DIASPORIC IDENTITY: MIRRORING CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI

Divakaruni belongs to the group of of Diasporic writers who explore the conditions of Diasporic realities; the phenomenon of isolation, alienation, cultural heterogeneity, expatriation, syncretism, dialogisms and hybridity in identity and their relationship with phenomenon of the world. She has been a sensitive woman, a consummate artist, a visionary endowed with exceptional human sensibility and innovative vision. The paper in context seeks to explore the dimensions of diasporic sensibility in some of Divakaruni’s seminal books which further gives rise to intellectual curiosity.


ISSN: 2320-5407
Int. J. Adv. Res. 8(08), 1223-1226 1224 adolescence, and early adulthood. The novel recounts the process of epistemological construction of Sudha and Anju. It also expounds how they experience social, cultural and linguistic realities which shape the process of their becoming or the reality of their Bildung formation. The novel has been divided into two books; "The Princess in the Palace of Snakes" and "The Queen of Sword" in which the process of becoming and unbecoming of both Sudha and Anju have been explored. The novel reinstates some underlying features of female Bildungsroman as has been expounded by Jerome Hamilton Buckley'sSeason of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding (1974) defines it the "[N]ovel of all-around development or self-culture with a more or less conscious attempt on the part of the hero to integrate his powers, to cultivate himself by his experience" 1 . The Bildung vacillates in the space between the child to the youth and the youth to the age of adulthood, the protagonist experiences several stumbling stones which propel her journey further, however the narrative pattern of the novel charts the growth and development of the character but it does not allow the protagonists to attain their inner culture, in fact they attain a failed Bildung which is amply clear through the failed narrative of Sudha and Anju. The first book of the novel recounts the relationship between Sudha and Anju, how they become almost inseparable friends, sisters and a constant companion for each other. "The Prince in the Palace of Snakes" states that both Suhda and Anju grow in a family which is controlled and run by three mothers; Pishi, Gouri, and Nalini.Pishi is the aunt of Sudha and Anju and the youngest brother of Pishi, BijoyChatterjee marries Gouri and thus Anju is the daughter of Bijoy and Gouri. Nalini is the mother of Sudha. Hence, the protagonists grow in a joint family, though they are sisters yet different. Sudha is a storyteller and dreams to maintain a family whereas Anju is very enthusiastic to study literature in a collage. When they are caught skipping their schools, the plan of their life is changed and the family prepares them to get married and finally they marry on the same day. Sudha moves along with their husband whereas Anju plans to move to United States of America where her husband lives. Though they are separated yet they are in constant touch with each other through letters. Finally, Sudha along with her daughter goes to Anju where two sisters are united but it offers some other kind of challenges in their life.
The Vine Desire (2002) with its extraordinary depth and sensibility, probes the trauma of immigration in the background of the complexity of personal relationship where the two lifelong friends get reunited and how the reunited relationship goes under a dangerous metamorphosis when the husband of one is attracted towards another. The book one "Subterranean Truth" records "The day Sudha stepped off the plane from India into Anju's arms, leaving a ruined marriage behind, their lives changed forever. And not just Sudha's and Anju's, Sunil's life changed, too. And baby Dayita's, like invisible sound weaves that ripple out and out, the changes reached all the way to India, to Ashok waiting on his balcony for the wind to turn…the changes multiplied the way vines might in a magical tale, their tendrils reaching for people whose names Sudha and Anju did not even know yet" 2 . Hence, in Vine of Desire there is a fine balance of internal and external conflict.
The novel Queen of Dreams (2004) marks a growth of Divakaruni's vision of immigration. The narrative is focused on the conflict and crises of survival of a Bengali immigrant family living in California at the beginning of new millennium. The mother, who comes from the native slum area of Calcutta, is endowed with the exceptional power of interpreting the hidden messages of the dreams of her customers. Like that of the mistress of spices, her identity has been acknowledged as the 'Queen of Dreams'. She wants to spare her daughter Rakhi, from the tales of her strange and painful past. Rakhi, in spite of her birth and nurturing in American life, unconsciously retains her innate bonding with Indian life, Indian scenery and Indian culture. She is married to Sonny, another Indianized American but fails to get desired contentment in her married life. However her six year old daughter Johna remains a link between them. Besides of her fascination for painting, Rakhi in association with her father runs a Chai Shop and this chai shop becomes the meeting point for all distinguished immigrants. It provides a natural feeling of fraternity for the immigrants. After the death of her mother in a car accident, her father tries to make financial support to save 'chai shop' from being closed. Father also supports Rakhi in translating her mother's dream journals from Bengali to English to reconstruct the mystery of the life of her mother. The novel is structured as the postmodern metanarrative and the narrative moves between past and present. In Queen of Dreams, in the background of magic and fancy, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni deals with the postmodern issues like racism, terrorism, painting, dreams and the conflict of dislocation and relocation affecting the life and sensibility of immigrants. Here Divakaruni presents a composite spectrum of enigmatic situation. In this novel, Johna's anxiety to discover India through her own imagination suggests that the shadows of homeland are integrated in the inner consciousness and they are beyond the constraints of time and space.
The novel The Palace of Illusions (2008) reinvents Indian myth in the light of western ideologies. It is an attempt of Divakaruni to give a voice to Panchaali, the fire born heroine of Mahabharata. The novelist here has tried to a 1225 weave a vibrant interpretation of the ancient tale of Panchaali's being married to five royal husbands. Panchaali did her best to support her husbands to regain their status and kingdom. However, she could not deny her complicated friendship with the enigmatic Krishna or her secret attraction to the mysterious man who is her husband's more dangerous enemy.
In One Amazing Thing (2010), Divakaruni makes experiment in the mode of travel narrative with the ample scope for the self-revelation of the characters. The structure of the novel is the collection of the experience of nine travellers trapped in the visa office at an Indian consulate after a massive earthquake in an American city. The group consists of two visa officers, an Indian woman in her last years. Her granddaughter, Lily, is an ex-soldier haunted by her own guilt. Uma is an Indian American girl bewildered by her parent's decision to shift to Kolkata. Tariq is a young Muslim from Kolkata. As rescue operation was going on, to come out of the trauma of earthquake, they begin to tell each other stories related with their own life, narrating one amazing thing from each one's life. These tales are the tales related to the harsh realization of life with the immense possibilities of affirmation of human conditions. Apart from some notable novels, Chitra Benerjee Divakaruni also has penned some beautiful collection of short stories. The first collection of short stories entitled Arranged Marriage (1995) contains eleven stories; "The Bats", "Cloths", "Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs", "The World Love", "A Perfect Life, The Maid Servant's Story" , "The Disappearance", "Doors", "The Ultra Sound", "Affair", and "Meeting Mrinal". Divakaruni with these short stories explores the realities of Diaspora where she delineates the condition of cultural alienation, expatriation, assimilation, disassociation, hyphenated identity, in-betweenness, syncretism and hybridity as has been explicated by HomiBhabha'sThe Location of Culture (1994) 3  The second story entitled "The Intelligence of Wild Things" explains the phenomenon of how the shift of geography creates some irresolvable barriers, however Divakaruni endeavors to address the structural realities of all binaries and tries to establish balance between past and present, native and alien, pragmatism and human values and the temporal and timeless. Towards the end of the story, Divakaruni condemns the narrator and she records, "That is the trouble with our Indian families, always worrying too much. Is it good for your brother to be on his own for a while. He is probably having a great time at the university. For all you know, he has half a dozen girlfriends and would much rather you did not keep tabs on him."(46). Thus the story passes through the conduit of emotional tempest where pathos and empathy dominate. The story also suggests that it is possible to reconcile the hiatus between cultures but is extremely difficult to resist the burden of emotion that is integral to human existence as it has been theorized by Arthur Danto's Narration and Knowledge (1985) 5 . Further the story "Love of a Good Man" also addresses the question of personal sensitivity and conflict. The plot of the story encapsulates the action and the narrative of the mother and the father in order to unfold the thematics of emotional crises and the texture of emotional crises has aptly been delineated by Jain, Jasbir Jain's Writers of Indian Diaspora(1998) 6.
When the volume comes to "The Unknown Errors of Our Lives" the writer turns towards the complex texture of human relationship. She does not provide the reader with psychological crisis in human relationship but she also underlines different lacunas and gaps which may fissure the human relationship in social and cultural hemisphere as has been adumbrated by John McLeod'sLiterature of Indian Diaspora (2000) 7 . The ultimate story entitled "The Names of Stars in Bengali" involves the poetics of exile, obscurity between mother and daughter relationship, nostalgia for the childhood memories and the clash of values of East and West. In a nutshell the story sums up all major arguments that Divakaruni has attempted to establish. BeenaAgrawal in her Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Like BharatiMukharjee, ChitraBanerjee through her novels constructs the world of immigrant's experiences and represents the plight of Indian immigrant women. The emotional identification and affirmation of self-anguish through their conflicts; provide a rare authenticity to her narrative presentations. In the galaxy of immigrants' literature, Divakaruni breaks the traditional matrix of 'home and homelessness' and constructs varied narrative patterns to provide ample spaces to her immigrant characters to reveal their suppressed sensibility for their homeland. Besides of the nostalgia of the characters, she encourages ethnic arts, performances, ethics and poetic realization of native sensibility. She has a realization of paradigms and commitments of her narrative art. Locating her position in the realm of Indian Diasporic writers, she admits: "Each one of us has our own concerns, style and subject matter. Some of mine are immigrant issues, women's roles and an interest in folk tales and magic. I have also become very interested in writing for children." (Interview: Deslit Daily) 9 Her agenda is evident because in her writings, she presents the message of cross-cultural understanding beyond the ivory towers of academia. She defines her own positions, "I am a listener, a facilitator, connectors to people, to me, and the art of dissolving boundaries is what living is all about." (Interview: Softky Elizabeth). As a writer she fulfils a significant role, the role of the 'connector' of cultures. She writes with the assumption that women as immigrants, have a better sense of cultural identity and they can more successfully work for the assimilation of cultures. Deviating from depressing cultural bouts, she records the incidents and the consequences of the horrors of violence against women crossing cultural boundaries. The idea of national consciousness, realization of the warmth of the mechanism of personal relationship, innate bonding with geography and culture, inheriting the heritage of ethnic arts, have been the prime issues integrated in the Diasporic consciousness presented by Divakaruni in her writings.