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CHAPTER III
Post-Colonial Family In Indian Fiction
The third chapter ―Post-Colonial Family in Indian Fiction‖ deals with the novels of
Kamala Markandaya, Anita Desai and Arundati Roy. Kamala Markandaya is one of the
most distinguished women novelists on the Indian scene. Her work is enthused by a
crusading strength for the welfare of humanity and the mitigation of human suffering. A
hammering purpose motivates her novel which has aesthetic value and is artistically
constructed. The novel is an explanation of life in the post-colonial Indian context and as
Feminist Literature. It tells the world the obstacles women face and disadvantages they
suffer in the conventional Hindu world.
In Nectar in a Sieve, Markandaya pictures a woman‘s struggle to find happiness in a
changing India. The novel underscores the uncontrolled hunger and gratitude of the
Indian. Kamala Markandaya is one of the most illustrious women novelists on the Indian
scene. A driving point motivates her novel which has aesthetic value and is artistically
constructed. The novel as an interpretation of life in the post-colonial Indian context and as
Feminist Literature. It tells the world the obstacles women face and disadvantages them
suffer in the conventional Hindu world.
Kamala Markandaya derives the title Nectar in a Sieve from Coleridge, whose lines
form an epigraph to the novel, ―work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, and hope
without an object cannot live‖ (Iyengar 438). Kamala Markandaya has used the couplet by
Coleridge because these lines sufficiently state the theme of the novel. When work is done
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without any hope it becomes as useless as nectar in a sieve. If there is no thing or objective
in life, life becomes useless. Markandaya shows that for a peasant his work is his life. If he
is alienated from his work he either withers with scarcity and hunger or dies. He has neither
hopes nor any goal in life. Markandaya also shows that happiness that stays in life only for
a short while is like ‗Nectar in a Sieve‘ for the peasant. M.K. Bhatnagar in his essay,
―Kamala Markandaya: The Insider-outsider‖ rightly observes, ―Markandaya‘s first novel,
Nectar in a Sieve illustrates all her basic preoccupations: the protagonist narrator Rukmani
caught in a hard peasant life; the vagaries of nature, the depredations of modern civilization
(in shape of tannery), the forced migration to city and so on, enlightening how work
without hope draws nectar in a sieve‖ (3).
The Indian peasant works without hope and leaves all in the hands of God and bears
all sufferings with a sense of fatalism. Kamala Markandaya has subtitled the novel as A
Novel of Rural India to reveal the very characteristics of rustic India through the life of
innumerable Indian villagers living in dire poverty, hunger and exploitation. She has not
named the fictional locale to make a village microcosm of rural India. Kai Nicholson in
Social Problems in the Indo-Anglian and Anglo-Indian Novel says, ―with her faultless
representational realism and pioneering account of Indian arcadia, Markandaya achieves an
ideal poise between the rustic reality and the restricted sophistication of art‖ (120).
The novelist has made Rukmani, the protagonist; narrate the tale, in order to show
the subtle intensities of the moving fabric. She has made a woman the central character
because she knows that woman is at the centre of the socio-economic structure of the
Indian peasant families. Rukmani is a symbol of an Indian rustic woman.
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Her views are reflections of typical socio-cultural ethos which is designed to make
an Indian woman broadminded, obedient, inoffensive and easily happy with her lot. The
story takes place in one of the small south Indian villages of India. It is difficult to pinpoint
the time and the place in which the action of the novel takes place. The historical
references reveal that it occurs at the backdrop of India‘s achievement of self-government.
However no matter what the setting and time are, the novelist‘s depiction of the Indian
social system has a timeless appeal. Rukmani, the youngest of the four daughters of a once
wealthy village headman is married to a tenant farmer, Nathan, who is poor in all respects.
By the time of her marriage the hay days of her father come to an end resultant in her
marriage with a poor peasant. Rukmani becomes the victim of the dowry system as her
father is unable to pay her dowry. The fourteen year old Rukmani comes to her new home,
the sight of which sends a chill down her spine. ―This mud hut, nothing but mud and thatch
was my home‖ (Markandaya 14). She cannot adjust herself to such a poor unsure of abode.
But when she comes to know that the hut has been built by her husband with his own
hands, her fear and humiliation turns into pride. The Indian dowry system throws her in
scarcity and Indian value system makes her to accept it as her fate. The first six years of
married life are spent without much complexity. However with the birth of every child
their poverty starts infuriating. Rukmani says ―we no longer had milk in the house except
for the youngest child; curds and butter were beyond our means apart from on rare
occasions‖ (Markandaya 24). Till the birth of the sixth child their economic condition
worsens to such an extent that they have to remain half fed though not starving till they
grow vegetables in their own field. The rise in prices of the essential commodities compels
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them to sell the cattle. When Irawaddy, her only daughter turns fourteen she marries her to
a farmless labourer by expenditure all her savings on her marriage. Unfortunately the flood
destroys their crops in the same year and they have no other way but to survive on roots,
leaves and plantain till the next harvest. To make the matters worse, four years after her
marriage Ira returns to her parents as her husband abandons her for not giving him an heir.
Arjun and Thambi, her two sons start working in a tannery and improve their economic
condition. But soon they lose their jobs and go to Ceylon in search of daily bread. The rains
fail and that year they leave destroying their hopes. As a tenant Nathan is compelled to pay
the revenue in order to save their tilling land for which they sell their household material
and bullocks. Rukmani‘s third son Raja dies of brutal beating by the tannery watchmen.
The condition of the youngest child Kuti becomes more and more critical. Ira becomes a
prostitute to save her brother; her sacrifice however fails to save Kuti. Old Granny, a well
wisher of Rukmani‘s family, also dies of hunger in the street.
Kennington, a doctor, another well wisher of Rukmani gives a job to her fourth son
in his mission of building a hospital in the village. One day the landlord gives a notice to
Nathan to vacate the land within a week to which he does not protest. The landless Nathan
and Rukmani find no other option but to go to their son Murugan in the town for their
survival. Selvam and Ira however settle on to stay back. As Rukmani and Nathan fail to
find out the address of their son in the town, they take shelter in a temple. When they come
to know that their son does not live in that town anymore they return to the temple and stay
there like beggars. They plan to earn enough money to travel back home within forty to
sixty days. But Nathan‘s health continues to depreciate day by day and he dies on the very
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day, on which they collect enough money to return. Nathan loses the battle against hunger
but Rukmani does not surrender. She returns to the village with her adopted son. Selvam
and Ira welcome them. Rukmani regains her tranquility. The novel appears circular in
structure as the story ends where it begins. Bhagwant Goyal in his book Culture and
Commitment rightly says, ―it indicates the endless cycle of misery and deficiency in which
India‘s rural and urban poor are eternally trapped‖ (98).
The novel deals with the peasants, their behavior, hopes and prospect and joys and
sorrows. It is a portrayal of goodness living in poverty, hunger and despair. It is a story of
landless peasants who are exploited by their landlords and shattered by the cruelty of
nature. Almost all the characters in the novel lead the miserable life and most of them fail
to survive. Rukmani is a tragic character but she has no personal hand in any of the
misfortunes which befall her and her family. Throughout the novel she struggles against the
heavy odds imposed on her by the society and nature. Rukmani is silent, submissive, easily
satisfied with her lot, ready to accept everything that comes her way with a calm
acceptance. Her unflinching faith in God, her strong will power and morality give her
strength to face vicissitudes of life. Even through the days of hardship her spirit does not
droop. She does not lose her patience even in the most adverse situations. K.R. Srinivasa
Iyengar says, ―but the heart that is tempered in the flames of love and faith, of sufferings
and sacrifice, will not easily accept defeat. Rukmani the narrator heroine is also a mother of
sorrow‖ (438). Her most prominent feature is her serenity and the sense of balance even in
crisis. Poverty and hunger cannot dehumanize her. Calamities of the flood call for major
attack of hunger, but Rukmani does not show any emotional outburst. She considers
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misfortunes and sorrows as essential ingredients of life and accepts poverty and hunger as
constant companions thereof. She considers that there is grandeur in endurance and she
looks at hunger in a truth-seeking manner. She says, ―Our priests fast and inflict on
themselves severe punishments, and we are taught to bear our sorrows in silence, and all
this is so that the soul may be cleansed‖ (Markandaya 114). Shiv K. Kumar in his essay
―Tradition and change in the novels of Kamala Markandaya‖ rightly observes,
―Markandaya seems to suggest by the resilient humanism of an individual like Rukmani,
whose limitless faith looks definitely beyond all physical suffering and partakes of that
peace that surpasseth all understanding‖ (206). She remains a symbol of Indian rustic poor
peasant, who has been taught to believe in the virtue of effortlessness, of living with the
minimum of needs and desires throughout her life. Balaram Gupta, one of the critics, in his
book Indian English Literature observes, ―Rukmani the mother figure, symbolizes the
mother earth, is the virgin soil, the source, the origin, the well-spring, the life giver, the
follower, the sustainer, the nourisher and even more, the last resort, the consoler, the healer.
It is the positive sustaining force of life... Her integrity is never on the brink of collapse‖
(92).
Nathan, the husband of Rukmani represents an Indian peasant. He is a stereotype
character. He is a passive sufferer. There is ‗an importance on rural ethos and rural value
system,‘ Nathan fits in this structure, a poor peasant in every sense. On the very day of the
marriage he tries to soothe her by showing a dream of bright future. But while doing so he
cannot hide his helplessness. It can be easily seen on his face. Rukmani says, ―There was
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something in his voice, an insistent, a look on his face such as a dog has when you are
about to kick it‖ (Markandaya 4).
Throughout the novel, he loose ends the shadow of his wife. He shows great
concern for her. He works for his family but cannot get enough to eat. His hard work and
starvation make him ill. He stands only on his wife‘s emotional and physical support.
Nathan accepts his poverty, hunger and exploitation as his destiny. He does not raise his
voice against the exploitation by his landlord, when his agent comes to collect the tax.
Nathan‘s comment on the exploitation of the peasant by the landlord is notable: ―That is
why he and his kind are employed,‖ Nathan said bitterly. ―To protect their overlords from
such unpleasant task, now the landlord can wring from us his moneys and care not for the
misery he evokes, for indeed it would be difficult for any man to see another starve and his
wife and children as well; or to enjoy the profits born of such travail‖ (Markandaya 73).
Irawaddy, Rukmani‘s first child, is another silent sufferer like her parents. Born as
an unwanted child, she remains unwanted throughout her life. The parents do not pay any
attention to her before her marriage. The gravity of her state can be easily understood by
Rukmani‘s words. She says, ―Poor child, she was bewildered by the many injunctions we
laid upon her and the curtailing of her freedom tried her sorely, though not a word of
complaint came from her‖ (Markandaya 30). At the age of fourteen, she gets married. After
five years of marriage, her husband abandons her as he considers her a barren woman. She
accepts it as her destiny and returns home to live with her parents. She does not raise her
voice against this exploitation. She withdraws herself from others. She accepts her future
with utter hopelessness. Rukmani says, ―With a dowry it was perhaps possible she might
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marry again, without it no man would look at her, no longer a virgin and reputedly barren‖
(Markandaya 62). Here too she has to suffer a lot due to hunger and poverty that the family
faces. When she realises that her younger brother is dying of hunger, she takes to
prostitution. The prostitution cannot save her brother, only it makes her pregnant. She gives
birth to an albino. But she becomes happy because the birth of a child proves that she is not
a barren. She manages to survive turbulence one after another and survives till the end. In
fact it is Ira who gives moral support to her mother in the end. Dr. Kennington is portrayed
as a kind hearted doctor who has sympathy for poverty suffering villager. He tries to make
them aware of the negligence of the government. He criticizes the dump peasants for not
raising voice against their exploitation. Though he is an English character he is not
portrayed as an exploiter. K. R. Chandrashekharan in his essay East and West in the Novels
of Kamala Markandaya points out that the novelist has projected ―…a good missionary and
philanthropic spin doing his best for a backward country without ostentation or vanity. He
is also neutral observer of life in India‖ (7). Arjun and Thambi symbolize both positive and
negative sides of industrialization. By working in the tannery, they bring money and
happiness to their family. But when they raise their voice against the exploitation by the
tannery owners, they lose their jobs. Unable to stand the miseries of unemployment and
poverty, both go to Ceylon in search of job. By leaving the village they reduce the possible
economic burden off their parents, however by deserting their parents they deny possible
financial support to their family. Kuti, the youngest member of the family, is a silent victim
of poverty and hunger. The agonies of hunger he suffers are beyond his tolerance. Hunger
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works like a slow poison with him. He symbolizes all other poverty suffering children who
try to stay alive the battle against poverty and hunger.
All the members of Nathan‘s family donate to the realistic depiction of the poor and
suffering India. So the novel, rightly described as ‗a novel of rural India‘ is an authentic
picture of the Indian rural society, in which most people live in continuous poverty and
hunger and often die of hunger. The problems of rural India and tragic quandary of Indian
peasants have been depicted with a moving sincerity. But a number of critics allege
Markandaya that she has over simplified the rural Indian scene as an absent narrator. M. K.
Naik in A History of Indian English Literature says that ―Rukmani‘s village exists only in
the expatriate‘s imagination of her creator‖ (263). She is also accused of making conscious
effort to make her work acceptable to the Western eye. However, her picture of village is
well grounded in reality. She may be careless about minor details but she focuses her
concentration on so many social evils of Indian society. The novel deals with a number of
themes such as beggary, prostitution, lack of family planning, zamindari system, dowry
system, superstitions, low status of women and evils of marriage system. Parvati Misra in
her Class Consciousness in the Novels of Kamala Markandaya observes: ―Nectar in a
Sieve is a vivid record of the hungry rural peasantry whose life is afflicted by the existing
social institutions and rituals such as child marriage, widowhood, negligence of female
child, slavery, landlessness, casteism and illiteracy‖ (2). All these themes move around the
central themes of poverty, hunger and exploitation. The exploitation leads to poverty,
poverty creates hunger and hunger again reverts to exploitation. Thus it becomes an
unending vicious cycle. An old woman, Rukmani who had lost her husband and five of her
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six sons, who live in her mud thatched hut, narrates her tremendously tender life‘s story
which fills us with deep sorrow. Being a daughter of this soil, she knows what it means to
be poor. She considers it as the ‗sixth great sin‘. Poverty breeds hunger. Anil Kumar
Bhatanagar in his Kamala Markandaya: A Thematic Study says, ―she makes her readers
understand the true meaning of hunger and starvation. True one cannot judge the impact of
hunger and starvation without passing through the terrible ordeal of being hungry.
Markandaya lived in South-Indian villages and shared the sufferings of villagers as
independent observer‖ (21). She shows her minute observation by recitation the effects of
hunger on the human body and the human mind. Rukmani says, ―for hunger is a inquisitive
thing: at first it is with you all the time, walking and sleeping and in your dreams and your
belly cries out insistently and there is a gnawing and a pain as of your very vitals were
being devour, and you must stop it at any cost, and you buy a moment‘s respite even while
you know and fear the sequel. Then the pain is no longer sharp but dull and this too is with
you always, so that you think of food many times a day and each time a terrible sickness
assails you, and because you know this, you try to avoid the thought, but you cannot, it is
with you. Then that too is gone, all pain all desire only a great emptiness is left, like the
sky, like a well in draught and it is now that the strength drains from your limbs and you try
to rise and find you cannot, or to swallow water and your throat is powerless and both the
swallow and the effort of retaining the liquid, tax you to the uttermost‖ (Markandaya 8788). Markandaya gives a thorough account of their efforts to make their two ends meet till
the next harvest. They struggle for survival facing the hardships of living like being fed
with the food that even animals cannot eat. She says, ―Thereafter we fed on whatever we
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could find: the soft ripe fruit of the prickly pear; a sweet potato or two, blackened and half
rotten, thrown away by some more wealthy hands; sometimes a crab that Nathan managed
to catch near the river. Early and late my sons roamed the countryside, returning with a few
bamboo shoots, a stick of sugarcane left in some deserted field, or a piece of coconut
picked from the gutter in the town...for every edible plant or root there was a struggle a
desperate competition that made enemies of friends and put an end to humanity‖
(Markandaya 87). No wonder, hunger turns them into beasts. This description makes us
feel the agony of the poor. Rukmani describes the effects of hunger on their bodies. She
says ―There flesh melted away and their skin sag and sink between their jutting bones, saw
their eyes retreat into their skulls, saw their ribs curve out from under the skin‖
(Markandaya 88).
The youngest Kuti could not digest the things brought by the elders to eat. Being a
weak child he suffers. Rukmani says, ―at first he asked for rice-water and cried because
there was none. But later he gave up asking and merely cried. Even in his sleep he
whimpered, twisting and turning endlessly, permitting no one to rest‖ (Markandaya 88).
All of them become so weak that on the death of Raja, her son Rukmani does not cry and
does not allow her daughter to cry. She says, ―What are you crying for?... you have little
enough strength, without dissolving it in tears‖ (Markandaya 89). Kuti turns so weak that
he stops wailing. Ira cannot see her brother dying of hunger and she takes to prostitution.
Nathan shows his parental anger, ―I will not have you parading at night‖ Ira‘s reply
‗‗Tonight and tomorrow and every night. So long as there is need, I will not hunger
anymore‖ (Markandaya 99) makes Nathan speechless. Ira‘s prostitution increases the life
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of Kuti by a few more days but it cannot save him. Kuti dies of hunger. Rukmani, the
mother feels relieved as she says, ―I grieved, it was not for my son: for in my heart and
could not have wished it otherwise. The strife had lasted too long and had been too painful
for me to call him back to continue it‖ (Markandaya 102).
Rukmani feels that her son has escaped from the cruel trap of hunger. She feels that
her son should not continue his battle against hunger. She does not want him to struggle
again for survival. Thus Markandaya shows her characters willingly accepting the death of
their near and dear ones as a permanent escape from the eternal feeling of hunger.
Markandaya brings out the fact that poverty and hunger can lead to degradation. At the root
of the acts of immorality there is poverty. It is poverty which drives Kunthi the neighbour
to prostitution. It is hunger which provokes Kunthi to blackmail Rukmani. But through
some characters like Irawaddy, Markandaya wants to project that not all choose the
immoral path to overcome their poverty. Ira‘s choice of prostitution is not due to her own
hunger but to save her brother‘s life. Even in dire poverty, Rukmani does not lose her
morality. She shows her willingness to share her meals with her neighbour Kunthi. She
even adopts a poor orphan child. Markandaya tries to show that lack of family planning is
one of the reasons of poverty in the rural India. When Rukmani gets married, they have
enough to eat and store. But with the growing number of children poverty also grows. Even
literate Rukmani is shown powerless. She knows that the growing number of children is the
root cause of their poverty but she feels proud of being a mother of six sons. Markandaya
emphasizes the fact that one of the recurring blights of Indian poverty is their extremely
large families. Most of the rustic Indian women are illiterate. By making Rukmani literate
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the novelist has made the point that though literacy cannot overcome poverty, it can help
the women to face the problems successfully. Literacy helps Rukmani to anticipate the
possible problems and plan accordingly. It is her literacy which helps Nathan and Rukmani
to survive in the city. Exploitation of women is one of the common themes of Markandaya.
She knows that a woman is at the centre of rural economy. She is eternally trapped in the
endless cycle of poverty, hunger and exploitation. Her utilization starts on her wedding
day. She feels humiliated when she gets married with a poor, illiterate peasant like Nathan.
A girl from a well to do family is compelled to marry such a man who has neither land nor
money. Poverty is imposed on her by the social system. Rukmani accepts it and adjusts
herself with new surroundings like any other Indian daughter of her age. She continues her
married life as any other Indian superstitious, conventional rustic woman. Even in poverty
she celebrates the birth of her first child but also expresses her disappointment over the
birth of a female child. Unfortunately the history is seen repeated in the marriage of her
daughter, when Rukmani has to marry her beautiful daughter Ira to a poor person due to
her incapability to pay the dowry. Markandaya also succeeds to portray the feudal
exploitation that is another important characteristic of rural India. Nathan is compelled to
pay the land taxes of the Zamindar, even after the failure of the harvest. After nature‘s
wrath, human assault comes like a bolt from the blue. The landlord orders Nathan to vacate
the land within two weeks. The tenant who has been tilling the land for more than thirty
years is asked to vacate it within two weeks, without any compensation or any provision
for his future. The land is sold to the tannery owner without the consent of the tenant.
Nathan mutely succumbs to the exploitation. He has his own fatalist philosophy that is
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representative of all Indian farmers. He feels that the land never belonged to him neither
could he ever buy it. As a son of a landless man, he inherits nothing. Nathan symbolizes the
plight of the Indian peasants when Rukmani says,
to those who live by the land there must always come time of hardship of
fear and of hunger, even as there are years of plenty? This is one of the
truths of our existence as those who live by the land know: that sometimes
we eat and sometimes we starve. We live by our labours from one harvest to
the next, there is no certain telling whether we shall be able to feed
ourselves and our children and if bad times are prolonged we know we must
see the weak surrender their lives and this fact, too, is within our experience.
In our life there is no margin for misfortune. (Markandaya 134-135)
Her son, the representative of the younger generation expresses his anger over the
exploitation but keeps mum when Nathan expresses his helplessness for not having any law
against it. He says, ―We may grieve, but there is no redress‖( Markandaya 136). Rukmani
blames the tannery for their exploitation. The tannery becomes the symbol of economic or
industrial exploitation. Shiv K. Kumar in his essay ―Tradition and Change in novels of
Kamala Markandaya‖ compares it with the serpent in the Garden of Eden. He says,
―Rukmani, the devoted wife of a tenant farmer, living in the soul of quietude of her little
village, suddenly finds within this garden of Eden a serpent in the form of a tannery that
begins to rear its ugly head, devouring green open spaces, pollution the clean, wholesome
atmosphere and tempting simple gullible peasants into greed, ambitions and immorality‖
(205). The tannery thus lays the foundation of industrialization based on the principles of
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exploitation of labour and absence. The very survival of the rural life is endangered by the
advent of tannery as the industry brings wealth as well as its ill effects. Through the
character of Nathan, Markandaya shows the picture of Indian peasant at the advent of
Industrialization. Industrialization makes peasants landless. Peasants know no other skills
but for tilling the land. Industrialization makes them rush to the towns and cities. But due to
their illiteracy and lack of any other skill they either turn beggars or die. When Nathan
becomes landless he goes to the town. He loves his land more than anything else. Knowing
no other skills, he becomes helpless when he is compelled to live in the town. He has to
become a beggar in order to survive in the town. His hard work on the quarry aggravates
his illness and brings him closer to death. He dies on the very day they plan to return. His
fight against poverty and hunger comes to an end only with his unfortunate death.
Markandaya thus succeeds in proving through this novel that it is the socio-economic state
that is answerable for various kinds of social evils. Poverty, hunger and exploitation can
give birth to the social evils like prostitution, disintegration of family, and a mad rush
towards city. So long as poverty exists a variety of social evils and malpractices will
continue to thrive. The hope for betterment lies only in the existing morality in a few
human beings.
The author‘s closeness to the central character makes Nectar in a Sieve ‗a veritable
saga of successful womanhood.‘ Most women in fiction and in real life have to struggle
with conflict situations. The Indian woman is caught in the flux of tradition and modernity
- the burden of the past and the aspirations of the future. The novel shows that the Indian
woman - passive or aggressive, traditional or modern – serves to reflect the author‘s quest
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for psychological insight and awareness. She evokes a continuous discussion of social
values, she is the focal point of contact between the writer‘s consciousness and the alien
world, the writer‘s knowledge of reality and hope for salvation. The Indian woman is
elastic and emboldens her writer and reader alike to endure and prevail. The figure of the
Indian woman represented by Rukmani, with her inner power and honesty, paving her own
resolute way through an exploitative, biased world serves as an inspiring light of hope and
attempt. Kamala Markandaya has a message for the new generation. Woman is not an
island; she is the main land, the heart land of the human race.
Anita Desai is sensitive in portraying the sensibilities in the characters in her
fiction, Bye-Bye Blackbird. The novel vividly represents emigrant situations, and the
treatment of different issues related to Diaspora, they significantly contribute to diverse
interpretations that are characteristic of the postmodern environment. In today‘s world with
its high level of mobility, it is difficult to capture with a satisfactory level of precision the
identity and the history of a modern-day immigrant community. The United Kingdom is
still considered to be a haven for immigrants from across the globe. Throughout the
nineteenth century it was ―a net exporter of people‖ (McCormick 54), most of which
emigrated to the United States and some dominions of the ―Old Commonwealth‖ and in
those days very few foreigners were living in Britain. ―This particularly changed in the
mid-twentieth century, following the decline of the colonization era, and a great number of
immigrants, mostly from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, West Africa and the Caribbean‖
(McCormick 54) came to live in the United Kingdom. Today, even though problems with
racism, which started to arise more than half a century ago, have not been fully resolved,
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and despite Prime Minister David Cameron‘s controversial statement that multiculturalism
in the United Kingdom has failed, the UK is still considered to be a multicultural society.
In her novel from 1971, Bye-Bye Blackbird, Anita Desai describes an incident of
the ―acclimatization‖ of two men from India in the post-colonial London of the 1960s. The
generation she describes is people who were born around the time of the Partition of India
and the story encompasses a period of a few months in the course of which significant
changes take place in the protagonists‘ characters. The story is set in the summer of 1965.
Adit is a young man from India, who leads an apparently happy life in the United Kingdom
with his English wife Sarah. Adit has been living in Britain for a while, and Dev, his friend
from Calcutta, arrives in England to stay with them for a while. He wishes to study
economics, but does not plan to stay in Britain longer than completely essential. For a
while the three of them live together, and the novel describes a number of their outings and
afternoons together. As the story unfolds, it turns out that Adit has been subconsciously
unhappy all the while, and Dev unexpectedly starts to find England very appealing and
finally decides to stay there and make it his home. The two friends, Adit and Dev, become
transposed as the story develops both with regards to their character, their personal
characteristics and the result of their life in England as it is presented in the book. Adit is a
self-proclaimed Anglophile who turns into a hopeless nostalgic returnee, while Dev, his old
Calcutta coffee-house friend, is a sworn Anglophobe who turns into a hopeful Anglicized
inhabitant of Great Britain.
New historicism allows us to observe any text as a product of the appropriate
cultural situation, and every text in its own way contributes to our reassessment of a period
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in history. In history books, we would read the facts, whereas a literary text brings us closer
to sympathetic what such pieces of information could actually mean. Reading Anita
Desai‘s novel from 1971 in this light contributes to our better understanding of the possible
reasons behind multiculturalism failing in Great Britain, if it indeed has failed.
At the end of World War I, at one point the British Empire covered roughly one
quarter of the earth‘s land surface. However, during this period there were also some signs
of the deteriorating of the empire because the British right to rule was being brought into
question. At a peace discussion in 1919, Britain had to agree that it would try to help its
colonies to establish successful self government. In addition to this, there was a rising
command for freedom in some of the colonies. India is an example of this, as the country‘s
aspiration for freedom kept growing in the 1920s and 1930s. By 1945 it was clear that
something had to change, and the British left India in 1947. Other colonies followed suit
and the only thing that remained from the old Empire was the ―New Commonwealth.‖
Following World War II, there was a period of prosperity in Britain due to
monetary aid conventional from the USA. The 1950s were a stage for many changes: ―new
supermarkets were opened, new urban shopping centers, there was more television.
Between 1956 and 1960 the number of television licenses doubled‖ (Briggs 358). There
was also an unparalleled consumer boom in this period: ―the proportion of the British
population who used refrigerators rose from 6 to 16 per cent, washing machines from 25 to
44 per cent and those owning a motor car from 18 to 32 per cent‖ (Briggs 358). ―The 1960s
were a break with the old ways, and life began to be more comfortable in many aspects.
People started to spend more, the credit card was introduced from the USA, and houses
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became warmer due to the development of central heating. Leisure clothes began to cost
more than working clothes, eating habits changed; fast-food restaurants were introduced,
and foreign cuisine restaurants became very popular with their take-away option.
Vegetarianism was adopted, and so were health foods and low calorie slimming diets‖
(Briggs 360).
During the 1950s and the 1960s Britain remained very successful with regards to
economy, and their economic troubles would not start to appear before the 1970s.
However, in the 1960s Britain was faced with a new gush of problems, namely social
problems in connection with the arrival of a large number of immigrants and the
consequent racism troubles that soon followed. Asa Briggs lists two reasons for this change
in English society: ―the immigrants were faced with low wages and unemployment in their
home countries, and there was relative prosperity in the UK‖ (364). The new comers
conventional mainly those jobs that were unappealing to the English-born worker. ―In
1958, an estimated 210,000 people of different race were living in the UK‖ (Briggs 366),
but they had problem combination in. There were tensions in the areas where the
immigrants lived, and they were often indirectly compulsory to live close to each other in
the ―so-called ‗zones of transition‘ within the great cities‖ (Briggs 366). This brought on
the first signs of trouble with domestic youth. As unemployment grew, these problems also
grew, and the immigrants were frequently blamed for the economic problems.
Following the freedom of the colonies, the British Nationality Act of 1948 allowed
the peoples of the former colonies to become citizens of the UK and Colonies and they
were decided passports that allowed them to travel to Britain freely and find employment
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there. As a direct importance of this Act, the island was hit by a large wave of immigrants.
Immigration to the UK from its former colonies increased in the 1960s; the reminiscences
of the former times were still quite alive, and the local population did not welcome their
new compatriots with open arms: ―It was met with a hostile response from many of the
original inhabitants, their fear of economic competition compounded by their longestablished sense of the racial superiority of the white people‖ (Ní Fhlathúin 31). The
Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 limited the rights (SPECIAL ISSUE 2012 ROCKY
MOUNTAIN REVIEW 61) of Commonwealth peoples to migrate into the UK, and the
Immigration Act 1971 and British Nationality Act 1981 further changed these regulations
and tightened up procedures. ―The single, unified citizenship of the UK and Colonies was
replaced by three separate citizenships: British citizenship, British Dependent Territories
citizenship, and British Overseas citizenship‖ (Briggs 367).
Taking into deliberation that today we can talk about several generations of
immigrants, it is very interesting to analyze the first generation due to its most difficult role
of pavement the way for future generations. Desai‘s text has been selected for analysis due
to tackling this exact topic. The novel also touches upon all the aforementioned changes in
British society, as well as the problems that started to arise in the 1960s. Although neither
of the main protagonists is British, the reader can get a glimpse of the life in Britain in this
period of history through the representation of Adit‘s neighbourhood, and Dev‘s
relationship with Sarah‘s family and Adit‘s former landlords, the Millers. Sarah‘s
surroundings at her workplace are also indicative of the manner in which immigrants were
viewed in this decade, and so are her and Adit‘s relations with their neighbours.
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Anita Desai is considered to be one of the most significant Indian writers today. She
is well known for her presentations of India and the Indian people throughout different
historical periods, but she is also famous for her fictional presentations of separation,
loneliness, family affairs, immigration, and the position of women. What makes Anita
Desai especially important from the aspect of post-colonial literature are her depictions of
the ordinary people alone against a sea of troubles, both in their original and their adopted
homeland.
Desai uses several devices of stream conscious narrative like symbols and imagery.
Desai engaged the complexities of modern Indian culture from a feministic perspective in
her works while highlighting the female Indian predicament of maintaining self-identity as
individual women. Bye-Bye Blackbird is Anita Desai‘s third novel. Alienation at different
levels forms the theme of the novel. It explores the lives of the outsiders seeking to forge a
new identity in alien society. The novel has been said to be the novel of closest to her
personal experience as immigrant. Anita Desai succeeds in her pattern when she shows a
character in action. Her revelation of the unconscious threads of human mind gives the
structural unity to the novel. She reveals the intense of longing of the exiled hero‘s emotion
towards his native land. Adit comes to England and marries an English lady Sarah. Having
a job and wife, he leads a happy life there. After some time Adit‘s friend Dev comes to
England for higher education but he does not like the pomp and show of England. Like the
other novels of Anita Desai, Bye-Bye Blackbird exhibit the living style of England.
England which changes Dev‘s Anglophobia extreme fear into an anglophile, he
develops a great fascination for the English people. Adit on the other hand becomes
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nostalgic about his childhood memories and longs intensely for his native country India.
Dev hated the ways of the English, now changes and begins to love England and desires to
seek his future existence. Sarah is the only character who resigns all claims of being an
English girl and submits fully to the wishes of her husband.
Desai‘s Bye-Bye Blackbird is mainly concerned with the varied human love-hate
relationship. Adit from the beginning of the novel develops attachment to the western way
of life, especially to England; but while living in England he shows his repulsion towards
the way of European life and particularly of England. Dev comes to England only for his
education. As a matter of fact Dev observes the basic distinction of social and educational
factors between the east and the west. Dev becomes eager to be an England returned
teacher at the same time shows his abhorrence hate to the social system of England. Adit
tries to be judicious to the country he inhabits to the country and he exists for his future.
Dev shows his aversion dislike towards men and manners of England; but his stay
there for a while intensifies his leanings to the country. Sarah stands for her reconciliatory
approach between the east and west. She sacrifices her inhibitive leanings just for the sake
of her husband. She outlines a proper and balanced approach to the various groups of
human relationship. She proves her respectability as an Indian wife. Adit loves England;
Dev loves India; but Sarah swings in between her natural inclination and willing adoption.
She willingly resigns all her claims for existence in England and ready to leave England for
India with her husband.
The breaking out of war between India and Pakistan once again creates yet another
important structure as a whole. The war news makes Adit, nostalgic and awareness in him
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a desire to be in India. The love of his motherland shakes the hidden dormant sentiments.
He decides to come back to his country immediately. There is wrestling inside his mind to
leave England or not. Ultimately he listens to the call of his conscience by which he
realizes his social responsibility. He knows no more artificial life of England. He candidly
confessed to Sarah. Sarah dedicates herself to her husband binds the different threads in the
story. Though she has to face problem during the long journey from England to India
because of her pregnancy she cherishes limping thought as a wife of Adit. She marries him
with expectations to share the best of his mind and spirit; but she gives up her womanly
desires and like a traditional Indian wife accepts her fate. She leaves her motherland for the
sake of her husband and motherhood.
Dev, another protagonist of Desai‘s Bye-Bye Blackbird undergoes a convulsive
change in his mind. He becomes an instance of contrast. Dev abominated Adit‘s mind and
prepares himself fully to settle down in England for its luxurious life. Like George Eliot,
Desai also leaves her character to grow independently and watches the inner feelings.
Author has made the diagnosis of the inner quivering in Adit and Dev for their respective
change towards life. Finally, he realizes his social obligations and return back home. He
gives up all the pomp and show of a materialistic life. Dev also undergoes metamorphosis
in his character and strike a comparison and contrast with Adit in existential pursuits. Thus
there is a gradual psychic change in both the characters. The novelist simply justifies Adit‘s
longing to come back to India due to Pakistan‘s attack; but the convulsive change through
the war does not convince the reader immediately. Anita Desai herself watches a slow and
gradual inhibitive sensibility in Adit. England as a living entity brings forth a slow change
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in the mind of each character. In his visit to the parental house of Sarah, Dev is attracted by
its scenery and calmness. He gives up all his doubts and confusion for his future existence;
he derives sensational excitement from all the objects seen in England.
Expatriation and the problems and complexities prevalent in the life of expatriates
have merged as a major theme in the novels of 20th century authors, crossing the barriers
of caste, creed and nationality. The authors have been articulate enough in narrating the
complexities of life of immigrants. Another author in the series of Anita Desai, who dives
deep in the unconscious and sub-conscious psyche of the expatriates and their nausea,
nostalgia and longingness to their native land. Her depiction of characters and situation is
not one sided and her protagonists seem to be cherishing a strange love hate relationship
with the end of their adoption with great precision brilliance. Adit weighing the merits and
demerits of foreign land, but at the end of the novel he comes with a conclusion when his
English self was receiving and fading and dying – that to achieve their real self and to have
a ―real life‖ he must go to India , his native place.
Desai feels that all these immigrants are prone to live or not live in England. Adit
leaves England for good and Dev remains behind once. Adit‘s part of fascination for his
foreign land to everything about London is fascinating and expresses unreservedly. He has
moulded and transformed himself entirely up to the expectations of England. He has fully
adopted the life style of Britishers. He keeps comparing England with his own native land
criticize India for its traditionally and backwardness. Truly his experience in India was not
very pleasant and he portrays its heart-rending picture. When Dev felt disgusted to see a
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couple hugging each other under a lamp-post and remarked about the obscenity of these
people as ―a bunch of exhibitions‘.
Adit is proud of his blind admiration of England. Love, admiration and loyalty have
much offer to England, in return he feels to enjoy and celebrate. Ironically, in all his
appraisal worship, land of liberty, individualism he realized that England can provide him
neither of these whenever he goes, he becomes a victim of racial discrimination and
constantly regarded as second grade citizen. His irresistible destiny gets on as long as his
wishes to stay in England.
Despite his love and admiration for England, he feels himself as a lien and strangers
at the moment his heart is full with nostalgic reveries of his native land. He longs for many
things especially for food items in his home. Adit closed the circle of his migration
complete from India to England and again to India. But Dev who came for studies
criticized Britishers, laugh at Adit about his love for England. Though in the beginning he
is fully determined, he would not stay in England. He appreciates only for England‘s green
and grisly life. It was the beginning of his predicament. At the close of the novel he finds
completely bewitched and charms for future perspectives of his life in England.
It can be easily evinced that Bye-Bye Blackbird depicts the love-hate relationship of
the expatriates with England. In the novel Desai presents a clear reversal attitude of two
expatriates. Adit who loves it leaves for good and decides to settle in India. Dev, who hate
it, stays in London. Thus the fact is that Dev and Adit have love-hate relationship with excolonizers. In Bye-Bye Blackbird, there is different effects on different characters. Adit,
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there is an eye-opener, realizes him to return to his country. He completes the full circle;
Dev begins a new one.
When Dev enters England he is shown that his state of mind is in an extreme end. He
has ferocious hatred towards England because once England has powered motherland and
ill-treated his countrymen. He shows hatred toward England and its people. He hated
Indians who supports the western culture.
Desai digs out Dev is deep rooted national feeling he imbibed by history of Indian
freedom. He considers English men as his enemy. The extreme end of his state of mind is
fully occupied with the spirit of his national feeling. The luxurious, happiness, privacy
which everyone possess and enjoys English culture. Slowly changes and starts admiring the
―once hatred‖ culture. In the end of the novel he decided to settle in England. It is another
end of his state of mind. It is to be appreciable that the role of the novelist in bringing the
psychic changes of the protagonists and their plight in an alien countries. She reveals that
culture will change any person to follow it not out of compulsion of any external force but
by changing the person‘s psyche to follow it voluntarily, whether it is eastern culture or
western changes of the protagonists of Desai.
Anita Desai‘s works mark a new and mature phase in Indian English fiction. Anita
Desai started writing in the sixties. The emergence of eminent women writers merged into
the stream with their male contemporaries. The legacy of colonialism hangs heavily on the
writers whose themes centered on socio-political and cultural issues results. Along with
colonial and post colonial issues, the theme of women writers fore grounded the emotional
in compatibility between partners in marriages and voiced the woman‘s need for space in a
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patriarchal society. Her early novels concentrate on the feminine sensibility at war with the
hostility of male centered universe. Her later novels reveal the sensitive apprehension of
existentialist against the modern man trapped in islands of loneliness, equally alienated
from family and society.
A prominent theme running through her novels is the aloneness of the human being in
the isolated island of human destiny. The burden of existence hands heavy on most of her
characters. Desai usually used the theme of expatriation in most of her novels. Desai
evokes the right atmosphere through the rich imagery characteristic of her style and the use
of symbols. The psychological issue in her character‘s life affairs the dimensions of
existential agony because it is rooted in the existential loneliness that corrodes her being
and makes it possible for her to find meaning in an arid existence.
Expatriation of the individual is a persistent theme in Anita Desai‘s novels. The
sensitive human being suffers from a sense of alienation who could reach the intensity of
an existential malaise. Desai unfolds the existential traits of man in society. She analyses a
man in action in order to reveal his hidden motives behind the reality of conscious mind.
Her novel brings forth some bright prospect of her creativity. They leave an impression on
the reader that Desai‘s arts moves from strength to strength, abounding in wit, humour and
creative fecundity.
In 1993 she was described as a writer who is ―struggling to find a voice that can (in
an ‗authentic‘ way) bridge the gap between a glorious (pre-British, pre-colonial) Indian
past and a much diminished, more squalid, postcolonial present‖ (Afzal-Khan 60), but her
topics today include a large variety of subjects. Desai was born Anita Mazumdar in
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Mussoorie, India to a German mother and a Bengali father. Her first language was German,
but she also spoke Bengali, Urdu, Hindi and she learnt English in school, which later
became her writing language of choice. She received a B.A., in English literature at the
University of Delhi in 1957, and, having moved several times, she is currently residing in
the United States. Desai was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, and according to
this criterion her most well-known novels would be Clear Light of Day (1980), In Custody
(1984) which was adapted as a Merchant Ivory Production movie in 1994, and Fasting,
Feasting (1999). Bye-Bye Blackbird, perhaps one of her less famous works, was published
in 1971. Desai‘s first novel was Cry, the Peacock (1963), and her other notable works are
Fire on the Mountain (1977), Clear Light of Day (1980), The Village by the Sea (1982),
Baumgartner‘s Bombay (1989), to name only a few. Her 2004 novel The Zig-Zag Way is
set in twentieth-century Mexico, and her most recent work is a collection of three novellas
titled The Artist of Disappearance (2011). The topics Desai presents in her numerous
works that span the course of an amazing half a century are very different, but also very
related: all her novels echo the difficulties of people who are caught between two cultures,
as she herself may have felt to have been in her own family, powerless to decide which side
to incline towards.
In Bye-Bye Blackbird, the protagonists have all the opportunities they had ever
dreamed of, which are in agreement with the period of wealth in Britain in the 1960s (and
they both are young men who are in a position to enjoy life). On the other hand, they are
also infrequent wounded of the developing social issues and as a result start feeling the
onset of racism-related dilemma. If we also reflect here on the fact that during the 1960s an
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experienced spectator noticed that immigrants ―had become an conventional part of the
British urban landscape, if not yet of the community‖ (Briggs 367), we can also see this
aspect in Desai‘s story: while the two men have completely no monetary difficulties, one
may also notice the fact that they do not socialize with English-born friends, they do not
connect in Britain‘s social life and all that it has to offer in this time of profusion.
Throughout the story, they are mainly alone, visiting relatives, or interact with their Indian
friends.
Adit‘s life in England was a road of slow but certain improvement; he first worked
in a post office in Coventry, then with camping equipment, then he did occasional jobs of
teaching English after he moved to London, then he worked in an Indian agency office
which he hated before coming to Blue Skies, a travel agency, where he got his dream job.
At one point in the novel, he enumerates all the things he likes about England: going into
the local for a pint on his way home to Sarah, wearing good tweed on a foggy November
day, the Covent Garden opera house, the English girls, steamed pudding with treacle,
thatched cottages, British history, reading the letters in The Times, economic freedom,
social freedom, reading the posters in the tube, the Thames, the ravens, the feeling he can
nip across the Channel for a holiday in Paris when he wins the football pool, strawberries
in summer, a weekend at the seaside, even the BBC! (Desai 18-19). From this excerpt it is
obvious that the London of that time could be a pleasant city to live in, even for a foreigner.
This fact is further proven by Dev, who, in India, ―had found it necessary to be on the
defensive in public, to assume an arrogance, a superiority to the rest, however unpleasant
and disagreeable‖ (Desai 12), but, among the carefree British people on a bright Sunday, he
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becomes enthralled by the ambiance and it is easy for him to forget about this selfconsciousness and feel good about himself and his surroundings.
Nevertheless, Dev is aware of the steady struggle that takes place in both of them,
while Adit believes that the two cultures are reconciled. Adit‘s identity is somewhere in
between, in what Bhabha calls the ―Third Space‖ (Desai 37). In his Imaginary Homelands,
Salman Rushdie warns about the entrapment of such a position: ―our physical alienation
from India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the
thing that was lost; that we will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but
invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind‖ (Desai 10). This position is
presented in the novel when Adit has a change of heart and decides to leave Britain. He
starts having romantic visions of India, which are most probably far removed from reality:
The long, lingering twilight of the English summer trembling over
the garden had seemed to him like an invalid stricken with
anaemia, had aroused in him a sudden clamour, like a child‘s
tantrum, to see again an Indian sunset, its wild conflagration, rose
and orange, flamingo pink and lemon, scattering into a million
sparks in the night sky. (Desai 178)
The language that Desai uses here is a visible exaggeration of her usual writing
style. Using images such as ―invalid stricken with anaemia‖ and ―scattering into a million
sparks‖ are obviously intentional markers of Adit‘s melancholy and his visions of an India
that does not actually exist.
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The two protagonists‘ identities change from feelings of being others, through
taking on forms of hybrid identity, to trying to become Anglicized in every way. A very
attractive story method of Desai‘s is that she takes us on this journey from different poles
of the immigrant world: both protagonists change but their identities never meet at the
same point. Adit changes from trying to be English to being the other, while Dev takes a
journey in the conflicting direction.
One can clearly deduce from the text of Bye-Bye Blackbird that the first generation
of immigrants was on a very slow and difficult path of trying to fit into the community. In
the novel the world of the immigrants and the world of the English seem to be permanently
disconnected. Desai even mentions the existence of a ―basic disharmony of the situation‖
(Desai 175). Adit‘s relationship with his former landlords or the attitude of Sarah‘s mother
toward her Indian guests further proves this claim. When Adit pays a visit to his former
landlords, his former landlady, Mrs. Miller, behaves as if she wishes ―to reject the fact of
Adit having lived in their house for three years‖ (Desai 81). When Adit and Sarah‘s friends
visit Sarah‘s family in the country, Desai stresses the differences between them by
describing the presence of the Indian people as strange. The Indian people are so different
that Desai suggests that ―a strange and incredible twist of fortune‖ (Desai 131) seems to
have brought them and the English together.
In post-colonial theory, the term other can refer to ―the colonized others who are
marginalized by imperial discourse, identified by their difference from the centre‖
(Ashcroft 170). In this given context, it is combined with dislocation, which is a direct
result of the former colonization process, and it is a term brought into connection with
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Heidegger‘s ―not-at-home-ness‖ (Ashcroft 73). In spite of their dislocation experience,
Adit and Dev are supposed to feel at home, because their migration was voluntary, but they
do not, at least not the whole time. Though the act of migration was the central point of
change, their inner selves keep altering as the story progresses.
The feature of strangeness is noticeable at a variety of levels in the novel. As far as
Adit is worried, one gets the most immediately visible impression of his otherness if one
takes into deeper consideration his estranged relationship with his wife Sarah. She feels
that they are strangers, she does not understand him, and she does not understand what he
is talking about when his homesickness breaks out. We can conclude that they are strangers
because she failed to notice all the while that he was unhappy deep inside; a close-knit
couple would surely have talked about such things sooner. She has mixed feelings about
her marriage to a man who is different; she has mixed feelings about the child she is
carrying. Her confusion is living proof of his otherness. Throughout the novel, this does not
change. Nevertheless, she tries to listen and provide him with support. She does not wish to
leave him, but things only get worse for the both of them, and even though at the end of the
novel she accepts to go to India with Adit, one might argue that she has little choice in the
matter, having found out that she was pregnant. It is very important to note that, unlike
Adit‘s feelings of being the other, Sarah‘s sense of being an exile in her own life is a matter
of her personal choice. On the other hand, this might also be a product of her constant
unrest regarding her marriage.
If we understand Sarah as a typical representative of an Englishwoman of that time,
she is a gold mine of information, her husband is a strange stranger she is irrevocably
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drawn to her, her husband is a stranger and will always remain one, because she cannot or
will not understand him; she is in two minds about having decided to spend her life with
him, she is concerned about the opinions of others; now that they are together, she sees no
way out and decides to stay together with him and see how that unfolds in the end, because,
as always, she believes everything will eventually fall into place, just as it should.
Examples of the behavior of Sarah‘s mother and Mrs. Miller only reinforce the quarrel that
the self/other binarity could not be easily overcome.
These excerpts, and the frequent mention of racism-related incidents in the novel,
bear observer to the resistance of the local population to accept their newly-arrived
compatriots. There are occasional strong depictions of racism-related incidents in Bye-Bye
Blackbird, even though this is not the central theme. On the streets of London, while the
protagonists are waiting for a bus, a boy yells ―Wog!‖ at them. An old lady in the
neighborhood shouts so that they can hear her: ―Littered with Asians! Must get Richard to
move out of Clap ham, it is impossible now‖ (Desai 16). In such examples, although Desai
occasionally uses humor and sarcasm in her writing, her images of the non-acceptance of
the local population remain clear.
It is also mentioned in the novel that the London docks have three kinds of
lavatories: Ladies, Gents, and Asia tics. Dev waits in front of this last one, because he
wants to show the white men that he does not want to go into their dirty lavatory (Desai
17). From their visit to the Millers, it becomes clear that they disapproved of Adit because
of his skin colour. Even Sarah, who is not an immigrant, is affronted because of her
husband. As she goes to work children call after her: ―Hurry, hurry, Mrs. Curry‖ (Desai
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34). In this example Desai uses rhyme, which makes the insult almost sound like a chant,
and a very lingering one.
The novel also includes talk about of racist graffiti in the tube. We learn that
Sarah‘s mother still cannot fathom the fact that her daughter really married an Indian. In
the course of their visit to the countryside, she asks Mala Singh when she will start wearing
English clothes, and refers to them as ―you people.‖ This is another example of the
self/other binarity, which is visible throughout the text.
At work, Sarah is ashamed to talk about her marriage, and we can only assume that
this is due to a fear of her colleagues‘ response. When she learns that Sarah is pregnant, her
co-worker Julia Baines mentions, while discussing Sarah‘s future child ―those tiny boys
with the giant turbans‖ (Desai 208). Although Desai presents to us the London of Emma
Moffit with her romantic visions of India and her Little India Club of Clap ham (which are
also debatable due to their implications of a necessary ―otherness‖), she does not let us
forget that the postcolonial world also has its dark side.
In an essay on multiculturalism, Bhikhu Parekh states that ―citizenship is about
status and rights; belonging is about acceptance, feeling welcome, a sense of
identification.‖ The novel clearly shows that being granted citizenship of a country does
not imply that a person has been able to fit in and feel at home. At the beginning of the
novel, Adit is happy and proud, he sings all the time and then, without providing any
explanation whatsoever, Desai writes:
But now his own education, his ―feel‖ for British history and
poetry, fell away room him like a coat that has been secretly
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undermined by moths so that its sinews and tendons are
gone and, upon being touched, crumbles quietly to dust upon the
wearer‘s shoulders. Unclothed, Adit began to shiver in the cold and
fear the approaching winter. (Desai 182)
In this example Adit‘s identity is presented in the form of a coat, which would be
his outer, social self, while his inner self is quietly being eaten away. The only conclusion
one can draw is that he had been unhappy all the while, at the level of the unconscious, and
felt that he did not truly belong in Britain, although he imitation otherwise.
Dev is the one who experiences this non-belonging most acutely:
There are days in which the life of an alien appears enthrallingly rich and
beautiful to him, and that of a homebody too dull, too stale to return to ever.
Then he hears a word in the tube or notices an expression on an English face
that overturns his latest decision and, drawing himself together, he feels he
can never bear to be the unwanted immigrant but must return to his own
land, however abject or dull, where he has, at least, a place in the sun,
security, status and freedom. (Desai 86)
Here again we have this continually present dilemma with regards to staying or
leaving. To leave would mean to give up, but this is the easier path, and to stay requires a
lot of effort, patience, and hope that the situation will one day change for the better. At the
beginning of the novel, while holding some coins in the palm of his hand, Dev feels
himself ―Director of the East India Company‖ (Desai 12), but his behavior changes quickly
―on the High street where he was a stranger again‖ (Desai 12). His constant rejection of his
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new surroundings is also proof of his feelings of not belonging, of not being at home. Dev
immediately sees everything new as overwhelming, while for Adit it takes a while for the
complexity of things to sink in. These feelings of being an eternal outsider are very well
presented in Hanif Kureishi‘s essay ―The Rainbow Sign.‖ When we first encounter these
men, Adit appears to be living the immigrant dream: he lives in a nice flat in Clapham, has
a pretty English wife who cares for him and a good job that he is satisfied with. Dev, on the
other hand, has come to London to study economics, and he finds it difficult to adapt in his
new surroundings. The novel opens with his waking up in the London flat, and he wonders
if his watch ―had died in the night of an inability to acclimatize itself‖ (Desai 5). His watch
is something he always wears, and it is something that helps him organize his day. If the
watch cannot acclimatize itself, it is not strange that neither can him. He thinks with
sadness about the cup of tea he would have gotten in India, and these are the first signs of
the two cultures being seemingly irreconcilable: ―It was the first lesson his first day in
London taught him: he who wants tea must get up and make it‖ (Desai 6).
Towards the end of the novel, when Adit moves from the trance-like state of utter
happiness and feelings of satisfaction to a deep dark depression that he cannot fathom,
suddenly, in his London flat he feels ―like a stranger arrived at an hotel in a strange city‖
(Desai 179). A hotel is not one‘s home, so the feelings of being dislocated and unadapted
are again presented by Desai. The footsteps of the passers-by sound different; laughter has
a sinister ring to it. It seems to Adit that he has turned into one of the Indians he used to
despise: ―the eternal immigrants‖ (Desai 181). He never wanted to be one of them, because
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he felt that with his natural vulnerability to the British culture he would have no difficulty
amalgamation in.
Even though at first it seems that Adit is satisfied with his decision to return to
India: ―now he was going to carry the message of England to the East—not the old
message of the colonist, the tradesman or the missionary, but the new message of the free
convert, the international citizen, a message of progress and good cheer, advance and good
will‖ (Desai 225-226) we see him clutching his umbrella as a sacred symbol of England.
His dilemma seems to be unresolved even at the very end. He is tired and he will leave
everything to fate because he is quickly becoming a ―good Hindu‖ (Desai 227). This
clearly implies that he felt to belong to a different nation while he was living in Britain.
Contrary to the reader‘s prospect, Dev is the one who decides to stay in Britain and
make it his home. England slowly draws him further inside her gripping embrace. At one
point he stops talking about the London School of Economics and starts talking about
judgment a job in London. He explains to Adit that the streets of London are a rich
education and that he cannot perhaps waste his time in school, but,
It is partly the reasons. The other part is something he cannot explain, even
to himself, for it is only a tumult inside him, a growing bewilderment, a kind
of schizophrenia that wakes him in the middle of the night and shadows him
by day, driving him along on endless tramps in all weathers while he
wonders whether he should stay, or go back. (Desai 85-86)
What once started as only a thought of definitely staying in England fights for
keeping its secure space in his mind and heart. He feels that something has inexplicably
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changed inside him, and he can never be the same man he used to be. He is determined to
find ―the England of his dreams and reading‖ (Desai 168) and decides to stay and pursue
this course. Adit leaves Dev his job, and he and Sarah leave him the flat in Clapham. The
first to arrive make the situation more comfortable for those who will succeed them. Dev
perfectly fits into ―the groove already cut and warmed for him by Adit‖ (Desai 229). As the
novel ends, he is not a man completely at peace, but one has the feeling that the good sides
of the life in Great Britain will finally overshadow the possible evils.
Ralph Waldo Emerson coined the term ―double consciousness,‖ proclaiming it to be
―one solution to the mysteries of human condition‖ (Sommer 166). A similar idea can
probably be said to lie behind the idea of multiculturalism, as it advocates being different,
but respecting the others‘ differences as well and being open to changes which always
inevitably come. Multiculturalism is currently in the spotlight due to the reconsideration of
the many policies introduced in its name, in these times when we are faced with constant
disquiet in multicultural communities, and we are witnessing ―disillusion and compassion
fatigue‖ (Bennett 1).
The first generation of immigrants were perhaps in the most tricky location because
of the real act of migration, but decades have proven that even today later generations find
it difficult to fit into their adopted community. Multiculturalism has not fully developed in
the way it was meant to, and the possible reasons for this are continually assessed and
reassessed. Analysis of literary texts written in such a cultural setting in the last few
decades may be offered as an unassuming donation. Desai‘s novel is interesting because it
gives us a sight of the obstacles first generation of immigrants faced. Excerpts from the
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selected novel have presented how the self of the refugee subject is multi-layered and how
a crossing actual border did not and does not necessarily imply journey inner borders, and
this extra step requires additional effort. If such collective effort is combined with the
understanding and acceptance of the surrounding community, multiculturalism may
prevail.
The God of Small Things written in the post-colonial Anglophone by Arundhati Roy
does reveal a decisive post-colonial condition; through its dialogues, characters and various
events and instances it encompass. Ms. Roy refers to the metaphor ―the heart of darkness‖
in the novel which is a sort of ridiculous reference to Conrad‘s novel the heart of darkness.
The narrator briefly describes the twins‘ adult lives before they return to
Ayemenem. In the present, Baby Kochamma gloats that Estha does not speak to Rahel just
as he does not speak to anyone else, and then the narrator gives an overview of Baby
Kochamma‘s life. Rahel looks out the window at the building that used to contain the
family business, Paradise Pickles and Preserves, and flashes back to the circumstances
surrounding Sophie Mol‘s death. Through flashbacks Roy is telling a story about what
happened in the family when Estha and Rahel were young. Horrible memories are
revealed, like the smarmy soda salesman selling yellow, sweet sodas; Sophie Mol's death;
and the forbidden love with an untouchable.
The history, culture, language, customs and beliefs of the white colonizers are
imposed on the colonized and they are eventually coaxed to consider them as universal,
normative and superior to their own local indigenous culture. This creates a strong sense of
inferiority in the colonized subject and leads to an adoption of the language, culture and
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customs of the colonizers by the colonized as a way of compensating for these feelings of
inferiority in their self-identity.
This creates a divided sense of self in the subject formation of the colonized.
Through this study I intend to do a post colonial analysis of the novel. ―Post colonialism‖,
the term itself is in want of a cohesive definition. It contains within it historical and
geographical notions. All post-colonial experiences are nearly the same regardless of
history. To conquer, to subjugate, to occupy and to dominate another being are all intrinsic
colonial stops. This discussion has also been formulated against issues like identity,
hybridity, cultural differences and conflict. Roy‘s novel, even though complex, incoherent
and fragmented, conveys a deeper meaning that runs into notions regarding human
perspectives, values and attitudes of a post colonial nation.
The relation between India and English has been a long and troublesome one. In
India, the cultural impact of imperialism dominated the urban elite class and the semiwesternized upper and lower middle classes. The women writers of post colonial India too
hail from either elite or moderate backgrounds and their writings reflected their
experiences. Here, Arundhati Roy, we see her capitalize on her straddling of different
cultures as an Indian writer writing in English by making this a crucial element in the
identities of her major protagonists. The twins portrayed in the novel are often found
speaking Malayalam and English.
Hybridity occurs in post-colonial societies both as a result of conscious movements
of cultural suppression, as when the colonial power invades to consolidate political and
economic control, or when settler-invaders disposes indigenous peoples and force them to
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―assimilate‖ to new social patterns. It may also occur in later periods when patterns of
immigration from metropolitan societies and from other imperial areas of influence
continue to produce complex cultural palimpsests with the post-colonial world. Frantz
Fanon talks about such a divided sense of the self in his ―Black Skin, White Masks‖. He
says ―As I begin to recognize that the Negro is the symbol of sin, I catch myself hating the
Negro. But then I recognize that I am a Negro. There are two ways out of this conflict.
Either I ask others to pay no attention to my skin, or else I want them to be aware of it.‖
Skin colour and race are seen to create a very different sort of power structure. A white
skin is an ideal of beauty which leaves anyone with dark skin in a lower bracket. The
impression that Sophie Mol leaves for herself is, ―hatted, bell bottomed and loved from the
beginning‖ (186). This out of the bounds glorification of the west is peculiar of the entire
family‘s behavior especially in Baby Kochamma‘s. The sense of inferiority complex at
being Indian makes her speak with an artificial accent and ask Sophie Mol questions on
Shakespeare‘s ―Tempest‖. ―All this was of course primarily to announce her credentials to
Margaret Kochamma (Chacko‘s English wife). To set herself apart from the Sweeper
class‖ (Roy 144).
The spread of English throughout the globe via colonialism trade and commerce has
resulted in the emergence of a number of accomplished writers today including Roy who is
a representative of such a cultural blend that looms large over the whole world. In The God
of Small Things Roy strikes a phrase ―led out of the history house‖ which connotes
different levels of meaning other than the peripheral one. It means that we are people who
are forced into an anglicized pattern of thinking and practice which is enabled by the public
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school education established by the colonial rulers. Roy herself is a representative of such a
phenomenon. As Chacko exclaims in the novel ―we are the prisoners of war. Our dreams
have been doctored. We belong nowhere. We sail unanchored on troubled seas. We may
never be allowed ashore. Our sorrows will never be sad enough, our joys never happy
enough, our dreams never big enough, our lives never important enough to matter‖ (Roy
53). It is quite true to say so. The post colonial mind is a fragmented post-war ground; a
war that‘s won and lost. Edward Said (Palestinian American literary theorist, cultural critic)
argues that the West had dominated the East for more than 2,000 years, since the
composition of ―The Persians‖ by Aeschylus. Europe had dominated Asia politically so
completely for so long that even the most outwardly objective Western texts on the East
were permeated with a bias that even most Western scholars could not recognize. His
contention was not only that the West has conquered the East politically but also that
Western scholars have appropriated the exploration and interpretation of the Orient‘s
languages, history and culture for themselves. Such a cultural adoption and moulding it to
suit their tastes finds expression in Roy‘s novel. Almost all the major characters in the
novel are live expressions of such a converted cultural mould.
The power structures are carefully delineated in the novel. Mammachi, Baby
Kochamma, the policemen etc stand aloof within their realms of power and they see to it
that the transgressors- Ammu, Velutha, Rahel and Estha, who hold no power in the social
hierarchies, remain vulnerable and hence overruled. It is quite a notable fact that the
characters in the novel although they have adopted the Western ways to suit their needs
they remain stubbornly centered onto the power structures their tradition had bestowed
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upon them. Pappachi (Estha and Rahel‘s grandfather), for instance, he is the British
entomologist who is hailed a British gentleman in the whole of Ayemenem. Even after his
retirement he refuses to go around in Indian clothes and followed Western suiting. He
drove a Plymouth and smoked a cigar. Despite all the outwardly British trappings he
remained a chauvinist at heart. He beat his wife and children and he resented his wife‘s
success at the pickle factory and her ability to play violin.
The children who they are ―small things‖ in the novel are the worst affected of all.
They go against the rule and make Velutha, who is a ―paravan‖, an untouchable, their God
– The God of small things. He is their best friend, because he lets them be, and also
becomes a part of their world. As Rahel grows up she realizes ―it is after all so easy to
shatter a story. To break a chain of thought, to ruin a fragment of a dream being carried
around carefully like a piece of porcelain. To let it be, to travel with it as Velutha did, is
much the harder thing to do‖ (Roy 190). The powerless being taken advantage of by the
powerful. The orange- lemon drink man sexually exploits Estha at the film theatre and
leaves him frightened and insecure. ―The orange drink lemon drink man knew where to
find him. In the factory in Ayemenem. On the banks of the Meenachal‖ (Roy 140).
In the novel ‗the other‘ has been made out of the children, Velutha and even
Ammu. At some point of time or the other, they are discriminated against; the children by
Ammu and their grand aunt Baby Kochamma, Ammu by her aunt and Velutha by the so
called ―modalalis‖ ( land lords) of the clan. In Roy‘s The God of Small Things, the English
figure as a typical colonizer in the form of Mr. Hollick and as a liberated decolonizer as
Father Mulligan who is a spiritually elevated man. Ammu‘s husband, Babu, almost lost his
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job due to excessive alcoholism and he requests his ―superior‖ Mr. Hollick (Babu's boss at
the Assam tea estate) not to sack him. To which Hollick says ―well actually there may be
an option... perhaps we could work something out...you are a very lucky man-wonderful
family, beautiful children, an extremely attractive wife‖ (Roy 41).
He shamefully suggests that Ammu should to be sent to his Bungalow to be ―looked
after‖ (Roy 42). The appearance of British as exploiters suggests a post-colonial tendency.
They act as instruments of imperial oppression trying to crush down the colonized to the
very extent of extreme pathos. Characters like Hollick symbolize the cruelty and carnality
of the superior planter class. They strike a glaring contrast to the impoverished labour class.
A recent tendency shows a shift in stance in terms of portraying English as paragons of
cruelty. They cease to be dark figures of villainy and crime. They are portrayed as more
individualized and aware. Such a newer version of the British figure as Father Mulligan in
the novel. He is a priest in Ayemenem and later he relinquishes Christianity and takes up
Hinduism and becomes an ardent follower of Lord Vishnu. Despite the knowledge of Baby
Kochamma‘s (Ammu‘s aunt) staunch affection for him, he never takes advantage of her
and remains on friendly terms with her until his death.
The God of small Things presents life in ―God‘s own country‖ as quite ungodly.
Against the Godly scenery of Kerala the characters find them sinned against, their
childhood – innocence raped and their lives ruined. What to Naipaul is an area of darkness,
to Roy is the Heart of darkness. But both are of interest and entertainment for the readers as
it clearly brings out those forces which vie for control over the outcastes and the down
castes. The ―Big things‖, inspite of their individual difference unite whenever they face a
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threat from ―Small things‖. The ―Small things‖ –Ammu, the twins and Velutha, who get
together for mutual love and warmth and not for any material gains are crudely acted upon
and destroyed. They leave behind no memory of pain or concern in the minds of the
survivors. Their every mark is completely wiped off. The novel carries with it throughout
its main, the disturbing motif of the ―permanent distancing of ‗the other‘ from the
mainstream life and their ultimate transgression by the mainstream powerful class.
In India, according to Chatterjee, ―politics has drifted from one contentious
principle to another (bourgeois equality, caste-class correlation, discriminatory privileges
for low castes through state intervention, etc.) without finding adequate ground on which it
can be superseded by a new universal form of community‖ (198-199). In The God of Small
Things, Roy portrays the private (small) struggles of the Ipe family as a mirror of the public
(large) identity struggles of the nation. The characters of the twins, Rahel and Estha,
portray Chatterjee‘s contention as they drift through life failing to find adequate ground,
much like the nation of India. The twins are caught in the internal struggle of the nation as
caste, discrimination, and politics converge on one night during their childhood and forever
change their lives. Anuradha Dingwaney Needham in The Small Voice of History‘ in
Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things argues that the novel illustrates history as ―a
dominating, oppressive force that saturates virtually all social and cultural space, including
familial, intimate, and affective relationships‖ (372). Needham further observes:
In as much as Small Things mobilizes ‗History‘ explicitly as the trope
through which the existing repressive social and political arrangements are
figured forth, envisioning and re-writing history is part and parcel of
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transforming these repressive conditions, and is, arguably, what the novel‘s
retrieval of ‗small things‘ enacts. (382)
The small things are personal toward the Ipe family, but remain representative of
the larger significant struggles of the people of Kerala and in some cases, the entire nation
of India. The novel tells the story of the Ipe family, an upper caste, Syrian Christian family
in the Ayemenem village of Kerala. Kerala also serves as a representation of culture and
history in a larger international background. Janet Thormann in The Ethical Subject of The
God of Small Things observes how international culture and Kerala‘s local environment
converge in Roy‘s narrative:
The novel dramatizes the unequal effects of the laws of international culture,
imposed in a master discourse entering the local environment through the
entertainment industry, consumerism, and international migration and
travel; the laws of caste that traditionally govern social relations in India in
complicity with class inequality in the global economy; and the regulation
of women that founds patriarchal power. (300)
In the novel, Thormann argues, the oppressive forces of both national and
international culture filter into Kerala‘s society. The national influences caste division,
religious diversity, class, and patriarchal family hierarchy and the international influences
colonialism, communism, global travel, and commerce all reveal themselves in the cultural
objects, traditions, beliefs, and the actions of the characters in the novel. Roy intensifies
these forces by utilizing Gothic tropes. While it may appear paradoxical for Roy and other
writers of colonized countries to utilize a Western story form to discover postcolonial
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issues. Wisker contends that the Gothic provides these writers with the chance to give a
voice to the marginalized through a reinvention of the genre. She states that post-colonial
Gothic ―reinhabits and reconfigures, it reinstates and newly imagines ways of being,
seeing, and expressing from the points of view of and using some of the forms of people
whose experiences and expressions have…largely been unheard of and even discredited‖
(Thormann 401-402). Indeed, Roy brings a voice to the marginalized people of India as she
illustrates the haunting effects of the nation‘s struggles through a sympathetic point of view
of the oppressed. Paravisini-Gebert points out that traditional English Gothic introduces the
colonized as the disturbing agent, or other, while the Caribbean challenges this Western
convention by portraying the colonizer, or England, as the other (Thormann 249). In The
God of Small Things, Roy employs a similar practice by reversing the identity of the other.
She depicts the postcolonial other in newer forms of cultural, patriarchal, and political
oppression that result from colonization. The turnaround of the other is one way in which
the post-colonial Gothic presents itself as a hybrid. Wisker observes hybridity in works
where the protagonist struggles to achieve her own version of being British, Asian, or
Caribbean (Thormann 413). Viewed in a broader context, this hybridity often expands to
the entire text in postcolonial Gothic fiction. The writer, in applying a Western narrative
form, creates a Gothic hybrid in which the East and West combine, paralleling the struggle
of a national individuality. It is this form of Gothic hybrid, in which the East and West
combine, that emerges in The God of Small Things. Roy utilizes many traditional Western
Gothic conventions in her novel, yet she also challenges and inverts these conventions,
creating a Gothic hybrid. In doing so, she creates a postcolonial Gothic text that is uniquely
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her own and uniquely Indian. Roy‘s use of the Gothic doubly destabilizes the world of her
narrative and the novel ends not in a restoration of order, but in a state of shifted order. Roy
does, as Wisker contends, reinvent the Gothic through a postcolonial trope. For Roy, this
reinvention is a form of empowerment. Through her Gothic reinvention, Roy recreates a
Western narrative trope on her own terms and gives a voice to the marginalized people of
India by illustrating their experiences and sufferings in a format that the West can
understand. As Paravisini-Gebert contends, ―Roy establishes a continuing dialogue with the
West and reformulates India‘s connections to and severance from the West‖ (248). Told
mainly from the point of view of Rahel Kochamma, the story takes place during thirteen
days in December 1969 and one day in June 1992. Rahel and Estha are forever haunted by
a tragedy resulting from their mother‘s affair with a lower caste man. Rahel relives the
history of the Night of Terror a night depicting the severe consequences that result when
cultural laws are broken. In the ghosts of a family and a nation, Roy creates her Gothic
world. It is a world where the screams of children die in shattered kneecaps (Roy 292).
Gothic imagery also conveys dramatic impulses. Elizabeth Mac Andrew in The
Gothic Tradition in Fiction asserts that the imagery of Gothic fiction is a ―symbolism of
spiritual states, in which the highest spiritual aspirations bring with them the greatest evils.
It shows within the outwardly everyday figures of ordinary people, strange, frightening,
half-understood, but dramatically sensed impulses‖ (45). Roy displays the haunting evil of
impulses in everyday figures of the ordinary and often combines well with evil, the
beautiful with the terrifying. Combining such opposites deepens the sense of uncertainty:
as Mac Andrew observes, ―When good and evil are intermingled they have a slippery
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tendency to change places and this undermines moral values and makes life seem uncertain
and directionless‖ (157). Roy presents the opposites of good and evil in her imagery to
underline the ambivalence of the narrative as a larger reflection of India. She utilizes dark
imagery in the vein of conventional Western Gothic, yet she also reinvents it with a unique
lyrical quality in specific portrayals of Indian life and turmoil.
Roy skillfully combines the good with evil and the innocent with terror in her dark
imagery to demonstrate the horror of oppression in India‘s culture. The innocent and
pleasant name of the Orange drink, Lemon drink man takes on haunting qualities when the
man abuses young Estha and threatens to come after him again (Roy 98-99, 104). Rahel‘s
toy watch is lost during Velutha‘s beating and is buried with the terror in the ground (Roy
295). Elaborate wedding ceremonies possess ghoulish qualities (Roy 43).Brass flower
vases symbolize a lifetime of domestic abuse (Roy 47). The monstrous wink of a glass eye
signifies a father willing to kill his own son when the son breaks the caste laws (Roy 241).
The child‘s word of ―LayTer‖ hints of the terror to come (Roy139). The Gothic imagery,
with its combination of innocent and evil, serves to underscore the narrative‘s dark
emotional tone, display evil impulses, and incite intense feelings all signaling the
undercurrent of horrific oppression. Gothic imagery also emerges in nature to reflect the
emotion of the characters. When the adult Rahel returns to the river, it greets her with a
―ghastly skull‘s smile‖ (Roy 118). The river remains a ghastly reminder of Sophie Mol‘s
death, a tragedy that forever haunts Rahel. When Ammu dreams of Velutha, she awakens
and comprehends the consequences that will come of her affair. Ammu realizes ―That the
air, the sky, the trees, the sun, the rain, the light and darkness were all slowly turning to
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sand. That sand would…pull her down‖ (Roy 212). Ammu knows she is spiraling, giving
in to her desire to love a lower caste man, but she is powerless to stop herself. The Gothic
imagery in nature also illustrates the history and emotion of the nation. A sparrow lays
dead on the backseat of the old Plymouth: ―She had found her way in through a hole in the
windscreen…She never found her way out‖ (Roy 280). Like the sparrow, Rahel, Estha,
Ammu, and the nation of India remain prisoned, unable to find a way out, trapped by
history. The dark imagery intensifies the horror of a repressed past as it haunts the at hand
through the characters, culture, and nature. The Gothic imagery competently crafted in
poetic brightness and specific to India insulate the narrative with a strange sense of dread
and nervousness.
The constituent of the paranormal intensify the effect of the Gothic imagery
throughout the novel, particularly in the image of Pappachi‘s moth. Punter contends the
supernatural becomes ―a symbol of our past rising against us, whether it is the
psychological past the realm of those primitive desires repressed by the demands of closely
organized society or the historical past, the realm of a social order characterized by total
power and servitude‖ (Punter 53). Mac Andrew notes that in the Gothic ―when figures of
the grotesque appear as non-human, supernatural beings, they still make the sense of
human evil darker and less optimistic‖ (Andrew 166). She states that such dark imagery
also draws the reader into ―sympathetic understanding‖ (Andrew 156). Pappachi‘s moth
haunts the child Rahel, evoking sympathy as it surfaces when the reader is made aware of
her absent guilt. The moth symbolizes the haunting effect of a culture and history one does
not fully understand and the subsequent guilt that can result. It is notable that the moth is
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not simply a moth, but Pappachi‘s moth. Botting notes that a common theme of the Gothic
is that ―sins of the father are visited on the offspring‖ (Roy 129). Pappachi, the patriarch of
the Ipe family and classic Gothic villain, represents the tyrannical patriarchal figure. ―He
beats Mammachi for years, and when he is finally stopped by his son, he never again
speaks to his wife‖ (Roy 47). Pappachi sits on the verandah and sews buttons onto his shirt
to make it appear that Mammachi neglects him, succeeding in ―further corroding
Ayemenem‘s view of working wives‖ (Roy 47). He does not allow anyone in the family to
sit in his Plymouth: ―The Plymouth was Pappachi‘s revenge‖ (Roy 47). Pappachi‘s
torment stems from his greatest setback in life: ―not having had the moth that he had
discovered named after him‖ (Roy 48). The moth embodies the family curse and haunts its
offspring. As the narrator notes, ―Pappachi‘s Moth was held responsible for his black
moods and sudden bouts of temper. Its pernicious ghost gray, furry and with unusual dense
dorsal tufts haunted every house that he ever lived in. It tormented him and his children and
his children‘s children‖ (Roy 48).The ghost of the moth repeatedly haunts Rahel as a child.
At the Abhilash Talkies Movie Theatre, when Ammu compliments the Orange drink,
Lemon drink man, Rahel snaps, ―So why don‘t you marry him then?‖ (Roy 106). Ammu
tells Rahel, ―When you hurt people, they begin to love you less‖ (Roy 107). It is then that a
―cold moth with unusually dense dorsal tufts‖ lands on Rahel‘s heart (Roy 107). Pappachi‘s
moth torments Rahel. The guilt of one generation carries on to the next. As Rahel‘s guilt
over hurting her mother grows, the moth on her heart ―spread its silver wings, and the chill
crept into her bones‖ (Roy 108). The moth gnaws on Rahel‘s heart, as the guilt gnaws on
her soul. The moth appears again on the Night of Terror. When the children are on the boat,
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it collides with a log and tips over. Rahel calls out to Sophie Mol and when Sophie does
not respond, ―On Rahel‘s heart Pappachi‘s moth snapped open its somber wings‖ (Roy
277). The guilt resurfaces because Rahel knows she has done wrong by disobeying Ammu.
When Sophie Mol does not respond to Rahel‘s calls, Rahel feels the haunting fear of what
is to come. The moth emerges again at the police station when Baby Kochamma frightens
Rahel and Estha into betraying Velutha in order to save their mother. The narrator states:
―Inside the Inspector‘s room, Pappachi‘s Moth was on the move‖ (Roy 300). The children
know they are about to do something wrong, yet they do not fully understand it. Roy
effectively portrays the moth as Gothic-like with its supernatural qualities to signify the
family curse and guilt and their effects upon a small child. Punter places images of the
Gothic in broader cultural terms: ―Gothic fiction becomes a process of cultural selfanalysis, and the images which it throws up become the dream-figures of a troubled social
group‖ (Punter 425). The Ipe family is troubled, just as India is troubled. The guilt of an
aggressive and domineering past, like Pappachi‘s moth, haunts future generations.
The Gothic gathering of the troubled house surfaces in the Ayemenem House. The
old house or castle, according to Mac Andrew, is one of the most stable characteristics of
the Gothic (48). Anne Williams contends the haunted house is ―marked, haunted by
‗history‘ the events of its own development‖ (45). Williams explains, ―The ghosts whether
real or imaginary derive from the past passions, past deeds, past crimes of the family
identified with this structure‖ (Williams 45). The Ayemenem House represents the Ipe
family. Its ghosts arise from the Ipe family‘s past passions and crimes Ammu‘s passion and
crime in breaking the Love Laws and the family‘s involvement in Velutha‘s death. The
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family‘s crimes mirror the Indian nation and the ghosts of its oppressive past. Botting
connects threats to domestic structures with political metaphors: ―In Gothic images of
violence and excessive passion, in villainous threats to proper domestic structures, there is
a significant overlap in literary and political metaphors of fear and anxiety: metaphors that
imply how much a culture, like the heroine and the family, sensed itself to be under attack‖
(Roy 63). The Ipe family, like the Ayemenem House, is full of fear and anxiety, and in a
sense, under attack. Botting notes that as the Gothic setting transforms from foreign
settings to the domestic and the home, the family home becomes a ―place rendered
threatening and uncanny by the haunting return of past transgressions and attendant guilt
on an everyday world shrouded in strangeness‖ (Roy 11). When Rahel returns home,
twenty three years after the tragedy of Sophie Mol‘s death, she finds the present day house
strange it is filled with ghosts, secrets, and death. The loss of Sophie Mol steps ―softly
around the Ayemenem House like a quiet thing in socks. It hid in books and food. In
Mammachi‘s violin case‖ (Roy 17). In Ammu‘s room, ―The terrible ghosts of impossibleto forget toys clustered on the blades of the ceiling fan‖ (Roy 87). The family ghosts live
within the walls of the Ayemenem House as haunting reminders of the Night of Terror.
Through the ghosts, the uncanny returns to the Ayemenem House. As Freud states, ―the
uncanny [‗the unhomely‘] is something familiar [‗homely,‘ ‗homey‘] that has been
repressed and then reappears, and that everything uncanny satisfies this condition‖ (152).
The ghosts will not let Rahel or Estha forget Sophie Mol‘s death or their
involvement in Velutha‘s death. When Rahel returns, the house is full of death and decay.
As Rahel notes, strange insects burn themselves on forty watt bulbs and their corpses litter
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the floor and window sills (Roy 11). The abandoned garden is overgrown with weeds and
only the vines keep growing ―like toe-nails on a corpse‖ (Roy 27). Filth clots ―every
crevice and clung to the windowpanes‖ (Roy 84). The family, like the house, has
decomposed. Botting suggests that the decaying family house utilizes Gothic elements that
―signify darker forces of individual passion, natural energy and social restriction‖ (Andrew
129). In the novel, the dark forces of the past haunt every room. In Pappachi‘s study, ―rank
with fungus and disuse,‖ Rahel finds hidden things an orange pipette, Baby Kochamma‘s
rosary, tattered notebooks—the dark ghosts of individual memories (Roy 148- 149). The
ghosts lead Rahel to the memory of the last time she saw Ammu. Rahel did not say goodbye: ―She hated her mother then. Hated her‖ (Roy 153). Ammu died alone. The
Ayemenem House is haunted by death, grief, and guilt. The family has kept its secrets and
like Ammu‘s room, ―It gave nothing away…Silence hung in the air like secret loss‖ (Roy
87).
The Ayemenem House of 1969 is haunted by the cruelty and abuse of Pappachi,
symbolizing the oppressiveness of a patriarchal society. Pappachi haunts the Ayemenem
House with his presence. A photograph of Pappachi in Vienna hangs in the drawing room:
―There was a watchful stillness to the photograph that lent an underlying chill to the warm
room in which it hung‖ (Roy 50). The evil of Pappachi pervades the room as the evil of
oppression pervades the nation. The Ayemenem House of the past, as the present-day
house, is uninviting. When Ammu divorces her husband, she returns to the Ayemenem
House ―unwelcomed‖ by her parents (Roy 42).Baby Kochamma often reminds the twins
that they live on ―sufferance‖ in the Ayemenem House, ―where they really had no right to
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be‖ (Roy 44). Culture has taken away the sense of home for Ammu, Rahel, and Estha and
turned the house into a prison. When Mammachi discovers Ammu‘s relationship with
Velutha, she locks Ammu in her bedroom. The narrator states, ―Ammu was incoherent with
rage and disbelief at what was happening to her at being locked away like the family
lunatic in a medieval household‖ (Roy 239). Ammu is a prisoner in her possess home,
much like the browbeaten people of India are prisoners in their own country.
The Ayemenem House of the past is also one of death. It is on the chaise lounge in
the drawing room where Sophie Mol‘s body is laid out (Roy 238). The narrator presents a
haunting description, ―Even from a distance, it was obvious that she was dead. Not ill or
asleep. It was something to do with the way she lay…Something to do with Death‘s
authority. It‘s terrible stillness‖ (Roy 238). The house of the past holds Sophie Mol‘s
corpse, while its ghost haunts the present-day house. As Rahel notes, it is a house where
―only the Small Things were said. The Big Things lurked unsaid inside‖ (Roy 165). The
ghastly qualities of the patriarchal culture and its oppression haunt the Ayemenem House
of the past and return in strange form to haunt the present-day house. Roy effectively
utilizes the Gothic trope of the haunted house to manifest the horrors of a patriarchal
society and its effects upon the Ipe family, symbolizing the haunting of an oppressive
history upon the nation of India. She employs the Western Gothic convention in customary
ways, but also creates haunting that are detailed to the members of the Ipe family. As
personal ghosts disturb the Ayemenem House, societal ghosts haunt the History House. It
is in the History House where caste, culture, and politics transform into aggression and
terror. Of the History House, Chacko tells the twins, ―When we look in through the
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windows, all we see are shadows. And when we try and listen, all we hear is a whispering.
And we cannot understand the whispering, because our minds have been invaded by a war‖
(Roy 52). Chacko describes the war as ―A war that we have won and lost. The very worst
sort of war. A war that captures dreams and re-dreams them. A war that has made us adore
our conquerors and despise ourselves‖ (Roy 52). The shadows and whispers of the History
House represent India‘s colonial past and the consequent political uprisings. For the twins,
it is a past they cannot understand, but even still, they feel it‘s haunting. ―The History
House is the house of Kari Saipu, the Englishman who had ‗gone native‘ and shot himself
in the head when his lover‘s parents took the boy from him and sent him away to school‖
(Roy 51). The narrator says that ―Vellya Paapen tells the twins he encountered Kari Saipu‘s
ghost and pinned the ghost to the trunk of a rubber tree, where the pedophile ghost
remains‖ (Roy 189). Roy gives the History House a haunting history of sexual crime and
suicide, foreshadowing more evil to come.
The evil comes on the Night of Terror. The Touchable Policeman arrive ―Deadly
purposed‖ searching for Velutha after Sophie Mol‘s body is found (Roy 289). Rahel and
Estha, hiding at the History House, awake to screams as they watch the police beat Velutha
nearly to death ―mesmerized by something that they sensed but didn‘t understand: the
absence of caprice in what the policemen did‖ (Roy 292). The dismay comes living in the
absence of caprice, and the twins mirror the anxiety of the people of India as they struggle
with horrors they cannot understand. The police, with their batons, beat Velutha nearly to
death: ―a clinical demonstration in controlled conditions of human nature‘s pursuit of
ascendancy…human history, masquerading as God‘s Purpose‖ (Roy 292-293). In Rahel‘s
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view, the police are living out history; their socially and culturally conditioned minds take
control of their wills. Rahel describes their actions as competent and economic: ―After all
they were not battling an epidemic. They were merely inoculating a community against an
outbreak‖ (Roy 293). The police‘s actions illustrate the power of the culture over its
participants and the culture‘s rule over their actions. The police are following history‘s
orders. It is this history, and the history of the Night of Terror, that haunts Rahel and Estha
into adulthood. The History House shows the powerful effects of war and colonialism. Roy
creates a sense of disturbing anxiety in the confusion between a culturally tyrannical past
and a modern national identity. When the adult Rahel returns, the History House has been
invaded by Western culture as the fear that occurred there buries itself in commerce and
tourism. In 1992, the History House has become a five-star hotel and the terror remains
hidden ―under the happy humming of hotel cooks‖ (Roy 290). For Rahel and Estha, the
tragic history will always live on in the History House. But the hotel people have recreated
history as a tourist attraction of ―toy histories,‖ manufactured wooden houses, and
truncated kathakali performances (Roy 120-121). At the History House, tourism and
commerce erase the true ancestral history and instead employ a new cultural history to
impress the rich tourists. The threat of erasure takes on a Gothic tone as Rahel‘s toy watch
remains buried in the ground, ―A small forgotten thing. Nothing that the world would miss‖
(Roy 121). Roy utilizes the Gothic to underscore the terror and dangers of history‘s erasure.
The history of an entire nation can become a small forgotten thing. Doppelganger The
threat of erasure carries on in the novel through the motif of the double. The double motif,
a traditional Gothic trope, emerges in the twins of Rahel and Estha and illustrates the larger
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issue of India‘s struggle with identity. The double, or doppelganger, according to Freud,
serves as a prominent motif that produces an uncanny effect where, ―a person may identify
himself with another and so become unsure of his true self; or he may substitute the other‘s
self for his own‖ (Roy 142). Freud asserts that the double motif involves a ―harking back to
single phases in evolution of the sense of self, a regression to times when the ego had not
yet clearly set itself off against the world and from others‖ (Roy 143). From the Gothic
viewpoint, Mac Andrew refers to doubles as ―reflecting devices‖ (Roy 213).
―She asserts that the double signifies moral confusion and doubt‖ (Roy 107).
Notably, Mac Andrew points out that the Gothic double typically portrays the polar
opposites of good and evil. In employing the doubling motif, Roy utilizes the Gothic
convention, but at the same time, reinvents it. Rahel and Estha closely identify with each
other and in Freud‘s words, often substitute the other‘s self for his own. However, Roy
inverts this convention by not creating the twins as polar opposites of good and evil. They
are portrayed as so closely connected, they even communicate with their thoughts. As
children, ―Esthappen and Rahel thought of themselves together as me, and separately,
individually as We or Us‖ (Roy 4). Roy also creates ambiguity in their identity, mirroring
the national identity of India, reflecting Chatterjee‘s theory with regard to the paradoxes
and difficulties in India‘s struggle with identity. The narrator says, ―Edges, Borders,
Boundaries, Brinks and Limits have appeared like a team of trolls on their separate
horizons. Short creature with long shadows, patrolling the Blurry End‖ (Roy 5). The
identities of Rahel and her brother have become blurred as their history continues to haunt
their present and future. They cannot reconcile the demons of their oppressive past the
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drowning of their cousin, the policemen‘s murder of a blameless Untouchable, and their
involvement in the cover-up. For Rahel and Estha, edges, borders, and limitations have all
been crossed and history‘s shadows shape their identities, much like they blur the identity
of India. The despair becomes personal. For Rahel, the misery lives in her eyes: ―In the
country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of
peace, Worse Things kept happening‖ (Roy 22). For Estha, the despair lives in his silence:
―It wasn‘t an accusing, protesting silence as much as a sort of estivation, a dormancy‖ (Roy
12). Both are struggling with identity, lost in grief and guilt, their suffering reflected in
each other. As the narrator states, ―the emptiness in one twin was only a version of the
quietness in the other‖ (Roy 21). They are not opposites, but instead complement each
other in pain. Rahel brings the past back to Estha: ―It had been quiet in Estha‘s head until
Rahel came…The world, locked out for years, suddenly flooded in, and now Estha couldn‘t
hear himself for the noise‖ (Roy 16). For Estha, the past resurfaces with Rahel, along with
the other part of himself. Rahel views Estha as a part of herself as well. When Ammu dies,
Rahel does not write to Estha: ―There are things that you can‘t do like writing letters to a
part of yourself. To your feet or hair. Or heart‖ (Postcolonial Text Vol 6 No 1. 156). They
are forever joined as twins, as doubles, as accomplices in tragedy.
The influence of Western ideals upon India and its identity also emerges through
the twins. The twins believe the English are superior and that they are not as good the Von
Trapp children in The Sound of Music or their English cousin Sophie Mol. After Estha is
molested by the Orange drink, Lemon drink man, he returns to the theatre and compares
himself with the ―clean‖ Von Trapp children (Roy 100). Estha poses silent questions at the
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screen: ―Oh Baron von Trapp…could you love the little fellow with the organ in the smelly
auditorium? ...And his twin sister?‖ (Roy 101). He imagines Von Trapp asking: ―Are they
clean white children?‖ with Estha answering, ―No. (But Sophie Mol is)‖ (Roy 101). In
Estha‘s mind, heightened by the trauma of the molestation, he believes Captain Von Trapp
could not love him or his sister. They are not clean, not English, not good enough. Rahel
also feels inferior to Sophie Mol. When their cousin arrives, Rahel compares herself and
Estha with Sophie Mol: ―Little angels were beach-colored and wore bell-bottoms. Little
demons were mud brown in Airport-Fairy frocks with forehead bumps that might turn into
horns…And if you cared to look, you could see Satan in their eyes‖ (Roy 170). Rahel‘s
comparison represents the societal beliefs she has learned from adults. She and Estha are
the little demons. They are less than Sophie Mol. The thoughts of both Estha and Rahel
represent the cultural philosophy embedded in the Kerala children in 1969, an ideology that
deems them inferior to the English, a significance of colonialism. In the twins, Roy also
employs the Gothic convention of incest but with another challenge to the Western
narrative. In traditional Gothic fiction, Mac Andrew explains that incest introduces a major
theme: ―the quality of innocence that is based on ignorance of the world and the
paradoxical involvement of virtuous characters in the causes of evil‖ (71). Mac Andrew
states that explorations of human nature and sexuality represent ―continued explorations of
the self‖ (248). The incest between the twins does represent a continued exploration of the
self. However, in traditional Gothic convention, incest emerges as much more unsettling
and horrific. While the incest between the twins is taboo, Roy does not depict the act as
deplorable or appalling. Instead, she portrays it as a gentle and loving act. When Rahel
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turns to Estha in the dark, ―She whispers. She moves her mouth‖ (Roy 310). Estha ―takes
his fingers to it. To touch the words it makes. To keep the whisper‖ (Roy 310). The
descriptive language is lyrical and delicate, conveying tenderness and love. The narrator
states that the act is nothing that would ―separate Sex from Love. Or Needs from Feelings‖
(Roy 311). The twins have merged in an act of loving desperation. The narrator describes a
mood of heartbreaking grief: ―Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and
Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons…Only that they held each other close, long
after it was over. Only that what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous
grief‖ (Roy 311). Rahel and Estha identify most with each other and love each other best.
Roy‘s portrayal of incest is not violent and disturbing, but gentle, loving, inevitable. It is a
result of the twins‘ grief over the death of Sophie Mol, their betrayal of Velutha, and their
desperation to escape the pain. It is the consequence of the guilt of a country‘s haunted
past. Significantly, this scene appears near the end of the novel, further supporting the
notion that Roy presents a reinvention of the Gothic. The ending, with the act of incest,
results not in a restoration of order, but in Wisker‘s words, in a shifted order.
The structure of the story the rambling chronology, shifts in narration, strange
classification and phrasing also creates a sense of confusion and indecision throughout the
novel. With this structure, Roy at once engages and challenges the Gothic narrative
convention. The chronology of the novel jumps from present to past and past to present
repeatedly throughout the novel, at times even on the same page. As Punter points out, the
code of Gothic is ―not a simple one in which past is encoded in present or vice versa, but
dialectical, past and present intertwined, each distorting each other with the sheer effort of
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coming to grips‖ (419). Indeed, Roy‘s chronological jumps effectively represent a past and
present intertwined, with each distorting the other. The nonlinear chronology symbolizes
the larger issue of India‘s colonial past intertwined with its present, again with one
distorting the other. Thormann expands upon Punter‘s notion, asserting that ―the breaks in
the novel‘s narrative chronology present an worrying continuity and illustrate an
undercurrent of violence‖ (Thormann 300). The disruptive chronology does unsettle the
reader and provide an undertone of violence, which points to the undercurrent of violence
in the nation of India as a result of colonialism. Speaking of the Gothic in general terms,
Botting notes that the uncanny movement of a narrative structures between past and present
signals ―an untamed and wild invasion of the home rather than the comfortable
domestication‖ (129). The disjointed narrative does produce a wild, undomesticated effect
underscoring the possibility that India is not a country of comfortable domestication. The
novel is told loosely from the point of view of Rahel, as both a child and adult. At times,
the narration switches to a third-person omniscient view. Again, this produces an unsettling
effect and heightens the sense of disorder in the novel. The reader is hesitant of who is
telling the story. This uncertainty symbolizes the larger narrative question of nationality.
Roy utilizes this technique to question dominant historical narratives and at the same time,
present her version of the suffering and oppression in postcolonial India. Botting notes that
disruptive narratives challenge the legitimacy and unity of modernity: ―Part of the
challenge to modernity‘s assumptions, meanings, exclusions and suppressions has emerged
in fictions that juxtapose, and thereby reorder, narrative styles and traditions‖ (Botting
169). In reorganizing the narrative style, Roy empowers her work with a challenge to
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leading narratives of colonial and post-colonial India. Roy‘s use of the English language to
tell her story is noteworthy as it allows Roy to engage with the West by using its own
language. However, Roy also challenges Standard English with her use of unique
capitalization, short sentences, unusual word pairings, and repetition. In effect, she creates
a language form of her own attractive with but also disengaging from the English. Roy‘s
language presents a childlike, sympathetic viewpoint to intensify the horror of the suffering
of her characters and the people of India. Even the title of the novel works to this effect as
the first letters of each word spell out ―ghost,‖ a hybrid or innocent spelling of the English
―ghost.‖ In challenging the English language, Roy employs what Rader terms ―engaged
resistance‖ and enacts the ―ideological/textual dialogue‖ noted by Paravisini-Gebert. She
also creates a rebellion in that the Gothic emphasizes ―a disrupted language that signals a
revolution within the established system‖ (Williams 66). The bitter tone of irony in the
narrative, in Thormann‘s view, presents ideology as a ―rationalization of the suffering of
the powerless, of children, women, and lower castes‖ (304). Roy challenges this ideology
of rationalization by presentation its horror. Similarly, Elleke Boehmer argues: ―In
paragraph after paragraph of Roy‘s dense experimental writing, we see the English
language the language bequeathed by the British colonizer, as she recognized expanded,
distorted, excavated, disconcerted. There is . . . no question about the energy and
compositionality of this writing‖ (Boehmer 67).
Through her creative use of language, Roy establishes a unique and powerful
narrative that works on many levels. It engages in a dialogue with the West, challenges
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dominant narratives of India‘s history, revolts against oppressive ideologies, and illustrates
the disorder, violence, and anxiety of a nation grappling with its colonial past.
In The God of Small Things, Roy adopts conventional Gothic rudiments yet at the
same time, she challenges this convention to efficiently exemplify the lingering of India‘s
colonial past upon its present. By creating a Gothic hybrid, Roy establishes a form of
empowerment. In her utilization of intricate complexities of the Gothic tropes, she gives a
voice to the marginalized people of India. Roy‘s empowering Gothic hybrid underscores
the haunting of a colonial, culturally oppressive, and politically violent past upon a
postcolonial nation. Mirroring the theories of Chatterjee, Roy‘s use of the Gothic conveys
the anxiety and disorder of a nation struggling with a modern-day identity. Punter connects
global modernity to the supernatural:
As the great globalising project of modernity, which has its own controlling
relation to the postcolonial, rolls on, one of its more curious current effects,
is that, perhaps against expectation, we live increasingly in a world of
ghosts, spirits, phantoms. (61)
In The God of Small Things, Roy creates a world of ghosts that promise tocontinue
haunting.
The novel Nectar in a Sieve is set in one of the tea-estates, a symbol of colonial
exploitation in the British Empire situated on Assam hills in the northeast India. Family
values are a popular topic among politicians, religious leaders, educators, journalists,
and others. Although opinions differ on just what values are suitable for families, most
people agree that families are the best vehicles for teaching important moral lessons. In
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a small group, discuss the values that Nathan and Rukmani pass on to their family. The
novel focuses on the debasements brought on by hunger: starvation, prostitution,
emigration, the splitting-up of families, cheating, blackmailing, and so on. Rukmani‘s
family‘s absolute dependence on nature is so severe as to be pitiable for most of the
novel. The family is hungry; their youngest dies of starvation while outside the harvest
ripens, ever so slowly—―indifferent to [their] need‖ (71). Her family suffers from severe
malnourishment.
The novel Bye-Bye Blackbird portrays Indians and Englishmen in England with
their problems both physical and psychological. Adit, an Indian is married to Sarah an
English girl. Both of them suffer from problems such as the loss of identity, alienation
and humiliation largely on account of racial and cultural prejudices. The novel is
basically concerned with immigrants abroad, their experience of alienation, loneliness
and nostalgia for their past life in India. This novel covers numerous aspects of the EastWest encounter, between the British and the Asiatic immigrants in England and one
such relationship is of marriage between disquieting life, the immigrant husband quietly
pocketing insults and humiliations, enamored of his fascination for England. Adit
marries an English girl Sarah and by doing so he incurs the anger of the white society. If
a girl marries in the same culture it is easier for her to adjust to her new home and
people. But interracial and intercultural marriage causes adjustment problem which are
not easy to overcome. In Sarah‘s case the problem becomes more complicated for she
has married a person whose race was once ruled over by her own. Anita Desai has
brought to focus the exile, self-alienation and torturous estrangement experienced by
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Adit, Dev and Sarah in Bye-Bye Blackbird. The uprooted individuals Adit, Dev and
Sarah have constant identity crises and suffer from cultural and social alienation
throughout the novel.
With this structure, Roy at once engages and challenges the Gothic narrative
convention and used the techniques of representing the children's viewpoint and their
innocence. Roy also employs a disjointed, non-sequential narrative that echoes the process
of memory, especially the resurfacing of a formerly suppressed, painful memory. The
uncovering of the story of Sophie Mol's death existing concurrently with the forward
moving story of Rahel's return to Ayemenem and reunion with Estha creates a complex
narrative that reiterates the difficulty of the subject of the story and the difficulty of the
culture from which the story originates. Time is rendered somewhat static as the different
parts of the one narrative line are intertwined through repetition and non-sequential
discovery. This is also part of the way in which Roy uses real life places and people that
she has shifted and altered for use within this story. All of the multifarious elements come
together to construct a diverse look at one instance of Indian culture and the effect of the
caste system on life and love during a time of post-colonialism. As the children attempt to
form their own identities, naming and renaming themselves in the process, Roy places in
parallel the effect of the process, by intertwining the past and the present. Similarly, this
process echoes the progression of the Indian people, like all other cultures that attempt to
find ways to maintain their traditions within a time of increasing globalization.