Prof.
D. Amalraj
Vellaore-641111
Coimbatore
Abstract:
The life of Indian native women from the stage of their
maturity to the attainment of their motherhood is strictly controlled by
traditional patriarchy and matriarchy. Though they attain empowerment through
education and profession before marriage, their life continues to be very hard
because they have to abide by the Indian cultural values of life both inside
and outside their homes. Their life becomes harder still when they are not
allowed to assert their empowerment in the choice of life partners of their
own. Their life turns to be the hardest when they enter into marital life
without asserting their individuality against their parents’ decision. The
parents also feel their responsibility to provide their daughters with well
settled marital life. Till then, they live with mental tension. It is their
Indian traditional belief that they will find themselves placed in heaven after
their death only when they provide their daughters with the marital life for
their contentment and happiness. Only when their married daughters go to the
houses of their husbands, they feel relieved of having done their parental duty
with satisfaction. But the in-laws in the houses of their husbands begin
considering them as unnecessary intruders but not as additional and permanent
members of their families. In spite of this hard reality, Indian native women
silently accept all that happens to them before and after their marriage
without expressing their agony and discontent openly. There are many empowered
married women who never hesitate to strike back in words and actions to any
kind of unpleasantness meted out to them in their marital homes. However, there
are women who carry on with their marital life without minding anything bitter
happenings to their relationship in the houses of their husbands. If
traditionally brought up empowered women get married to men living as American
immigrants, they enjoy their independent and individual life without any
restrictions in America. They change their cultural habits to the changing
scenario in America and behave like conformist to American cultural habits.
Yet, some women who find themselves in America after their marriage continue to
be strong conformists to Indian cultural habits. They never change their
traditional life according to changing situations in which they are placed.
Ashima in Jhumpa Lakiri’s The Name Sake
is a total conformist to Indian cultural habits in the midst of
multi-Culturalists during her American immigrant life. In her ways of living,
she stands as an odd woman out in the midst of Indian women conformists. This
is the nucleus of this critical article.
Key
Words:
Immigrant,
Native-culture, American-culture, Conformist, Non-conformist
Introduction:
Many
empowered Indian women take shelter under the wings of feminism to establish
their independence and individuality as per the desire of their hearts. In the
guise of New Women, they do not accept their men and society to treat them as
playthings as if they were bereft of any life in them. Never do they hesitate
to rebel against all traditional bindings as and when they are more subjugated
beyond enduring power. They assert their rights to live in dignity, equality,
and respect like their men in all fields of human endeavour. They choose their
own choices of life for their marital happiness and contentment. They fall in
love with the men they like and marry them too even though their men do not
belong to their level of social statuses and religious groups. If they cannot
marry the men they love, they never hesitate to lead a single and independent
life. If they are single, some women among them remain completely traditional
without violating their cultural habits. Some women even assert their
individuality and establish relationship either with some unmarried or married
men stealthily. But at the same time, all married women are neither completely
good nor completely bad in their attitudes and behaviour. There are a few women
who violate all their traditional brought up because of their wrong conception
of feminism. Just because of a few violators among them, it is patriarchal
thought that all empowered women are sailing in the same boat. In such
situations and patriarchal assumptions, many modern women dare assert their
individuality without minding the bad consequences, misunderstanding, and
strained relationship in their familial and marital life.
If
the empowered women get married to Indian men living as immigrants in alien
countries through arranged marriage, and if they go and live with their
husbands, they forget their Indian culture and live like the native women of
their countries of immigration. They give up wearing their Indian traditional
dresses, start wearing modern dresses and change their eating habits so that
they can be one with the natives of their adopted country. They also mingle
with native and other immigrant men and women freely during their alien life.
If they find themselves placed in America after their marriage, they entertain the
thought that as they are in America, they should be Americans in their ways of
life lest they should be alienated as the strangers by the Americans as well as
immigrants of other nationalities. There are a few Indian women immigrants who
continue to remain diehard even in America and follow their Indian cultural
habits. Such women not only refuse to accept the changing situations during
their immigrant life but also they refrain from following American cultural
habits. This kind of their attitudes keeps them naturally separated from the
natives and other American immigrants. Such diehard Indian women are considered
to be square pegs in round holes of multicultural American society. Ashima in
Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake is one
such an Indian married woman in America, and she becomes an odd one out even
among the Indian women immigrants who have changed their life style to that of
America. She is thus every inch a conformist to Indian cultural ways of life as
an Indian immigrant in America.
Analysis:
Ashima
is an Indian Bengali married woman, living as an immigrant in America with her
husband Ashoke. She remains completely traditional in her thoughts, words and
deeds as per her cultural brought up even in America. She does not entertain
any thought of changing her Bengali life style to that of American
multicultural life. She tries to move only with other Bengali immigrant women
because she feels at home only with them. She is not only a total stranger but
also a nonentity to other Indian immigrants as well as to those American
immigrants of other nationalities. However, she does not mind the thoughts of
others about her way of Bengali life in America. Mahesh Bharatkumar Bhatt has
endorsed Ashima’s identification with her Bengali immigrants in America:
Ashima
is not like any other Indian immigrant women in America who move with all the natives, other Indian immigrants and
those from other nationalities. She loves only
Indian Bengali families in America and establishes her close and intimate relationship with them. All other Indian
immigrants from other Indian states are total strangers
to her as she is to them. This particular Bengali group like her practises only
Indian custom, speaks Bengali
language, and in many respects, becomes only a substitute
family for the vast collection of relatives back in India. But Ashima’s attitude against her close relationship with
other Indian immigrants but only with the Bengali
immigrants is nothing but an excuse for her to avoid following the customs of American life. (Struggle to Acculturate 44)
Being
faithful to her Bengali cultural habits, Ashima does not make any attempt to
establish her relationship with her neighbours because they are not only
non-Bengali Indian immigrants but also the other immigrants from different
continents. As and when she likes to go out and mingles with the Indian
immigrants, she always chooses only the immigrants from Bengal in India because
she feels at home with them. Moreover, she makes visits regularly only to their
houses. In doing so, she does not mind whether they are nearby or living far
away from her residence. During her weekly visits, she shares her feelings with
them and theirs with her. She always talks to them about her happy and peaceful
days that she has spent in Bengal. In doing so, she feels as if she were still
living in Bengal with her Bengali people but not in America:
Every
week end [for Ashima], there is a new Bengali home in America to go to, or a new Bengali couple or young Bengali
family to meet [because] they all have come from
Calcutta, [her native state in India], and for this reason alone, they are her friends. Most of them live within walking distance of one another in Cambridge
. . .The [married women who
are] homesick and bewildered at the eating habits in America turn to Ashima for [Indian] recipes . . .They sit in circles
on the floor, singing songs of Nazrul and
Tagore [and enjoy their togetherness]. (38)
Besides
meeting her Bengali people in America, Ashima continues to be in touch with her
own Bengali relatives in India. Her talks to them are only about some important
Bengali functions and their important dates. As she has been far away from
Bengal for a quite a long time, she sometimes forgets the days and the dates on
which she has to observe her Bengali religious days in America. Hence, she used
to be in contact with them and she gets from them the most needed instructions
for her religious observations during her immigrant life. Thus, she tries to
preserve Indian style of living in an American multicultural environment.
Unlike other Indian immigrants, she is actually a non-conformist to the style
of American life. As a traditional
Bengali wife, she never calls her husband by name as Americans, non-Bengali
Indian and other immigrants from other countries do. She never calls her
husband by his name because she feels:
Calling
her husband by name is not the type of thing, [which traditional] Bengali [married women] do wherever they are. [Being a
Bengali, she remains truthful to the tradition]
She will [also] never kiss or caress her husband [as and when she is with him all alone] at home like the actresses
she has seen doing when they are with the actors
in a Hindi movie; a husband’s name is something intimate, and therefore unspoken, clearly patched over. (2)
Ashima
cooks only Indian food items and serves them to her husband for all the three
times in a day. She also prepares only Bengali special eatable items on all
festive seasons and religious functions at home itself. She regularly makes hot
and soft drinks for all at home. Even during her pregnant period, she prepares
only homemade drinks for her to drink:
[Whenever
she needs something to take or drink] Ashima combines rice krispies and planter peanuts and chopped red onion in a
bowl. She adds salt, lemon juice, thin slices
of green chilli pepper, wishing [that] there were mustard oil to pour into the mix. She has been consuming the concoction
throughout her pregnancy, a humble
approximation of a snack sold for pennies on Calcutta sidewalks and on railway platforms throughout India,
spilling from newspaper cones. (1) Thus, she never touches American
dishes and drinks, which all other Indian immigrants take as they are in
America. She also wears only Bengali traditional dresses. In her way of living
like a Bengali even in America, she looks like someone totally different from
Indian immigrants and their ways of cultural habits. She thus completely
attaches herself only to anything that is Bengali even in her American
immigrant life.
Ashima
goes through another anxiety as a pregnant woman in an alien land for her
non-conformist attitudes. She feels lonely and isolated without anyone coming
to her help in her pregnant status as she is not friendly to her neighbours. If
she were in India before and after delivery, she would not have looked much
worried about her motherhood. If she had given birth to a child in India, she
would not have faced any difficulty too in raising her child because her mother
and other Indian native Bengali women would have been always with her. As she
is in America, and she is all alone in her pregnant status, “She [feels]
terrified to raise a child in a country where she is related to no one, where
she knows so little, where life seems so tentative” (5). Had she not remained a
non-conformist to her immigrant multicultural life, she would not have
alienated herself from moving with the American and all other immigrant women.
Had she followed American cultural habits too and moved with all in America
without any difference in her attitudes and behaviour besides her traditional
habits, she would not have felt lonely and helpless. She would have felt at
home in America too. As an Indian immigrant, she should have felt like an
Indian American in America but she has not entertained such a feeling. Hence,
her agony is indescribable in her self-warranted isolated life. However, she
frees herself from her loneliness and homesickness by going out and visiting
super-markets in order to buy groceries all alone.
Ashima,
after giving birth to a male baby, begins to feel that she is not alone at
home. There is another Bengali who is always with her and it is none other than
her first son Gogol. She is always happy to be with a son born to Bengali
parents in America. Though things keep changing in her familial life after the
birth of her first son, she remains rooted to her traditional ways as a Bengali
mother. She is not able to forget her native Calcutta and the days she has
spent with her friends and relatives. By thinking of them, she feels like
living in Bengal. As years go by, she has the feeling that she has completely
lost her touch with her home and with her relatives and friends in Bengal. Soon
after the birth of a daughter Sonia as her second child, she feels happy that
she has got a gender companion in her new born daughter. As the days pass and
her duty as a mother keeps her very busy, and though she continues to be a
non-conformist, she does not mind her children being Americans in their ways of
life.
Ashima’s
coping with her alienated American life suddenly and unexpectedly takes a back
seat. She receives the news of her mother’s death in India and it saddens her
heart. But the death of her husband due to heart attack in America jolts her
immigrant life and makes her feel lonely even though she has two children with
her:
Ashima feels suddenly, horribly,
permanently all alone . . . She feels impatient over the rest of her earthly days she has to live [without her
husband in alien country]. But at
the same time, something tells her [that] she will not die as unexpectedly like
her husband. For thirty-three years,
she has missed her life in India. Now
she will miss her job at the library,
and the women with whom she's worked.
. . She will miss the country
in which she has grown to know and love her husband. Though his ashes have been scattered into the Ganges,
it is here, in this house, and in this town, that he will continue to dwell in her mind. (278)
In spite of loss of her dependence
in the death of her husband, she does not lose her heart because she has two
children to bring up. Her self-alienated life and steadfastness to her Indian
cultural habits in America give her self confidence and brave her immigrant
life all alone. She becomes realistic when she thinks that the loss of life is
a loss for ever and thinking of the unbearable loss is a kind of excruciating
experience to her.
However,
Ashima sees her children having settled in America itself. She does not want to
be a nuisance to their independent and individual American life. She makes up
her mind and takes a decision firmly. She plans to spend six months in India
and the next six months in America with her children and friends. She will be
like the one “without borders, without a home of her own, [but] a resident
everywhere and nowhere” (276). B. Vidya
and Kavya Purushothaman in their article titled “The Tumultuous Journey of the
Diasporic Women: A Study of the Female Characters in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake” have expressed their
views about the self alienated life of Ashima as a traditional Indian married
woman immigrant:
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri focuses on
the alienated immigrant life of Ashima Ganguli
both mentally and physically. Lahiri, being a true representative of Diaspora, presents the distressing emotion of a
woman living in foreign country through the existential
struggle of Ashima and she has also made Ashima live to the role assigned to her truthfully as a traditional
daughter, and granddaughter, and she has become successful as a wife and a mother as an exceptional Indian
woman immigrant. (69)
Conclusion:
All
those married Indian women who live as immigrants in America need not act like
New Women to enjoy their individuality and independence by being one with the
American multiculturalists in their ways of living. Some married Indian women
still continue to follow Indian cultural habits without identifying themselves
with the natives by following their own native cultural ways of living. Such
women are exemplary ones for other Indian immigrant women so that they can
emulate them in America. By remaining Indian and by following the traditional
life even in alien countries is an individual trait. Since such women do not
ape Americans, they look different from the natives and so they are the people
with unique individual identity in multicultural societal life of America. Any
Indian woman living like Ashima during her immigrant life is a different one
and so she keeps her Indian identity intact. She need not become a drop in the
ocean of multicultural sea by changing herself to that of her adopted country.
She can keep her Indian identity wherever she is. Ashima in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake is such a woman who keeps
her identity intact through her steadfastness to Indian culture even during her
alien life. All empowered women will always be tempted to go astray and behave
like the natives in their ways of life when they find themselves completely
independent individuals if they are away from their traditional families. But
Ashima is exceptionally a unique Indian immigrant who has led her life without
violating her cultural brought up.
Works Cited
Bhatt, Mahesh Bharatkumar. “Struggle to Acculturate in the
Namesake: A Comment on Jhumpa Lahiri's
Work as Diaspora Literature.” IMDS
Working Paper Series, 2009, pp.
35-49.
Lahiri,
Jhumpa. The Namesake. Harper Collins
Publishers.2004.
Vidya B, and Kavya Purushothaman. “The Tumultuous Journey of
the Diasporic Women” A Study of the
Female Characters in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The
Namesake.” International Journal of English
Research, vol.3, no. 4, 2017, pp. 68-69.