves only. They continue to survive there by facing many kinds of problems. Homi Bhaba also gives his views on the survival of immigrants in his interview with Kalpana Sheshadri, titled ' Surviving Theory'
Survival continually haunts the dream of sovereignty with the possibility that their failure is not the other side of success or mystery: It is lining, an intimate and proximate mode of being living in the midst of what we think needs to be done fresh or anew and what requires repeatedly be repaired, revised or reassembled.(379)
This chapter analyses the problems of immigrants and how they survive in different country which is totally opposite their cultures in Divakaruni's Queen of Dreams.

And what of the home they carry with them? How they feel about sense of self? How do they deal with that as they move into a place where self means something quite different? It is also important to note that if they suppress their sense of past and their heritage that will come out in many other ways.
As an immigrant, Chitra Banerjee seems to take pride in being more of a Westerner and less of an Indian. Her all works portray the complexities faced by immigrants. She has exceeded boundaries, conveying two different worlds from various viewpoints. In an interview with Morton Marcus, She explained briefly about her writings and

said
all this risk taking goes back to my hospital experience, since one way or another it involves bridging barriers, doing away with boundaries; not only boundaries between life and death, the everyday world and the mythic one, but with the thought that perhaps the boundaries we create in our lives are not real. I'm talking about that separate communities and people (2)
She attempts to interweave the elements of ancient culture, saga, and myth and the magic alongside the contemporary culture. She mainly puts her attention on the characters balancing two different worlds. Most of her writings are about the Indian Immigrants in United States from author's native reign of Bengal, India. Living in this country, she has become more aware of the differences in beliefs, society and culture which urge her to write about it in all its basics. This distinguishes her from many other writers. After an interview with Divakaruni, Sarah Anne explains,
Divakaruni... explores the issues that are central to the experiences of immigration. Her rich collection of characters includes Indian and Indian American, who have one thing in common: They are in transition and struggling for a sense of their true identity as they try to come to terms with complex cultural and social pressures. They are lured by the forces of tradition but also drawn to possibilities of an American future and all it represents in terms of personal choices. As they reconcile their humanity and close the perceived distance between people of different cultures. (20)

Queen of Dreams portrays reality: anxieties and fear that immigrants are vulnerable to, souring of American Dream and immigrant Indian's response to the loneliness and emptiness that haunts the citizens of this modern wasteland. I also talks about the problems, trials and experiences of the Indian American community through the lives of a Bengali immigrant family. The story for good amount is about Rakhi, the only daughter of immigrant couple who have established themselves in California and wish to bring up their daughter as an American, shielding her from their past lives in India. Rakhi has never gone to India but she is determined to identify her background so that she can best understand herself as an Asian American properly. She is also determined to search of her identity in an Alien country. Although she never sees herself as an immigrant because it is a part of her parents' lives. The novel is divided between the United States America and India, although the whole story takes place in America. Divakaruni mainly puts an attention on the characters balancing two worlds, particularly Indian Immigrants struggling through life in America. In this way she attempts to tie the gulf between an American- born daughter and an Indian immigrant mother. There are forty one chapters in the novel. Many of these are entitled 'from Dream Journals' to show the events in life of the dream interpreter, Rakhi's mother Mrs. Gupta. The other chapters are entitled 'Rakhi' the narrator of these chapters and a few others give a general viewpoint of the activities in the lives of these characters as if somebody is witnessing all these characters.
The experiences of the immigrants and their life in Diaspora are briefly discussed in this novel. It depicts the problems of people immigrating to America and the dream of new life which attracts them to go there. This novel also puts light on the strategies which they adopt for their survival. It is said that when a man comes on an unknown place at that time he feels himself as an outsider on that no man's land. The only way left for him to survive is to struggle by conquering those new feelings of nostalgia. The living in-between condition is very marginalizing and painful for the immigrants. So many problems and issues related with immigrants e.g. issue of identity, issue of culture, issue of gender and class, issue of colour, issue of economy, issue of freedom etc. are briefly discussed throughout the play.
In Rakhi, she has combined the feelings of an immigrant who has an oriental past and tries to live up to occidental ethos. Her personality rises from inquiring many phases of what is happening around her to a state where she is ready to accept the reason behind all activities. She is an American by birth, is a young divorcee and a struggling painter. Being immigrants her family is facing many kinds of problems. They feel difficulty to adjust to the new cultures and new communities. Their own culture and rituals are different from the hostland. The sufferings and the problems which immigrants face are explained by Meira Chand as:

Tradition nurtures, it offers the consistency of a blood line, a spring board for evolution, growth and experimentation ... the writer has forsaken all this. He has been cut from his own tradition and culture from osmosis and introspection, and from his own context within it. How he deals with this trauma, this crisis of identity is perhaps the greatest problem confronting him in his situation.( Chand 17)
She raises her voice against cultural alienation, identity crisis and mental trauma of the disturbed people from their birthplace India. Her terrible sense of homelessness and alienation create the motivation that forces her into the necessary changes to get her life back on track. She always tries to acculturate to the unfamiliar country. This results in the elimination of the unpleasant and painful incidents with her family and her husband from mind. In this way towards the end, she instigates to question her basic motives, the capacity to forgive, the true nature of love and to recover her love for family. The dynamics of some of her main relationships are transformed in the phase between her acculturation and identity crisis.
The whole story of the novel revolves around Rakhi. Although she is comfortable in her American life, she feels a strong connection towards her Indianness. However her mother does not want to tell her the tale of her painful and strange past in India. Mrs. Gupta is a first-generation Indian Immigrant in America. Her job is to interpret dreams for people and warn them about the forthcoming problems and danger. She often recites lines from Brihat Swapna Sarita as the elders do at the time of trouble. Although she forgets many of the cantos but still narrate:
The dream comes from heralding joy. I welcome the dream The dream comes heralding sorrow. I welcome the dream The dream is a mirror showing me my beauty. I bless the dream. The dream is a mirror showing me my ugliness. I bless the dream. My life is nothing but a dream. From which i will wake into death, Which is nothing but a dream of life. (qd 21)
In this way she has full dedication in her profession. She does not want to disclose this secret to her daughter. But her mother's this kind of attitude towards her, has aroused her interest to search all that which is hidden from her now.
The nation, myth and culture play a great role in the life of immigrants. The perceptions of first and second generation immigrants in the America regarding their native land are totally based on their culture. The concepts of nation, myths, culture and identity can be witnessed throughout the novel. The idea of Nation is formed by immigrant's communities through their beliefs, ideas, memories and myths which are related with their own native land. Rakhi is continually haunted by imagined India, although she doesn't know much about Indian culture but tries to depict that through her imagination and the stories her mother tells her. India is a mysterious and legend place for her. She is torn between the culture she assimilates in America and her imagined India.
She knows that her mother always slept alone. Before going to her bed, it is her routine to sit on the edge of daughter's bed for a while, and smooth her hair with her fingers at night. At that age Rakhi does not prefer to listen her stories much, and she also did not tell her. Her mother is used to tell her stories of Nina-Miki to her at that time. But she says, "I would have preferred the stories to come from my mother, and to have been set in India, where she grew up, a land that seemed to me to be shaded with unending mystery”? (4) She wants to visualize her native land through the eyes of her mother. She tries to convince her mother to tell her the stories about India where her mother took birth. India is the biggest mystery for her that's why she uses the word 'mystery'. But for her mother India was not all that mysterious. It was just another place, not different from California. Her mother describes India as 'just another place'. Rakhi further admits, "I hungered for all things Indian because my mother never spoke of the country she'd grown up in-- just as she never spoke of her past."( 35) She feels isolated from her mother's the dream world which she inhabits and her past in India. She finds relief in the finding, after her mother's death, of her dream journals. "A dream is a telegram from the hidden world". (34), her mother writes this in journals, which open the long-closed door to Rakhi's past.
She does know that her mother don’t sleep with her father. Then she discovered that her mother is a dream taller. She did not know much about her mother’s dreaming. She never knew that where her mother put her bedding. The carpet on which her mother used to sleep was not flattened to indicate that someone had slept there. When she asked her that what reason behind all these incidents is? Her mother said: "I don’t sleep with you or your father because my work is to dream. I can’t do it if someone is in the bed with me”. (7) So her mother does dreaming for other people so that she can help them to live their life peacefully. Rakhi explains, "That was when i made the other discovery, the one that would nudge and gnaw and mock at me all my growing - up years. My mother was a dram teller." The word 'discovery' here resembles the word 'mystery' which is used by her in her last sentence. Knowing about her mother is like a shock for her, but through this she can find her true existence. Although her mother explains her that India is not a mysterious or magical place where unusual incidents happen. It is a regular place like any other. But Rakhi thinks dream-tellers are rare and unusual. First thing, her mother is a dream teller and second, she is Indian. These things are opposite to each other. That's why she thinks it is a mysterious place which has given her mother a precious gift, dream interpretation. She further tells, "At home we rarely ate anything but Indian; that was the one way in which my mother kept her culture." In this way, her mother continues to keep her culture in this so called American society. Rakhi receives Indian culture and tradition by eating Indian food at home. The food and nation are inseparably joined with each other. So it is only the food which can make your connection with your nation in a foreign land. It is also notable that Rakhi uses the word 'her culture' because it is her mother's culture yet. This kind of thoughts also show her sense of alienation which she feels from the Indian tradition and culture. Perhaps it is so because she is not a part of this culture yet.
There is a very big difference between her mother and her in the views about India. It is so because her mother has left India and come to United States when she was grown up. On the other hand, Rakhi is born in America, so she can not feel the same way her mother feels. It is the human nature which always goes towards the unknown. Her mother freely talks to her on those topics which are considered bad or forbidden in India. She does so because they are not living in India now. America is much forward in these matters. Anyway it is good for Rakhi to learn all those things and matters. Her mother fascinates her with stories of miracle and wonder that are based in India. She has been fed with stories of Shangri-La since her childhood days. These all have tremendous impact on her psyche. She wants to decode all those secrets about India by asking her mother about them. Being a good painter, her mind is also attracted towards the nation about which she knows not much. Most of her paintings present the picture of her imagined India. She always tries to collect the Indian ethos from photographs and journals which serve the best of Indian culture. In one of her painting, she presents the beautiful scene of India's mountain peak, Kanchenjunga. It is also notable that painting places on the western wall. It can be said an influence on Rakhi's life.
The true happiness in this world is the right earthly aim for man. It lies in maintaining of a natural coordination of mind, body and spirit which is the root of Indian culture. That's why Rakhi feels relax and happy with her paintings about India. She and her friend Belle have good commitment towards their friendship. They both have their parents from Indian background, that's why Indian culture has put its effects on them. Indian parent's pressure can be seen on their children anywhere in the world. It is seen as a family trait and also as a crucial quality of Indianness. All the parents don't do so but majority of the Indian parents is on this side. Her mother's quality of telling dreams of other people makes her different from others. But she always tells Rakhi that being different doesn’t mean that someone is weird. In western cultures, dream interpretation is a science, practiced by psychogists. In Indian culture, dream interpretation is a gift. That's why she does not want to share her secrets with her daughter. Rakhi wants to analyze her mother's gift. That's why she desires to obtain her mother's precious gift of interpreting dreams as it is "...i wanted to be an interpreter...i grew obsessed with the idea. I saw it as a noble vocation, at once mysterious and helpful to the world. To be an interpreter of the inner realm seemed so Indian. (35)
Now she has an approach to her mother's dream journals. With the help of these, she comes to know the incidents and things that are so strange to her. She comes to know about the ancient texts such as Swapna Purana and Brihat Swapna Sarita. In this way she learns about the tradition and rituals of dream-interpreting. All these texts start making her sense of self. She starts undoing her true mother with Indian heritage. Now she recognizes that nation is a multilayered bound of experiences. Her father also shares the stories from the Indian epics, The Mahabharata and Ramayana regarding the history of various Indian food items. Although she has criticized the Indian food for their very long preparation but now she is curious to know about their links with the ancient history. In this way, Rakhi's interest can be seen in Indian tradition and heritage.
So the main thing the immigrants miss is their culture, their native place, their traditions and their land etc. We see Rakhi want to know about her native land India. She really misses the motherland because it is the only place where she can find her roots. That's why she tries many ways to know about that land, culture and tradition. If we see, her mother also does the same, she tries to remind her native land and culture through her dreams, making food and writing journals. Being immigrants, they don't think they have any existence in America. Where do they exist? To which land do they belong? All these types of question always run through their mind. The question of survival becomes bigger for them. They do try to survive on the land which does not really belong to them. So in this way, surviving as immigrants for Rakhi and her family is quite difficult. But they do try to survive their predicaments with courage.
Another major problem for Immigrants is that they feel alienation in their life. They don't mix-up with the people of host country. Although they have been living there since their childhood, they don't get that much of comfort which they get in their own native land. We see in the novel every character feels alienation. All these try to gain their own existence and peace. Rakhi's mother tries to search inner truths through her dreams and dedicates her whole life to this. She tries to comfort herself by making and eating Indian food. On the other hand Rakhi tries to find peace through her talent of painting. Sonny finds peace in his own way by going to clubs and attending parties. Mr. Gupta feels alienation because his wife does not give him that much of time which he wants and he also misses his Indian tradition. That's why he feels good by singing and listening Indian old songs. Jaspal feels the same so follows his Indian Sikh life in the American community and wants to have good life ahead with Belle. All the characters find their aspirations and desires with the help of courage and their will. In this way, they try to make themselves happy.
As a divorcee, Rakhi also feels alienation in her life. She thinks Sonny always tries to win the favour of her mother. She does not like this. She understands the reasons behind her mother's good behavior for Sonny. Even Sonny also tries to go close to her mother. She says, "You always tried to worm your way into my mother's good books, to win her over to your side, to---".(154) Sonny does not like her attitude. That's why he tells her:
That's the real problem, isn't it? You can't stand the fact that your mother loved me. You never could. You've always wanted to control everyone in your life, what they do, how they think, who they love. That's why you left me. Because i wouldn't let you control my whole existence.(154)
She tells belle’ “She is not complaining. Compared to how things were three years ago, when she‘d just moved out and was waiting for the divorce to come through; her life is roses, roses all the way. (15) The memories of her love with Sonny always haunt her. Although she does not have that kind of good relation with Sonny but she still loves him. That's why she does not want Eliana to come near him. It is very difficult for her to survive, because she is facing problems in every field of her life. But her hobby of painting helps her to survive in this kind of terrific situation. She thinks the only thing that takes her out of her miserable condition is the painting of the eucalyptus grove. She works till late night on it until her eyes turn bleary and colors get muddied from reworking the strokes. She wants to establish herself, wants to make her name that's why she is preparing her painting for the show at the Atelier. She talks about India through her paintings about India, and her imaginary India as she has never gone there. It is notable “… most of her paintings had been about India – an imagined India, an India researched from photographs, because she‘d never traveled there. She ‘d painted temples and cityscapes and women in a marketplace and bus drivers at lunch”(11) At the time of painting she don’t want any kind of disturbance. Even Bella also knows this, she don’t want to disturb her because morning is the time for her paintings. She hates sonny because he upsets her routine, she has worked hardtop establish herself and Jona. She exposes her daughter to the dangers both physical and moral. Rakhi has once explained Sonny that at a certain moment the colors take over the eyes and hands. That’s why she surrenders her body to their rhythm. At that time nothing else matters for her. She tries to feel the life behind the brush- strokes. While doing the painting she always thinks that there are many other layers which are waiting, many new colors want to introduce themselves. The first thing she paints after the divorce is the scene of store's interior. She pins it on her bedroom wall next to the sketch of Jona. So the main point is that she feels her existence in painting. That’s why she always utters a line from a famous movie: “Life gets in the way of art”.(15) She also says, “…she dreams and I paint. Because dreams look to the future and paintings try to preserve the past” (35) She spends most of her time by doing painting and reading her mother's dream journals.
Rakhi does not understand her mother at that time. But she knew that her mother loves all of them. Although her father didn’t say anything to her mother at that time, but she knew that he is suffering and one day he will tell me about that. The issue of survival was also big in front of her father. He also spends his time in alienation, because his wife does not give him much time to talk. Rakhi knows this that's why she thinks that one day her father will say, "She didn’t love me, not really. She never let me get that close. The place right at the center of her – that was reserved for her dream gods or demons, whoever they were. She never shared that with anyone.” And at that time Rakhi will definitely agree with him.
For the second-generation Indian-Americans the feeling of being in-between is particularly highlighted. The Conflicts and struggles typically arise from the traditional clash between Indian communitarianism and American Individualism. The culture and value system of the second -generation is indistinct and unclear. That's why when she compares her attitude or position with that of her mother, she reflects, "Thank God, my world is simpler. Even my tragedies are simple ones, colored in commonplace blues". (40) There is different between their thinking, living standard and situation. The adaptive nature of the first-generation immigrants and the second-generation immigrants differs from each other as Keya Ganguly explains:
For the first generation immigrants, life in the new country may frequently turn out to be one fraught with misunderstanding, discrimination and the day-to-day business of recreating one's culture in an unwelcoming atmosphere. The second generation migrants or those who were taken abroad at a young age have no difficulty in adapting to the host culture but they are obliged to navigate between two traditions, an unenviable position, which can cause distress and feeling of guilt or disloyalty. (27)
The conflict of ideas between Rakhi and her mother elucidate the notion that there is always an inner clash between a first-generation Indian American and second-generation Indian American. Her mother's consciousness is a cross connection between polarisms. The transfer from their homeland to foreign land shows the adjustments of inner fights, outer reality and displacement. While reading the dream journals of her mother, she faces many doubts and questions. She thinks: "Did my other make the wrong choice deciding to come to America with my father?" (211) But after reading the journals, she begins to know what her mother hid from all of them so craftily: "her regret, her longing for community, her fear of losing her gift".(211) Only then she starts thinking of her mother. Now she recognizes that her mother rejected to accept grief and sadness, which are considered inadequate emotions. Instead of all these useless emotion, she survived only by making herself believing that loneliness was her strength. This also discovers the theme of what it means to be an American, particularly in immigrant community. The cultural differences and subsequent isolation get strengthened constantly for immigrants. They hardly mingle with the people of host country because of their cultural and traditional background. But they make their many other ways for their survival in the host country.
The domination over the women is many-sided e.g. physical, social and psychological. They are dominated by patriarchy in their every field of life. But at many stages of the Indian history, they have created their own space by hard work and courage in the patriarchal society. Being a woman, Rakhi is also dominated by her husband in many fields of her daily routine which she does not like. He doesn't want her to open the shop. He thinks that she is not capable to do so. On the other hand, he enjoys in the music and dance in the club. One day Rakhi goes with her in the club where she is tortured by drunken man. At that time, she cries for help but Sonny doesn't come for her rescue. After that night, the bond of their true love breaks down. She has never expected this kind of behavior from Sonny. She does want to be loved by a man who understands her. After all that, she tries her best to establish herself. She does not lose the hope. Because she wants to tell the world, especially her husband that she can do anything which a man can do. So she starts Chai house.
Rakhi tries to understand the meaning of life. She is not capable to come to terms with the division in her family's history, between America and India. After her divorce, she opens an ethnic-style coffee shop in Barkley, California with her friend Belle. The Chai House serves her in the dark months after her divorce. That's why she says,
There is another way in which Chai house saved me in those dark months after the divorce .... those restless midnights of doubt, the Chai house gave me something tangible to hold on to, something that was exactly what it appeared to be, nothing more and nothing less. Taking care of it was a way at least one part of my life turn on right." (26)
The Chai House, which later renamed as kurma House, is an embodiment of cultural fusion of music, conversation, cuisine and myth, assimilating them into the American mainstream.

When her mother visits this shop, she tells them, " This isn't a real cha-shop... she pronounces the word in Bengali way... but a mishmash, a western notion of what's Indian". (89) This is a perfect congent of Kakar's concept of adaptation in American life. He says, " In the process of convergence the impact of minority cultures on the mainstream can occur when elements of their culture are absorbed by Anglo-American community, thus creating a composite culture". (kakar,1991.25) So her mother desires her daughter to get habituated to her American way of life and to line in between two nations. That's why she holds her for her failing in the Chai house. She says, "The reason you don't have enough power to fight that woman there is that she knows exactly who she is, and you don't.... May be that's the problem. May be if you can make it into something authentic, you will survive.(89) Rakhi retorts her mother telling that her haunting silence about her country and her own past accounts for her "warped sense of what's Indian"(89) That's why her mother admits her fault for not telling her all those things and incidents. Then she gives her a valid explanation for her

act:
You are right. It is my fault. I see now that i brought you up wrong. I thought it would perfect you if i didn't talk about the past. That way you wouldn't be constantly looking back, hankering like so many immigrants do. I didn't want to be like those other members spitting you between here and there, between your life right now and that which can never be. But by not telling you about India as it really were, i made it into something far bigger. It crowded other things out of your mind. It pressed upon your brain like a tumour"(89)
There is a intermingling of the occident and orient in Rakhi's personality. She is an exhibition of her loyalty and her true love torn between the country of her birth and her imagined homeland.
A few Indian immigrants who visit the shop often demanding her father to sing songs from old Hindi movies underline their continuous effort to build the lost boundaries in the host country. In this way they preserve their cultural hangovers which have been dropped by the dominant culture. In the same way, Rakhi borrows a tape of songs about Bengal monsoons from the South Asian library."A tape with songs about monsoons: how the skies grow into the color of polished steel, how the clouds advance like black armies, or spill across the horizon like the unwound hair of beautiful maiden's. i loved the tape, even though i could understand only about half the words."(91) She starts day-dreaming about the palm trees and hanging roots of banyan. She also recalls: "The lighting was silver combs decorating the rain maiden's hair. The rain was warm, like human tears. One of the singers had compared her heart to a dancing peacock".(82)
Benedict Anderson in his book Imagined Communities says that " nationalism has to be understood by aligning it, not with self-consciously held political ideologies, but with the large cultural systems that preceded it, out of which...it came into being.... imagined community because in the mind of each, lives an image of their communion".(5) So nation is then a cultural community which is created by the traditions, customs and experiences of people who may never meet fellow members, or know them but they come together in an 'imagined community'. This happens only because they all do have the same image of their communion. When Rakhi sees her father talking to an Indian immigrant, she notices they both have the same body of language. It is also interesting to note that she finds an 'authentic' Indian-ness in that shared sense of community. Her father has resurrected the Chai house as 'Kurma House' and also added some Bengali dished in the list. Now they have decided to transform the chai house into an Indian snack shop, a chaer dokan, as it would be called in Calcutta. They are going to model it after the shop in which her father had worked many years ago. He decides to teach cooking to Belle and Rakhi. He will teach them to brew tea and coffee the right way, he will cook the snacks himself. Another way to authenticate the practices and experiences of Indian-ness in that situation is to image a community on the basis of collective experiences of old Hindi film music:
And my father, who has sung only for himself until now... launches into the melody, his voice made truer by the hopes of strangers. The men nod their hands to the beat, clearly, they know the words too... after a few minutes, one of them takes a mouth organ out of a pocket, while another lifts a small, two-ended drum out of a big i hadn't noticed. When my father starts on another song (sing us a gana of sholay, Bhaisahab!), they accompany him, filling our shop with gaiety.... They have forgotten our presence, even my father. The music continues for the next couple of hours, song after song, without break. When the tune is particularly catchy, two or three of the men get up and dance, their steps unhurried, unself-conscious, the bright handkerchiefs that materialize in their hands like magician's scarves rising and falling in slow motion. When my father finally stops, out of breath, the men don't applaud. For them, what happened in this shop isn't a performance but a ceremony something they were part of.
After watching this scene, the thoughts and feelings start running in her mind. All these thoughts overpower her desire to be the part of practices and experiences that her father's generation seems to have carried from their homeland. She has a sense of kinship with them:
Then there is noise at the door, and a group of people around my father's age come in. Some wear western clothes, and some are in kurta-pajamas, but what i notice most are their faces. Lined, unabashedly showing their age, they hint at eventful pasts lived in places very different from this one, difficulties and triumphs that i can't quite imagine. The word foreign comes to me again, though i know it is ironic. They're my countrymen. We share the same skin color (7)
In this way, although she is caught between two world's experiences, 're-memorizing' her origins through these people is healing.
Belle knows her problems, her weak points, her suspicions, her stubbornness, her fear etc. Without her Rakhi doesn’t think she could have survived her divorce. Her real name is Balwant Kaur, but she does not like this kind of desi-name. Her parents think that she is safe in her Sikh look. But she always does quarrel with her parents, and refuses to let them pull her back into their safe Sikh nest. She moves from boyfriend to boyfriend, never letting them become important. Her parents are trying to get her back. Perhaps they‘ll probably arrange her marriage to one of those young Indian farmers. She loves the store and also gives it importance. She wants to establish herself in the society. That’s why the chai house means more for her than Rakhi. She has persuaded her parents into letting her have the money which they‘d saved for her marriage. She gave her a large sum of money which is enough to buy all equipment. Although they didn’t believe that Belle and Rakhi have enough business sense. But she works hard to prove them wrong. They have put everything they had into the chai House. They have converted a run-down establishment into something special with their little money. In this way, there is a bond of love between them.
They have nursed each other through romantic troubles, failing grades, bouts of flu and the pressures that only Indian parents know to apply to their offspring. They have loaned each other money and underwear, courage and lipstick, and held each other‘s heads when they threw up after drinking too much at parties to which they shouldn’t have gone. They confessed to each other things that they ‘ve never dared to tell anyone before, and seen themselves newly through each other’s eyes.(17)
Belle does not like India desi look, that's why she don't want to accept what her parents want to put upon her. She is crazy about Jaspal. But when Jaspal asks her for marriage, she hesitates. It doesn't mean he is bad boy. The problem is that she does not like his look, his turban, her long hair under her turban and his style. She further explains that he believes in living according to the Granth Sahib and a respectable gurdwara-going member of the community. He believes in, discipline, physical purity and putting the family first. All these values mean the world to him. He thinks all these values suits him better than western ways of life.
She thinks that after sometime they will disagree on everything. Jaspal is keen to settle down, wants to start a new life by doing marriage with Belle. The other reason is that his parents are getting old, and they want to see their grandchild before they die. In this way he loves her as much as he can. But she is not serious about their relationship. There are some major reasons behind her hesitation. One of them is that her parents have been compelling her since her childhood to adopt their religious and moral rules, to follow their Indian tradition. But she does not like that much. All the rules e.g. physical purity, discipline, community love has been pushed down by her parents on her throat everyday of her life. It is said that westernization of east is a process of traditional and cultural exchange. So she has become now a western lady, she doesn't like the Indian life style. She spends her time at chai house which has become a medium of her survival.
Chai House is the place which has saved Rakhi in those dark months after divorce when she was thinking that if she had made a terrible mistake. There were many questions in her mind at that time. But Chai House has helped her in her survival:-
Through those restless midnights of doubt, the chai house gave me something tangible to hold on to, something that was exactly what it appeared to be, and nothing more and nothing less. Taking care of it was a way to make at least one part of it was a way to make at least one part of my life turn out right.(26)
Like Belle's parents, Sonny was also not in the favour of this shop. That's why he did not want Rakhi to start this kind of business. He thought that it would require so much of her attention when Jona was still a baby. But her mother was on her side. She said, "Women need something of their own to make them independent…. Something to give them a sense of self”.(31). She never sat on the chairs which they have bought from a warehouse sale. All those chairs are bought at the time of her divorce. That's why she does not want to sit on them. She says, "But I never sat in them myself. I’d refinished them in the long evenings that followed my divorce, and it seemed to me that they still smelled of that time, sad mix of freedom and fear.” (25)
This is also important for her because she has painted first the scene of store’s interior there after her divorce. That’s why she says, “...on those days the only thing that got me out of bed was knowing that without me they might not survive, my store and my daughter.”(27) Now she tries to concentrate on the shop. She does not want to remind the old incidents, events. She says, “I believe in forgetting unpleasant facts as soon as possible. The more you think of them … the more psychic power they suck from you, and the stronger they grow.”(29) She also thinks about Sonny and her family.
Later that night, lying sleepless in bed, thinking of all the things that were going in my life, I’d realize I’d included Sonny in my family list. And with chagrin I‘d admit that he was still family, much as I wanted to disown him. Because only family filled you with such exasperation. Only family could irritate you like a hangnail that you couldn’t chew off, no matter how much you tried.(74)
This is not easy for them to run their shop in that society. They do not know their tastes, interests likes, dislikes etc. Biggest problem is that they don't have enough money to fulfill all the requirements. Another shop 'Jawa' near them also creates problems for them. Jawa is a fastest growing café chain in this country. Their policy is to open new stores near coffee shops, and to take away their customers with low-priced special. Within three years it has captured sixty-seven percent of United States market. CEO claims that they are aiming for one hundred percent. Even Rakhi‘s mother says that they need to find something authentic to offer their customers, something that satisfies a need in them.
Things are not going well at the chai house. There has been a sharp drop in customers, especially after the new café put up a sign advertising discounts for students. Sometimes an entire day goes by no one coming in- something that has never happened before. Even their Book Club members have stopped coming regular. They have tried everything- slashing prices, putting up promotional posters outside, having distributed coupons at the street corners. They also put horrendously expensive ad in the Berkeley Voice.
Rakhi doesn’t want to ask her mother for help. Because she thinks that chai house is her sanctuary, the place she has made her own. She doesn’t want her mother to take over it- the way she dominates other areas of her life
But her mother tells them,
You must act fast before they expect you to. They are going to steal your customers, lure them with deals you can’t beat. You can succeed only if you do something different. Create a special attraction, something that means more to people than money....you need to find something authentic to offer your customers, something that satisfies a need in them that's deep and real. I know you will figure it out. I have full confidence in the two of you.(52)
Rakhi is worried about their condition in chai house. She does not know the reason why their regular customers are going away. She thinks of them all with bafflement and concern- and a sense of betrayal. She says, “What has happened to Mrs. Locklin? To old Professor Rogers? To Laurel Street Club members, who used to come in every Wednesday and fill the corner nook with intense electricity of their arguments?(75) They sit at the dining table to discuss the ideas. Before this, all these kinds of interactions were took place in the presence of mother. She was their conductor, their buffer zone and also their translator. She often clarified their doubts, their questions with an ease. But now that entire mother medium has gone. Now Rakhi, Belle and Mr. Gupta will have to do something for Chai House.
There are many kinds of cultural differences between Chai House and Java. The main reason behind all this is the difference of values and culture of American and Indian. Java is running down by them according to American ways, on the other hand Chai house is based on Indian values and styles. American culture is a combination of various cultures. The main reason behind this is that people from many countries have come there and settled down there. In the matter of culture and tradition, Americans are in a privileged situation because they have no ancient cultural history like the India. India, however, has had a long list of rituals and cultures. The culture of India is deep-rooted in the earliest Vedic culture of the Indus Valley civilization. The main difference between the eastern and western cultures lies in marriage, religion and social interaction. The west is rational and logical, while the east is predominantly religious and magical. These two cultures are diametrically opposite to each other. The people prefer Java because they feel more comfortable there than Chai House.
Java demands nothing from them expect money. It allows them to remain unknown. No conversation, no contact, nothing to look at or discuss nothing of themselves exchanged of exhaled. And yet they have community too, as much of it as they want: the comfortable company of roomful of nameless, faceless folks just like themselves, happy to be left alone, to gaze into the middle distance, to notice no one.(95)
In this way, their living style, nature and behavior is different from Indians. It is very difficult for Rakhi and Balle to fit them in that kind of system. That's why Rakhi says,
Our customers allow us to enter in their lives just as we have invited them into ours. That our shop stays with them even they leave it. We have believed that places shouldn't be come clones of other places. We have believed that it is important for people to have a venue to enjoy intelligent conversation and a well-brewed cup of tea.(95)
She says that perhaps we have built our entire business on misconception. She thinks that they have wasted their time in building a sanctuary when all people want just a stop-'n'-go. The customers vacate their shop because they do like Java more than them. So it is a biggest crisis for them. This sudden crisis turns them again towards India. That's why they decide to transform the shop into a traditional Indian snack shop. They get into their native land's ethos to protect their shop. They feel a bit of separation from the American nation because it cannot help them in their business. In this way, their restaurant business starts reviving again. Her father suggests introducing the buffet system in which customers have to pay minimum amount on anything they want to eat. He thinks it will help them to win the favour of customers. Although she doesn't like the idea much, but she is surprised to see that it indeed works. The customers are increasing day by day. It is also a surprise for her because immigrant community is coming in their shop now. The community feels the sense of belongingness with the shop.
They feel like aliens in America, although they have American citizenship. It is too difficult to forget the roots, so your native place always remains in your mind forever. In India, the profit becomes bigger than the community. But it is not the same on a foreign land. For Rakhi, her restaurant is very important because it is the only place where they can be themselves. At this shop, she can be Indian without any inhibition. It is a unique way in which the nationalism works. It is not limited to any specific discourse because nation generates their own as it interacts with human experiences. Her concept of India and nation changes after her experiences. Now she understands that nationality and nation can't be set under any clear category. She receives a bundle of beautiful paintings by Indian artistes. She has not seen these kinds of pictures before. Before this, Indian meant the scenes of poor people, market places and mountains but now she understands it in better way. She learns that art cannot be limited to any boundary. Now she also understands the mystery of India. She understands what it means to be an Indian. Till now she has been putting boundaries around the word 'India'. It becomes clear to her that nation as a concept cannot be bound to specific limit. After facing many difficulties in her life, finally she understands how to survive.
The United States America is often referred to as a country of immigrants. The American Indians and people from other countries have experienced a great deal of racism here. The discrimination against immigrants is a biggest problem. Although government has passed many laws that aim to protect immigrants from discrimination, but discrimination on the basis of colour, caste, nation, language and culture is still there. Furthermore the violence has unleashed in the American public on account of the bombing of the World Trade Centre takes a great toll on the lives of the immigrant. The Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda has coordinated this terrorist attack on United States. Thousands of people have died in the towers. In an interview with Bridget Kinsella, Chitra Banerjee describes the unforgettable questions of an unpleasant experience of 9/11:
I write about 9/11, actually what happened in our community ( San Francisco Bay Area ) It was very painful and very scary. There was an additional backlash against our community and against other communities that looked different and 'suspicious'... what it did for me as an individual was brought up as the question that Rakhi has to face. If i am not American, or if people don't see me as American, then what does that do to my identity?...who is American and who should we identify with? Is it you do if you belong to a visible minority who then become the victims of fear and hatred? How do we continue to live in America as Americans? (Kinsella 229)
Divakaruni sketched her own experiences of 9/11 through her novels. She gives reference about this incident in most of her novels. She presents the miserable stories of their survival after 9/11. She has used the idea of the near-death experience basically in her interpretation of 9/11 and its aftermath, presenting the idea that American culture cannot survive in the form in which it existed before the attack and critiquing American groupings of racial and cultural relationship based on skin color. She says,
I want to touch people, to have them think about the issues they haven't considered before, to make them more compassionate towards other people ... that was my major intention with writing this book after 9/11: if i could make the pain and the hope powerful enough in the book, then maybe i might stop some of the prejudice out there, and have some sort of counter effect to what followed 9/11 ... i find that when i really care about a character from particular background, when i look those people in my real life, then i feel differently about them. i feel more compassionate. And that's my hope for Queen and for my community.
The Indian immigrant's community, South Asian American community and Arab communities have experienced quite a bit of violent hate crimes. Those who have Sikh background also suffered a lot. Sometimes the same incident put different effects on different people. Some react with a great fear and others with violence.
And for Rakhi and her mother, its effects are different. As she is trying to balance her life of failed mom, mother -fixed daughter, failed entrepreneur, divorced woman into a unified whole through imagining her identity in a certain way, she finds herself in the midst of an inexplicable situation:
I see the explosion and think i've caught in the middle of a sci-fi film, or one of those gruesome disaster movies that people are so inexplicably fond of. I am about to change the channel when there is a rapid are of movement on the screen, followed by another soundless blast. It takes me a minute to process what i saw: a plane crashing into a tall building that looks familiar, looks just like the one that exploded. The scene comes on again and again. I became aware of the newscaster's voice telling me that the World Trade Centre has been hit by terrorist planes. As if on cue, the skycrapers begin to crumple in on themselves... i see smoke, shattered walls, people screaming in terror as they run. A briefcase falls open and scatters papers all over the street. The camera zooms in on a woman 's high- heeled shoe, lying on its side.
She finds herself struggling with her relationship, business and the shocking incidents relating to 9/11. She is unable to believe that anybody can hate America so much. By doing all this, the haters just want us to know this. She says, " We see the building collapsing under the weight of their own rubble ... we look at them, then at each other in disbelief. How could this have happened ... here, at home, in a time of peace? In America?".(284) Everybody is haunted not only by vivid images of what happened, but also by the consequences felt throughout the country, especially by Indian American community. She thinks that it will be good for us to have the shop open today, because in this way we can help people to deal with the shock. Although Sonny is not in the favour of opening shop today, but she wants to do something useful. For the long time after they open the shop nobody comes into it. Most of the shops around them are closed, and the streets are appearing abandoned. Even the homeless people are not here. There is a big banner hanging on Java proclaiming 'Proud to be American'. Mr. Soto asks them to buy American flags from the corner of University, if they want to save themselves. But she tells Belle that she will not do this. She doesn't want to prove that she is an American, because she is already an American by birth. That's why she says, " Is this California, year 2001 or is this Nazi Germany? .... I don't have to put up a flag to prove that I'm American! I 'm American already. I love this country - hell, it is the only country i know. But I'm not going to be pressured into putting up a sign to announce that love to every passerby." (293) She observes how she has suddenly become an outsider in her own country where she was born. But Americans don't think so. That's why they consider Indians immigrants as terrorists. Branded as terrorists for keeping the shop open they are attacked by a group of people with baseballs and chains. They called themselves as patriots. They start beating them because they think they were celebrating the attacks here. Then Jaspal explains that we haven't done anything wrong like this. All these men present here are mourning for that dreadful attack. He further says that we are Americans, so we also feel terrible about what happened. Obscene words are hurled at them: “Looked in a mirror lately? One of them spits. You ain’t no American! It’s fuckers like you who planned this attack on the innocent people of this country. Time someone taught you faggots a lesson” (267). Pondering over these words Rakhi replicates “But if I wasn’t American, then what was I?” (271) All the built in feeling of being American is lost on that day of great loss to many people as they realize, “And people like us, seeing ourselves darkly through the eyes of stranger, who lost a sense of belonging” (272). Rakhi, thus, suffers from multiple stresses and is forced to construct a gender identity where she has to locate herself. Her chai shop becomes un-American because it is run by Indian Immigrant. Her sense of belongingness is also shaken by doing attack on their shop. She thinks that she cannot become an outside overnight because she completely belongs to this country, America. Her identity is being challenged by all these uncertainties. But for their survival, she has to open the Chai shop again.
This is not the only incident happened with Indian immigrants, but there are many others also. After this kind of terrible incident, Indian organizations start circulating copies of e-mails among immigrants. It says not to go anywhere alone, don't wear your native clothes and put up the American flag in the prominent location in your shop and home. Even the American government is also sending mails to people. Rakhi has also received e-mails saying no one should go to the malls on Halloween, because another major attacks ware also planned. Many of the waiters in the World Trade Centre were undocumented workers. Nobody can ever know who were they or their families. Government has started torturing innocent immigrants, especially Asian American immigrants. The Muslims have been treated in very bad manner, are tortured in many parts of the world and certainly here in the United States. There is distrust and fear, even toward Muslims people who have nothing to do with the fundamentalist side of the religion.
After that incident, people cross over her shop but don't talk to her. She says, " How is it, she wonders, that one can become, overnight, both so frightening and so vulnerable?"(305) The horrible violence came upon her forces the reader to view those terrible days from the point of view of Indian-Americans and immigrants whose only crime is the turban they wore the color of their skin. It is disturbing yet wholly believable scene when they are attacked in their shop by men wielding baseball bats and announcing themselves 'patriots'. It is very difficult for her to forget the incident. She starts noticing every small incident related to this. She comes to know that her neighborhood has totally changed. The Pakistani women hardly come out of their homes. The Afghani men take rounding up the children of their community and driving them to the neighborhood school, although it is two blocks away. When all the images start coming in front of her, she starts painting in order to paint that terrible experience.
She starts painting them in: a Sikh man shot at a gas station because someone thought he was Middle Eastern; terrified women peering from behind curtains that look like burkhas; Jaspal's turban unraveled like a river of blood; his eye the swollen purple of monsoon sky. The background is a college of faces striped red, white and blue. A fist waves a flag so mammoth that if it falls, it'll suffocate them all. The birds have disappeared, their places taken by airplanes. Some crash into buildings. Some drop bombs as easily as insects drop their eggs. She paints in a GOD BLESS sign.... Knives fly across painted space like the props of jugglers - but they are deadly real. A police car glides through the broken night under a gouged-out moon. When she stands back to look, the colors and shapes come together in rush that makes the hairs on her arms stand up. She gives it the only possible name: You Ain't American.(310)
After the terrible attacks on that day, the author has her all characters "deal" with being brown-skinned in America The turbaned Sikh is attacked; the American flag is used as shield by a large number of people. The people of many different skin shades and colors have declared "I am an American." Many people have given their opinions and views about this attack in their own different way. A preacher on TV says that homosexuals and abortion-rights advocates must bear the blame for the terrorist attacks because they have angered God and caused his wrath to descend on America. Rakhi observes, "I think of the people in the towers and in the airplanes, who lost their lives. The people grieving tonight who lost their love ones. Leaders and decision makers, who lost belief in their invincibility, and people like us. Seeing ourselves darkly through the eyes of strangers, who lost a sense of belonging".
What she wants is to exist somewhere because she is hovering between to dual identity of being an Indian immigrant and citizen of America. But later she accepts this. She also distinguishes herself with multilayered companionship at sonny's club and chai shop. Her chai shop and sonny's club help her to make herself more progressive and mature.

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