A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF NEIL BISSONDATH`S THE CAGE, BHARATI MUKHERJEE`S A WIFE`S STORY,M.G.VASSANJI`S LEAVING AND ROHINTON MISTRY`S LEND ME YOUR LI
A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF NEIL BISSONDATH’S THE CAGE, BHARATI MUKHERJEE’S A WIFE’S STORY, M.G. VASSANJI’S LEAVING AND ROHINTON MISTRY’S LEND ME YOUR LIGHT In this paper I shall make a comparative assessment of Neil Bissondath’s The Cage, Bharati Mukherjee’s A Wife’s Story, M.G. Vassanji’s leaving and Rohinton Mistry’s Lend me your light. While analysing the theme of displacement and alienation undergone by the characters in the process of their physical and psychological adaptation to the new environment. I shall also attempt to compare the above paradigms from the perspective of male and female experiences in relation to the diasporic or expatriate experience of each author. Michi, the female protagonist of Bissondath’s The Cage grows up within the four walls of a patriarchal Japnese culture which imposes its restrictive values on every woman in the name of tradition. Michi and her mother are the subjects of this dominating culture, which guards every move of female member even impinge upon their privacy to secure its hold. Bissondath presents the mother and the daughter in contrast to bring out the difference of attitude of two different generations while her mother meekly and unquestioningly accepts the cultural dictum, Michi brews up her resistance deep within unable to give in like her mother. (1) She is virtually non-existent for her father till she was fifteen. Suddenly his interest in her grows since he is responsible to transplant the cultural values in her. Learning music lessons, keeping away from boys, mixing up with people only of their status are some of the important things she was taught to do. When a simple letter from a boy was taken away from her, she realised that she had no hold even over her own life. “I learnt, more than anything else, how little of my life was my own, in my father’s eyes. His claim to my privacy finally caused me to regard him with eyes of ice’ (82) on her father’s advice she took a course on dietetics and she was even told to court men chosen by him. In order to evade this cage formed by patriarchal culture she leaves for toronto an uncommon Japnese destination that would provide her anonymity and freedom from the restrictive bondage of culture. One away from her home land Michi is able to view the old and the new culture properly and attempts to `place’ herself. Her initial reaction is to watch the people of the new land, the `glimpses of lives’ I would never touch.’ But gradually she acquaints herself with inmates of her apartment house and encounters the nuances of both the cultures through their subtle hints. On her way to school, she finds people displaying themselves at the sidewalks and is irked by their behaviourdemanding to be noticed. More than this her English Tutor’s insistence (2) that she never ate bread in Japan suggests the baseless bias the Western people hold for the oriental food habit. He insisted that I, being a Japanese person never ate bread, only rice and vegetables and raw fish and nothing else. He would not believe that I had tasted my first big mac in Tokyo (94) Marvelling at the immensity of freedom that Toronto would hold for her, she reflects : Toronto : a place where my personality could be free, it was not a city of traditions in a country of traditions. It was America, in the best implication that world held for us. Japnese: bright, clean, safe, new. Life experienced without the constraints of an overwhelming past. (95) But her dream of freedom without constraints is short-lived. Her relationship with the third floor neighbour Shery shocks her enough to see the tangibility of her belongingness. She worked as a stripper and a call-gril Unaware of this, one night hearing some grunting noise from her room she calls on her like any sensible neighbour. but to her utter dismay Sherry accuses her of being a moron. One too stupid to understand the other culture and its practices. Through her acquaintance with Mrs. Duncan and her landlady Mrs. Harris she comes to the realisation that women are displaced everywhere, as much in Canada as in Japan. For Mrs. Harris and Mrs. Duncan both widows, keeping their husbands name and not their own is tradition : (3) “It is tradition dear christian tradition’ “Yes, dear, it is as simple as that. It’s what women have always done.’ (98) Michi discovers from her mother’s letter that `Michi’ her grand mother being `a strong and independent woman with her own ideas’. had been beaten to submission and finally left with only a grandson (her father) as an outlet for her sense of life. She is now confronted with the past that she has tried to ignore in Toronto. She has by now seen that it is better to have a room of one’s own than have a nothing. Her final decision to return to her father’s house and arrange flowers only provokes the reader to see her desperate attempt to `place’ herself even if through a cage like tradition Despite her realization that “the corollary of tradition’s pride is tradition’s guilt’ (99) her non resistance to patriarchal culture would impell any feminist critic to comment that Bissondath’s inclination still lies towards a male oriented society. While Bissoondath allows Michi to return to her past tradition, Panna Bhatt is Bharati Mukherjee’s `A Wife’s Story’ is caught between the two worlds-After her son’s death, she leaves for New York to prusue a Ph.d course and distances herself from her husband. Her reaction to the racial discrimination and prejudiced language in David Mamet’s play glengarry Glen Ross brings out her sense of indignity and outrage. “It’s the tyranny of American dream that scares me. First, you don’t exist. Then you are invisible, Then you are funny. Then you are (4) disgusting. Insult, my American friends will tell me, is a kind of acceptance. No instant dignity here. I long at times, for clear cut answers offer me instant, dignity, today and I’ll take it.’ (422) Panna’s husband works in Laxmi Cotton Mills, a private enterprise in Ahmedabad with the end of family responsibility now she is virtually a different self. She has almost overcome her inhibition of her past life, even sexually she feels no compunction to share with her male friends like Imre, a Muslim from Hungary. Her transitional state and the extent of her dislocation comes to the forefront when her husband arrives in New York on holiday for fifteen days. During his presence, she keeps herself away from other friends. But on meeting Imre she feels as if she is really seeing him for the first time : “Guilt, shame, loyalty, I long to be ungracious, not ingratiate myself with both men.’ (428) Being in such transitional state, she finds herself too far away from her past culture and tacitly rejects her husband’s suggestion to go back home. She further reflects : “Tonight I should make up to him for my years away, the gutted trucks, the degree I’ll never use in India. I want to pretend with him that nothing has changed.’ (432) Ironically, her plea to stay back for study is meaningless. It only (5) suggests her confused state, her “in-between’ position where she is vaccilating between two cultures pretentively conforming to the past yet looking forward to the present. Mukherjee has beautifully presented her character “in transition’ who is seeking present ideals “A Wife’s story’ is an exemplary statement on the new “international person’ who is attempting to balance heritage with new situations quite like her creator. Vassanji’s protagonist Aloo in “Leaving’ is a boy from the Indian community settled in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania whose sole reason behind imigration is to better the economic conditions of his family through foreign education. His ambition to be a doctor is thwarted by the handiwork of some corrupted bureawrat who selects him for a course of Agriculture. This denial of opportunity leads to a sense of dislocation in Aloo, which is inflamed by his mother through her humour and joke. For Aloo it is the American University only, that can fulfil his promise, give him a `place’ A whole universe was out there waiting for him if only he could reach it (492) His selection in california Institute of Technology virtually sets him on the course of dislocation from his native culture and attracts him to look forward to the new culture hopefully his letter from London during his brief stopover there evocatively brings out the significance of the present place and the inadequacy of his native land : Oh London it seemed that it (6) would never end-blocks and blocks of houses, squires, park, monuments could any city be larger ? How many of ur Dar es Salaams would fit here, in this one gorgeous city. (495) Aloo leaves for USA with promises to his mother that he would not `marry a white woman’ and would not `smoke or drink’. Whether or not to chooses to keep his promise is not the contentious issue here, however, such fore closer hints at the possible displacement he would undergo in the new culture while abiding the restrictive values of the past imposed upon him. Rohinton Mistry’s Lend Me Your Light when compared with the above three stories seems to be the most poignant in reflecting the dichotomies confronting his characters who are trying desperately to hold both the worlds in balance of the three characters, Jamshed and Kersi immigrate to New York and Toronto respectively while Percy the brother of Kersi stays back in India. Percy’s schoolmate Jamshed virtually is an alien even among school lunch, in the “leather upholstered luxury of the backseat of his “ehauffeur-driven, air conditioned family car.’ (99) All these hyphenated lavishness only increases the distance between him and the culture he lives is rooted in his displacement all races in India are “Ghatis’ who are flooding all the places, Jamshed represents that breed of affluent Parsi family who believed in extending the colonial authority in absence of their (7) erstwhile colonial masters. The post independence India holds no future for such bigot residue of imperialism. Absolutely no future in this stupid place. Bloody corruption everywhere. And you can’t buy any of the things you want don’t even get to see a decent England movie. First chance I get, I’m going abroad. Preferably the US (178) Jamshed manages to leave for U.S. his land of promises that can provide him his much needed place. After him it is Kersi’s turn to leave for Toronto, though his reason for immigration is to better his and his family’s economic standard. His relationship with his brother Percy reflects his alienation in his own family. While for Pery his idealist goal to free rural India from poverty and oppression roots him strongly to his place, for Kersi “there weren’t any prospects in this country.’ (178) Leaving for Toronto with severe infection of conjuctivities he half jokingly compares himself with displaced Teresias, “blend and throbbing between two lives, the one in Bombay and the one to come in toronto.’ (180) Though Kersi is not so bitter about his old place, he too is undergoing a crisi in Toronto where he finds the whole community living the life they have left behind in India and relishing its food still. It is Percy who sees Jamshed’s torments and agony of displacement in his desperate assertion of authority over the waiter in the five star Taj (8) Mahal Hotel before his friends. Explaining that this was the only way to handle incompetence. Indians were too meek and docile and should learn to stand for their rights the way people do in states. (185) Like Jamshed Kersi confesses of his displacement in India in his inability to board the local train amidst the milling crowd. With the old and the feeble was my place, as long as I was a tourist here, and not committed to life in the combat zone (188) The final encounter of the three characters brings out the sense of dislocation and belongingness by presenting in contrast the immigrants and the one living in India. Percy returns from the village shocked by the murder of his friend Navjeet by village landlord. Jamshed urges him in his characteristic off-handish manner to go to states where “if you are good at something you are appreciated, and you get ahead.’ Ironically this knowledge of his has found him no place there. While rooted in his idealism and faith Percy prepares himself for his next strategic move to village Kersi returns to Toronto as confused as before. Jamshed’s confusion, disdain and arrogance “is the surfacing of Kersi’s “entire burden of riddles and puzzles unsolved’ (192) Like mistry, his characters reflects the anxiety of his community that has undergone the difficulties of diaspora. In the post (9) independence India, the Parsi community looking westward for carving out another “cultural territory’ seems to be the reason for their dislocation. Mistry like Vassanji brings out the ambiguities and dichotomies confronting his dislocated characters quite dexterously. It is through such analysis of male and female experiences that the discourses of displacement of the above immigrant writers could be read in a new perspective. WORKS CITED 1. Bissondath, Neil, “The Cage’ Contemporary Short Fiction written in English Ed. Bruce Meyer Scarborough Antario : Prentice Hall Canada Inc.1997 2. Mukherjee, Bharati, “A Wife’s Story’ Contemporary Short Fiction in English Ed. Bruce Meyer N.P. n.p. 1997 3. Vassanji, M.G. “Leaving’ Contemporary Short Ficiton in English Ed. Bruce Meyer N.P., n.p. 1997 4. Mistry. Rohinton “Swimming Lessons and other stories from Firozeshah Baag. New York Vintage International Edition random House Inc. 1997 5. Said, Edward, Culture and Imperialism London : chatto and Windus, 1993 By : Dr. Ram Sharma Sr. Lecturer, Department of English Janta Vedic P.G. College, BARAUT (BAGHPAT) U.P. (10)
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