(By Aryavart International University, India)
Dr. Deepak Upadhyay
Vol. 1, Jan-Jun 2016
Abstract:
Indian Writing in English has come a long way since the time when there were only a few writers on the horizon who took up writing in English. But with the passage of time it is not only that many a writer chose English for creative writing, Indian Writing in English, too, established itself with diverse theme as well as its great narrating skill. Jhumpa Lahiri, one of the most celebrated women writers, took up the theme of diasporic consciousness with an immense care and concern in her novel The Namesake. The novel expresses the agony and anguish of the Indian immigrants settled in an alien land. Their displacement, loneliness and solitariness form the theme of this novel as they fail to relate with new and alien culture of the country where they have migrated for economic reasons. Albeit many a novelist approached the theme earlier, what makes this novel stand apart is that it examines the diasporic sensibility from the prism of a woman’s perspective. This paper proposes to study how Jhumpa Lahiri in The Namasake explores the theme of cultural identity, the up rootedness and the longing for ‘home’ as the protagonist Ashima fails to find her way on a foreign land. Furthermore, it will reiterate how her struggle symbolizes the restless quest of a rootless person expressed by a depressing sense of isolation all around.