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11 http:// english .aizeonpublishers.net/content/2014/1/ eng1 1-14.pdf The English Literature Journal Vol. 1, No. 1 (2014): 11-14 Review Article Open Access Identity and Diaspora in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake Ritu Bhardwaj* Department of English, Govt. Ripudaman College, Nabha, Punjab, India *Corresponding author: Ritu Bhardwaj The Diaspora experience in the words of Stuart Hall “is defined not by essence or purity, but by recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity, by a conception of identity which lives with and through, not despite difference... (Hall 402). Diaspora has been a favourite topic for disgruntling dialecticism, as well as a source of literary outputs. People who have flown over the distant territories of globe, their settled assurances of home and roots being blown over into smithereens of uncertain insecurities have been represented in diverse ways in diverse writings all over the world. Diaspora is not a new phenomenon just as exile or expatriate, only it’s phenomenal scale in our globalizing new world. The reason for this is the increasing interactivity between local and the distant due to communication technologies, willed migration of people from their place of origin especially from third world countries to others in search of greener pastures. Diasporas are deracinated population who’s cultural and ethnic origin lie in a land other than where they currently reside and who’s economic, social and political affiliations cross borders of nations. Diasporic studies presuppose the existence of displaced groups of people who retain a collective sense of identity. While major concerns of the most diasporic writers are fractured and fluid nature of individual identities they also foreground generational differences in exploring how new and old Diasporas relate to their land of origin and the host culture. The element of nostalgia and a," Quest for Identity" or "Roots" mark the diasporic fiction. Terry Eagleton writes in, The Idea of Culture (2000) that the very word culture contains a tension between making and being made. Indians of almost all Diasporas have sought to record the manner in which they have adopted to their environment and how they have experienced both identification with and alienation from their old and new homelands. Jhumpa Lahiri has said, “The question of identity is always a difficult one, but especially for those who are culturally displaced, as immigrants are who grow up in two worlds simultaneously”. Due to the displacement, Diaspora’s quest for identity, a sense of inability to belong becomes all the more difficult and desperate. The rootlessness, coupled with the indifferent attitude of host culture adds to sense of otherness and alienation .Diaspora's sense of loss becomes tragic when they think of returning to their homeland. The homes to which they want to return undergoes complete transformation and turns out to be a romantic illusion. If seen metaphysically human beings turn out to be eternal exiles. Man does not have a permanent home anywhere. It is this displacement which gives diasporic writing its peculiar qualities of loss and nostalgia. As Rushdie has said in Imaginary Homelands they are obliged to deal in broken mirrors, some of fragments have been lost. An immigrant, even though westernized, has a painful experience. He is vexed with identity crisis; his native culture unconsciously interferes with the logical grasp of alien culture. They feel suspended in a limbo. The dedication to the set traditions and sense of belonging to their motherland comes in opposition with new environment resulting in desolateness and feeling of insecurity. The immigrant faces two questions "who am I?" and “where is here?” Identity crisis or the search/quest for identity is no longer confined to the individual it can characterize a group, an institution, a class, a profession or even a nation. An individual’s sense of identity is neither completely conscious nor unconscious although at times it appears to be exclusively the one or the other. Quest is also one which symbolizes the human search Received: 05 October 2013 Accepted: 29 October 2013 Online: 20 January 2014 ISSN: 2348-3288 12 http:// english .aizeonpublishers.net/content/201 4 / 1 / eng1 1 - 14 . pdf for attaining whatever is distant and dream like, a search which skews from the deepest layers of one’s soul, emotions and sub conscious desires. In a way man’s quest is meaningful and universal. The recurrent theme in Lahiri’s writing is the bitter - sweet experience of emigrant to America from India. Her characters are often caught in a cultural limbo - excited about their new home but grieving the loss of their country of origin. In an interview Lahiri has admitted: “I” m lucky that I’ m between two worlds … I don’t really know what a distinct south Asian identity means. I don’t think about that when I write, I just try to bring a person to life”. And that is exactly what she does though her characters. All names have meanings and that is what makes them m eaningful and symbolic in life as well as in literature. Names are symbols of identity. As identity becomes the core issue, the names become quite significant. They are conspicuous not only by their presence but their absence as well. In literature, dealin g with the clash of cultures, countries, and races, names emerge as identity symbols. The novel represents the experience of a very specific community which has no name. Sociologically, they are second generation south Asian immigrant or south Asian Am ericans. She focuses on the cultural dislocations of one family, immigrants from Calcutta who settle in Boston to study, work and raise a family. The novel moves quietly, eloquently across its central arc from the birth of a son to the death of a father. It is also a story of guilt and liberation because it speaks about the universal struggle to extricate ourselves from the past, from family and obligation and the curse of history. The great concern of novel is that Gogol the representative of community w ithout a name, is himself misnamed Gogol, struggles with a name he is embarrassed by and a heritage he is not sure of either. Gogol wants to redefine himself on the terms that he feels are his own rather than those that come from his parent’s Bengali immi grant culture. In an amazing act of self definition, he abandons the name Gogol and tries to become someone else. The question of identity is a very difficult one it is related to unbelongingness and especially arises when a person is culturally displac ed and he can’t co relate with any of the two worlds in which he is living. Ashima Ganguly born and bred in India and married in America undergoes same phase and she feels that living in a foreign land is like a lifelong pregnancy. She clutches to her mo ral and cultural ideology of Bengali Indian. Ashima and Ashoke Ganguly try to create a small Bengal clutching to their roots and culture in America far from the land of their birth and struggling for an identity in the land of opportunities and riches. A t home and with friends they speak in Bengali and eat only Bengali dishes with their hands. An atmosphere of home is tried to be built up for children and themselves far from their real home. This sense of alienation from the western culture and the land where they live creates a feeling of rootlessness among the children who can neither co - relate with the place where they are born and bred nor to the place to which their parents belong to and about which they are always being told about. The Namesake ha s number of interesting parallels with Gogol’s The Overcoat especially regarding the naming. The story toys with anonymity with the prospect of namelessness, it is a perfect reference for Lahiri’s story about the strangeness of the Indian immigrant experie nce in the United states and that’s somewhat true also because the child of immigrants begins in a kind of nowhere place. Gogol or even Lahiri is firmly of America but is not quite an American in part because they are not recognized as such by others. The child may have privileges, access to education, better opportunities but still he/she has to first discover and then adapt to American values and life concepts which are firmly resisted at home. The title of the novel interrogates as does Shakespeare, asking, “What’s in a name”? We name a child and fix his identity, the migrants continue to observe all rites and ceremonies their parents and their grandparents had been observing. But even this relation with the past is essentially imaginative, a poor s ubstitution of the actual. Diaspora is a site for cultural dichotomies, parents do their utmost to create Bengali ambience for Gogol and Sonia by arranging all Bengali get - togethers, but the two as they grew in hybrid culture, part Bengali, part American, gingerly respond to their parents efforts to create a homeland in America, an oasis of Bengali culture. Ashima tells Gogol about Durga Puja, she also makes him memorise four line children’s poem by Tagore. But at the same time she is conscious of her child being American student and makes him watch Sesame Street and the Electric Company in order to match with English he uses at school. So Gogol is always sailing in two boats simultaneously,one with his parents at home speaking Bengali and living in Be ngali style and the other of American Indian. But being too small to understand the impact of these things he is least bothered about his hyphenated existence as long as he has not stepped into the outer world which is alien to his parents but not for him as he is born American Indian. His identity as Gogol, namesake of Nikolai Gogol, Russian author, looms over longer period of his life, creating a divide self which can’t reconcile with his past present or future, always drifting like a rudderless boat from one shore to another without ever realizing its true self. The main problem with Gogol is that he is a hyphenated character living in two totally different worlds, the stress of which he can’t cope up, he is lost and drifts away from his parents and culture. He wants Ritu Bhardwaj / The Eng Lit J. 2014 , 1(1): 11 - 1 4 13 http:// english .aizeonpublishers.net/content/201 4 / 1 / eng1 1 - 14 . pdf to be an American living in Americ, rather than as Indian living in America. He belongs to second generation of Diaspora which is born and bred in America and whose values have been defined by American culture for whom India is an alien country to be visited once a year to spend holidays and meet relatives with whom you don’t have any have any close contact except for two or three month they spend in India in the houses of different relatives who are always fawning upon these NRIs. La hiri’s thinking is existential. The man is thrown into the world abandoned to chance factor, which has already constituted him. He discovers himself as already brought into being, a fact among other facts. This is man’s factuality and it becomes his destin y. Haunted by the fear of death, his father decided to move to America, as if the new country were immune from death. Lahiri also suggests that though one is determined by chance factors but one also determines oneself. Man is both that is which he has been but and also which he can become. Man is born without his choosing it in a certain family, community, but he is free and responsible to transform the world and redefine as Gogol does in the novel by refusing to be Gogol anymore. Gogol changes his name. All appears to be easy with the change of name but still something is there that irks him that deflates his ego, divides his identity. He is happy with his new name,Nikhil, but still feels like being separated or severed from his past which was at tached with Gogol. His past continuously haunts and to get rid of this past he severs his connection with past. “There is only one complication. He doesn’t feel like Nikhil not yet. Part of the problem is that the people who now know him as Nikhil have no idea that he used to be Gogol. They know him only in the present, not at all in the past.” (Lahiri 105) . So far Gogol has never ever known about the word ABCD that is American Born confused Deshi. One day he has to attend a panel discussion about India n novels written in English, as one of the presenters on panel was Amit his distant cousin because his mother has asked him to do so. One sociologist on panel explains that: “Teleologically speaking ABCD’s are unable to answer the question, “where are yo u from?” Here he realizes that it he who is being discussed because he born in America never thinks of India as a desh. He thinks of it as Americans do, as India.” (Lahiri 118) He realizes that although he understands his mother tongue and can speak f luently but can’t read it or write it. Even his Americanised accent in India was a source of amusement to his relatives who never understood a single word. He has never ever noticed ABCD’s on his campus, nor he ever wanted to remain in contact with them a s they reminded him too much of the way his parents choose to live. Befriend people not so much because they like them, but because of a past they happen to share. He wants to carve a separate identity of his, different from that of his parents to under stand the reality of life where no one just know him as Nikhil Ganguly son of Ashoke Ganguly but as American Nikhil, an architect. His search for identity lies at roots of his wanderings, he moves from one place to other, away from his parents home Pember ton road. Just like his father he is searching roots far away from the roots He is having wings but his feet are ingrained in his past, which he can’t understand. The book advances through the women who serve as signposts along the road of Gogol’s searc h for identity. Maxine Ratliff, an old money New Yorker, when he falls for her, its more than her blond hair and green eyes it’s the family’s ea sy way of inhabiting the world. So different from the awkwardness of his parents. In the death of his fathe r, he finds a beginning, awareness and understanding of the place of individual within the family. The ambivalence of his in - between state ceases to trouble him anymore. From here he starts on the journey to the end of his quest of identity as who he is, w here he belongs to. He identifies himself with his culture and roots. He is now Bengali Indian in America, assimilation of two cultures . CONCLUSION From where do we take our notions of romantic love, from our family and friends, or from the society and th e media? How much does our cultural heritage define our ideas and experience of love? Lahiri has explored in several ways the difficulty of reconciling cross - cultural rituals around death, dying and love. She has tried to answer all these questions in he r own poise through the quest of identity of her characters. Who are what they are actually, Indians at heart, having familial ties, bonds that last long than all the physical relations they build around themselves. The second generation Diaspora finds t heir roots only after undergoing cultural imbalance. Multiculturalism teaches them that where the person may go or wander, he will always go back to roots in search of his identity. His expatriate sensibility will never remain in rest until and unless hi s quest ends. The authenticity of one’s self, its discovery is full of trials and errors but this search is meaningful as it will ultimately lead person to find a meaning in this otherwise meaningless world. “Nothing begets anything”, but something does p rovide a self. Gogol realizes now that he has spent years maintaining distance from his origins and his parents bridging that distance. How could, he wondered, his parents did it when they decided to come to America, leaving behind their family and frie nds. The novel comes full circle with Gogol’s reflection on human alienation. It started with a push towards anonymity, Gogol’s, in the very name he was given sadness and amusement. He had Ritu Bhardwaj / The Eng Lit J. 2014 , 1(1): 11 - 1 4 14 http:// english .aizeonpublishers.net/content/201 4 / 1 / eng1 1 - 14 . pdf © 2014 ; AIZEON Publishers; All Rights Reserved This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the origina l work is properly cited. tried to correct this error and yet it had not been fully possible to reinvent him fully. Man is made of events from his birth till death, one can’t forego one’s past and roots, these will remain forever looming here and there shaping one’s present and future. Gogol is thus shaped by the contingency of life, includi ng his naming. These happenings formed his identity. He could not have shaped them, for the world is contingent as there is no reason for its being and central fact about human existence is its temporality. The book gives a dimension into the life of ne xt generation Indian kids growing up in western culture. Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along path, strewn with conflicting loyalties and heart wrenching love affairs that lead him back to the old ways of his parents. Lahiri with pe netrating insight reveals not only the defining power of names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves. The first generation’s story was about adaptation and l earning, acculturating, and also discovering new things about themselves. The second generation found itself presented with two conflicting realities and cultures and sets of expectation. The struggle exists at a formative level and there’s a sense of he lplessness and even desperation. Except Gogol no one in the family is aroused out of this in authenticity. He alone in the end chooses to rise out of his average existence. He resolved to leave a name behind, which an average person would hardly think of. Thus he hoped to become a category which is desirable because to become entails the realization that we must die, a realization which is of crucial importance. Gogol in his reflection achieves what Nikolai Gogol was he becomes a commentator. He a ssumes his parents; consciousness Diasporic in essence, that one should retrace one’s origins because one belongs there. He himself had spent years maintaining distance from his origins and yet for all his aloofness, his impersonality of naming him as som eone else, he heard the call of conscience. Human existence, as Gogol also comes to posit in the end, is being in the world his parents were born in a society, in a family and a state. Their very structure was constituted by their relation with others an d the world. There is no escape from involvement but it should be authentic involvement. Gogol stands out as unlikely man in the chaos that surrounds him, and his uniqueness strikes us to the point of oddity. He is the product of expatriate sensibility e merging out of the clash of continents and cultures, a child of abrupt historical journey patterns, a representative of generation with torn hopes and psyche. He can say, he is an allegorical man whose life encapsulates a whole collective historical experi ence. The quest for identity in his case can be said as a rootless search for life boats of endurance and survival. Philosophically it is a deep exploration to reach a stage of conviction about value of life which pitted against the forces of history and events . REFERENCES 1. Bala, Suman, ed. Jhumpa Lahiri: The Master Story teller A Critical Response to Intereter of Maladies. New Delhi: KPH., 2002 2. Bhabha Homi K. The Locaiton of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. 3. Eagleton, Terry. The Idea of Culture. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. 4. Hall, Stuart. Cultural Identity and Diaspora’ in Colonial Discourse and Post Colonial Theory. ed.Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, London: Longman, 1993. 5. Jain, Jasber. Critical Spectrum: Essays in Literary culture. Jaipur: Rawat publica tions, 2003. 6. Jha, Paramanand. Home and Abroad: Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies. The Indian Journal of English Studies, Vol. XXXVIII (2000 - 2001). 7. Kaur, Tejinder, and N.K. Neb, eds. Perspectives on Diaspora Indian Fiction in English. Jalandhar. Nirm an Publications, 2005. 8. Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Namesake. New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2003. 9. Sharma, Kavita A ,Adeshpal. Theorising and Critiquing Indian Diaspora, Creative New Literature Series - 64. New Delhi: Creative Books, 2000. ***** Ritu Bhardwaj / The Eng Lit J. 2014 , 1(1): 11 - 1 4