characterised their is -...

76

CHAPTER-IV

Bharati Mukherjee : Striking Roots

*

The female protagonists of Bharati Mukherjee's earlier novels

characterised by their rootlessness and their incapacity to belong; while even their

attempts to find roots are either half-hearted or unrealistic. Mukherjee is an

expatriate writer who says she is "writing about the here and now of America."1

are

Her protagonists are either Indians living abroad (in the U.S.) or Indians who have

come back home after a period of staying abroad. Though none of the novels is

actually autobiographical, the novelist’s experiences first in Canada and then the

U.S. have coloured the perceptions of her characters. She says : "I wonder if my

reluctance to write straight or naked autobiographical fiction relates to my Indian

background. I don't want them to know what I'm really thinking ”.2 An upper-class

Indian home on a visit after seven years abroad, a middle-class Indian emigrating

to the U.S. with her engineer-husband who is in search of greener pastures and a

young widow off to the U.S. to fulfil her dead husband’s cherished dream - all the

three protagonists have to create a home away from home. The protagonists are

characterised by certain qualities which are responsbile for these characters to face

and overcome or succumb to the traumatic experience of what Clark Blaise calls

"unhousement and rehousement".3 Bharati Mukherjee has admitted that an issue

"...the finding of a new identity...the painful orvery important to her is ;

exhilarating process of pulling yourself out of the culture that you were bom into,

and then replanting yourself in another culture".4

77

The Tiger’s Daughter is the story of a rich industrialist's pampered daughter -

Tara- who returns to Calcutta "in search of the Indian dream"5 after seven years in

the U.S. Unable to fit into the culture of Calcutta where she grew up, she finds

that she is as much of an alien at home as she was abroad. Wife deals with the

pre- and post-marital experiences of Dimple Dasgupta-an ordinary-looking, dull,

middle-class girl, who fed on film magazines and T.V.serials is unable to accept

the humdrum existence that marriage leads her into. Moving to New York only

makes matters worse and her psychotic nature finds a final answer only in the

gruesome murder of her husband, after planning suicide in a dozen different ways.

Jasmine is the story of an uneducated, simple but courageous Punjabi peasant girl

Jasmine, who travels, from an inconspicuous village in Punjab, through the

breadth of the U.S. in order to fulfil a far-fetched dream. Her determination and

resilience help her in the new land. The beauty as well as the brutality of America

are encapsulated in the experiences of Jasmine who changes names and identities

with equal ease. The first two are unable to come out of their alien status and

become an integral part of their new milieu while Jasmine succeeds in

experiencing life to the full with all the "exuberance of immigration."6

As an emigrant to Canada and then the U.S Bharati Mukherjee has

personally experienced both negative hatred and positive welcome in the country

of immigration. Her experiences in the two countries were widely different.

Though she is married to a Canadian, her experiences in Canada were not very

pleasant as she was often suspected of being "a shoplifter, frequently assumed to

be a domestic and praised by astonished auditors (sic) that (she) I did not have a

78

Her emigration to Canada was a natural outcome of hersing-song accent".7

marriage and not in quest of the American dream. Her three protagonists emigrate

for three different reasons. Even when she is totally unprepared for it, Tara is sent

abroad for a degree by her father, who assumes that Calcutta is no longer as safe

it once was because of its "constant gheraos and Coke bottles filled with urine

and vulgar men leering at them."8 As a protected child, Tara had never been

as

outside Bengal except for vacations in the hills or sea-side resorts. Now, when she

is suddenly transported to Vassar, she finds everything unusual and even

unacceptable. She considers her "father's decision to send her to Vassar strangely

ruthless, though courageous."9 At Vassar she is lonely and uneasy, sensing

discrimination even when her friend refuses to share her bottle of mango chutney

laughs at her mother's letter describing the valiant sacrifice of the brave ja

Being "pushed to the periphery of her old world,"10 Tara continues to cling to her

or wans.

old loyalties while;

the girls in the residence hall tried to draw her out. They lent

her books and records and hand lotions unasked. But how

could Tara share her Camac Street thoughts with the pale,

dry-skinned girls the same way they shared their Alberto V05

(sic) in the shower?1 1

In her attempts to get acclimatized to the new surroundings and culture, Tara,

“stayed up till two in the morning discussing birth control with her dormitory

neighbours...(tried) cycling blithely from class to class, rubbing Nivea cream on

79

her face to protect it from the hostile weather”12 and even "started to think for

herself in the dormitory at Vassar."13 Though the desire to become a part of her9

new milieu is strong, Tara's attempts appear very superficial. She lacks the

capacity to probe into the differences between the two cultures, accept the merits

ot both or one and then adopt the necessary changes. Hence, she fails to feel at

home, inspite ot her best intentions.

Dimple emigrates after a seemingly long wait, when she prays and hopes

that America would welcome them early as she wants to start a new life, escape

from the claustrophobia of a small house, an unlit staircase, water to be carried up

in buckets and stored, Mrs. Basu's hypochondriac, nagging and the humdrum,

unexciting existence that she feels marriage has led her into. Though she imagines

that moving to the U.S. will bring about a sea-change in her life, she soon realizes9

that her bitterness and loneliness only increase in the U.S. Dimple and Amit meet

and socialise only with the Indians there and her attempts at acculturation are

limited to learning to shop at the super-market, swilling beer, watching T.V.,

listening to discussions on mugging, kidnapping and rape and finally a mild

flirtation, or succumbing to seduction, with Milt. With these superficial attempts,

Dimple can never become a part of American society and hence remains what

Ratna Das calls her - "a resident alien".14

Jasmine was written after Bharati Mukherjee migrated to the U.S. and hence

reveals a more positive approach to the problem of immigration. The protagonist,

Jasmine, is very different from the other two protagonists and her reason for

emigrating and her experiences too are very different. Moving to the U.S. as an

k

80t

%

illegal immigrant with forged papers, with little or no knowledge of lite in the

U.S., armed with just the address of a Prof. Vadhera whom she had never met,%

t

Jasmine’s entry into the U.S. is fraught with dangers and pitfalls. The condition of

such immigrants is described in vivid detail: I

we are refugees and mercenaries and guest workers; you see•%

us sleeping in airport lounges; you watch us unwrapping the

last of our native foods, unrolling our prayer rugs, reading our

holy books, taking out for the hundredth time an aerogram

promising a job or place to sleep, a newspaper in our

language, a photo of happier times, a passport a visa, a laissez,

passer.15

Yet, from the moment Jasmine murders Half-Face and walks out empty-handed*

into the highway, American life swallows her up. Picked up by the kind-hearted

Lillian Gordon, she has experiences similar to other illegal immigrants like the

Kanjobal women. She becomes care- giver and later Day-Mummy to Duff, fits in

easily into the vacant slot left by Wylie in Taylor's life, runs away from him

fearing an attack by Sukhi - her husband’s assassin-, befriends Darrell and even

carries Bud’s child without being married to him. Her experiences are as varied as

the vast American subcontinent which she traverses. It is clear that for Jasmine it

is willingness to accept the new culture that makes the process of acculturation

She avoids even talking about Hasnapur as even "memories are a sign of

disloyalty".16 Ofcourse, she experiences the culture shock and feeling of novelty

easy.

* *

that all immigrants have to face. On seeing a revolving door for the first time, she

m

m

w

$

814

wonders: "How could something be always open and at the same time always§

She has an unpleasant.experience when "This American beggar kept

clawing at me, grabbing and touching me in unfamiliar ways,"1* and then kept«

yelling abuses at her. Life in America often seems like a whirlpool to her: "I feel

at times like a stone hurtling through diaphanous mist, unable to grab hold, unable

to slow myself, yet unwilling to abandon the ride I'm on".ly Yet, Jasmine does nott

face the dilemmas that trouble Tara and Dimple because she is willing to face the

fact that life in the U.S. is radically different from that in India. She exhibits a

resilience that is capable of adapting to every changed situation.

mplifies the joys of immigration and makes no special efforUto keep in touch

with Indians: "Aside from my Dr.Jaswani and Dr.Patel in Infertility, I haven't

spoken to an Indian since my months in Flushing,'*

desire to return to her homeland, Jasmine too has, like Bharati Mukherjee herself,

"joined imaginative forces with an anonymous, driven under-class of semi-

assimilated Indians with sentimental attachments to a distant homeland, but no real

desire for permanent return".21 On the other hand, Dimple Basu cannot think of

America as a permanent home and would like to return to Calcutta: "...she

(Dimple) wanted him (Amit) to find a job so that after a decent number of years,»

m

he could take his savings and retire with her to a 3-storey house in Ballygunje

Mukherjee suggests that the only way to survive in the new land is to be

like Jasmine and not "attempt to preserve the fragile identity as an Indian.

Jasmine, too, realizes that in order to survive it is necessary to be assimilated or to

achieve a fusion in which "immigration was a two- way process and both the

..17closed?

Jasmine

exe

M 20 admits Jasmine. Having no

%

Park".22

*

I »% •

82

whites and immigrants were growing into a third thing by this interchange and

If this fusion is not achieved, an immigrant, tends to stand apart«24experience.

waiting, like Du, to join his compatriots again and give up his American family.

Jasmine realizes that Du can never become a real American because: "My

transformation has been genetic, Du's was hyphenated ...he's a hybrid like the

fantasy appliances that he wants to build".25 Jasmine's desire to belong and become

a part of American society is so intense that she is even willing to "reposition the

as she walks out with Taylor "greedy with wants and reckless fromM26stars,

..27hope.

Bharati Mukherjee's protagonists attempt to strike roots but the first two fail

to do so because of their innate weaknesses. A sense of rootlessness dogs Tara

throughout the novel. When at Vassar, she yearns for the life at St. Blaise with her

She is shocked by the callous attitude of herfriends and the school nuns.

American friends and complained of homesickness in her letters written to her

mother. She makes frantic attempts to feel at home in New York:

New York was certainly extra-ordinary and it had driven her

to despair. On days she had thought she could not possibly

survive, she had shaken out all her silk scarves, ironed them

and hung them to make the apartment more "Indian". She had

curried hamburger desperately. ...she had burned incense sent

28from home.

v

However, all these attempts fail to make her feel at home. Yet, soon after her

return to India, she finds that she does not fit into the old life of Calcutta which

83

she had left seven years ago and for which she had yearned when she

. Poughkeepsie. Her group of friends now irritates her with its lack of seriousness

was at

and she felt very distant from the passions that quickened or outraged her class in

Calcutta”.29 Though Tara meets her friends regularly at the Catelli- Continental,

she "was startled at their tremendous capacity for surfaces...30 Though her friends -aie curious about her life in New York, they only wanted to know the superficial,

external details. Ironically, Tara accuses her friends of lacking depth which is

clearly absent in her too. Tara thinks of her friends as being,

sharings of her personality.

omissions, their aristocratic

about the things that she had brought back and had admired

her velours jumpsuit and electric-shaver, but not once had%

they asked about her husband.31

She feared their tone, their

They had asked heroneness.

Seven years in the U.S. has made it impossible for Tara to feel at ease with her

close circle of friends. American experience has isolated her from Indian life and

culture. Tara wonders: "How does the foreignness of the spirit begin?"32 for even

the familiar David now appears unfamiliar to her: "He seemed like a figure%

standing in shadows, or a foreigner with an accent on television...she felt she was

A

not married to a person but to a foreigner and this foreignness was a burden". On

her arrival at Calcutta, she is met with great affection and excitement. The

celebrations around her make it difficult for her to even "think of the 120th street

apartment as home."34 Distance makes everything abroad unreal for her. Her walk

along the ghat and her visit to Tollygunje prove that she is totally out of touch with

84*

the real Calcutta. All through her childhood, Tara has been unexposed to the

reality of Calcutta life. To her, Calcutta just meant living in a huge house on

Camac Street, going to school at St. Blaise, seeing movies at the Metro and now

whiling away her time at the Catelli-Continental, drinking endless cups of tea and

listening to the arm- chair politics of her numerous rich friends. Tara has not

come face to face with the real Calcutta of poverty and squalor, industrial unrest

and increasing crimes. Even when she is surrounded by friends and relatives, she

feels totally isolated and completely alone. By not being able to fit back into

Calcutta society, Tara realizes that she is a misfit at both places. She is always

troubled by nostalgia for the life left behind and this leaves her in a Catch-22

situation. In Calcutta, people think of her as being too American: Reena's mother%

calls her "our lone Americawalli", and Reena accuses her of having become "too-

self-centred and European". Her Aunt Jharna misinterprets even Tara's genuine

concern and asks with a quiet violence: "You have come back to make fun of us,

haven't you? What gives you the right? Your American money? Your mleccha

At the same time, an American like McDowell finds it impossible "to

relate to her - she was just another Indian and the fact of an apartment on the

fringes of Harlem, an American husband and passport, simply didn’t register.

is easier for a casual visitor like McDowell to gain acceptance into an Indian

family than it is for Tara who "had been asked to be a bridge between Washington

McDowell and Camac Street during the crucial hours before dinner was served.

M37husband?

.,38It

,,39

Tara could not fit into that role because to her "it was impossible to be a bridge for

anyone... Bridges had a way of cluttering up the landscape.,.40

Tara fails to find a

I

%

#

m H

85

niche for herself even within her own circle of friends and relatives. Her decision

to go back to David is not a result of deep thought. Instead, it is impelled by his

letters "which intensified her depression...(for) he saw Calcutta as the collective#

future in which garbage, disease and stagnation are man's estate."

decision to return to David is not a positive realization or finding of roots away

from home, but instead an escape from the present. To Tara, New York and

Calcutta are not very different from each other. Being married to an American

does not help Tara to find roots more easily than Dimple who is married to an

Indian.

Tara's

Dimple's rootlessness is caused by an inherent psychological trait - she is

incapable of accepting her surroundings or adapting herself to them. Before her

marriage, she always dreamt of marriage which "would bring her freedom, cocktail

parties on carpeted lawns, fund-raising dinners for noble charities."42 Inspite of

her eagerness to get married, she could not settle down comfortably at Amit's flat,

because she was keen to migrate to the U.S.. After reaching the U.S. she had to

share a flat with Meena and Jyoti. She hated the place, even though she pretended

to love it all: “The Sen's living room...had now become hideous to her...It was all

so shabby, so bare...No one knew how she hated the furniture. Nobody could tell

she really wanted to break and smash each piece and squirt dust on the walls."4-''

Now, she begins to dream of having a house of her own but when they move into

Marsha's flat near the University, "she felt like a star, collapsing inwardly."44 She

never could feel at home, anywhere in the U.S. because as Amit rightly points out

- Dimple's heart is still in Calcutta. Her attempts at Americanization are all very

86

superficial because they begin and end with trying out new recipes or showering at

night instead of during the day. She shows no maturity in her attempts to fit into

her surroundings. Her rootlessness is clearly the result of her own "sado¬

masochism."45

It is Jasmine who is able to strike roots easily even as she moves across

continents. From the moment she quits her rustic background of Hasnapur and

becomes the progressive-thinking wife of a modem, non-feudal Prakash, Jasmine

faces every situation squarely. Jyoti-Jasmine-Jase-Jane-she lives each moment of

her life fully as she treats "every second of (her) your existence as a possible

assignment from god. It is her deep faith in the cycle of birth and death that"46

makes her believe that she is experiencing more than one life within a single life¬

span. To her, life can be “ like a giant long-playing record with millions of tracks.

each of them a complete circle with only one diamond sharp microscopic link to

the next life, and to the next and only god to hear it all."47 As her experiences

become more variegated, she begins to wonder whether she has "ripped across

incarnations or jumped tracks."48 For Jasmine, there is a constant shuttling of

identities which makes her realize, "Jyoti of Hasnapur was not Jasmine, Duffs day

mummy and Taylor and Wylie's aupair in Manhattan; that Jasmine isn't this Jane

Ripplemeyer...".49 Though Tara and Dimple do not mix much with the local

Americans, in the case of Jasmine there is a constant give and take. This helps her

break free of many age-old prejudices and achieve a total integration within

herself: "I changed because I wanted to. To bunker oneself inside nostalgia, to

87

sheathe the heart in a bullet-proof vest was to be a coward".50 It is to Jasmine s0

credit that she is able to not merely strike roots easily, but also uproot herself with

equal ease and move on without any remorse. This is because she had inculcated

Mrs. Gordon's advice: " let the past make you wary, by all means. But do not let _it detorm you."51 Each time Jasmine is forced to move, it is due to an incident

•••

beyond her control - Prakash's death. Half-Face's murder and being recognised by

Sukhi. Being a survivor, Jasmine quickly learns and accepts that,

In America, nothing lasts. I can say that now and it doesn't

shock me, but I think it was the hardest lesson of all for me to

learn. We arrive so eager to learn, to adjust, to participate,

only to find the monuments are plastic, agreements are

annulled. Nothing is forever, nothing is so terrible, or so

wonderful, that it won't disintegrate.52

This facet of American life becomes a part of her mental process. However, her

self-realization is spurred again and again by her conviction. "I want to do the

right thing. I don't want to be a terrible person." Living in America, she learns

t

to fend for herself till she "learnt to live not for her husband or for her children but

for herself."54

In moving away to a new country, the link with their cultural past can

hamper the acculturation process of the immigrants even though they may realize

that "they have to shed all their inherited, racial, religious and cultural

A social institution that is an inalienable part of the life of all the"55prejudices.

I

*

4

"*

88#%

%

In The Tiger's Daughter, Bharati Mukherjeethree protagonists is marriage.

describes a traditional, Indian marriage in very unflattering, unromantic terms:

When the choice is made and the bargaining settled with•••i

maximum discontent, then the Brahmin priest appears...And

after a fire has been lit...when the guests have been fed...then

the groom takes his bride, a total stranger, and rapes her on a

brand new flower-decked bed.56

This is the manner in which Dimple gets married while Tara falls in love, at first

sight, with a young man in an elevator and has a wedding "with no invitations, no

priests, no fires, no blessings.

immediately broaden Tara's horizon for she finds that she cannot explain or

discuss many ideas with him. Even in her letters, "she managed quite deftly not to

r g

give her own feelings away."' David fails to understand many aspects of her life

because "he expected everything to have some meaning or point"50 and asks: "Why

three baths a day for god's sake?

..57 Being married to a foreigner does not

»i60 In failing to understand her, David shows the*

distance that has still to be covered between the two cultures. By reading books

on India, he cannot comprehend her counUy and she is convinced that if "he had

not understood her country through her...probably he had not understood her

Though married in the traditional manner, Dimple is too deeply

engrossed in her own self to be ever satisfied with her partner in marriage. She

thinks of her husband as, "merely a provider of small material comforts. In bitter*

g jg ’fw' .'

„ ” u «a » • •

moments, she ranked husband, blender, colour T.V., cassette tape recorder, stereo

..61either.

*

in their order of convenience". Jasmine's marriage to Prakash is not set in the

»

89

traditional mode, but yet she is willing to follow in his footsteps and allow him to

lead her out of the feudal set-up. into which she was born. She soon gets

influenced by his dreams and his ambition. It is only after his death and her

l

migration to the U.S. that she shows her capacity for decision-making and her

resolution to achieve her goals. The traditional Indian-wife image is cast off and

the taboos on Indian widows are shed, inspite of her earlier fear of the astrologers

prediction. From a desire to become a Sati’, she becomes a Kali'. The sanctity

that is associated with marriage and child-bearing in her Indian past does not cast a

shadow on Jasmine as she slides easily into Taylors and later Bud’s life. She is

able to break herself totally from all those aspects of her past which may weigh her

down. ___ ____ __ ___ __

_

These three protagonists differ in their perception of their roles in society or

their expectations of life. Tara considers her marriage to David as an emancipated

gesture, but realizes that emancipation presupposes a bondage which she is not

willing to accept. From being a dutiful daughter to the Bengal Tiger, she wants to

become a dutiful wife in the traditional mould. She wants to be appreciated by

David and is most wary of his comments or criticism. Her correspondence with

David does not follow "any pattern of confession, reproof or rebuttal",63 though he

often "accused her of stupid inanities and callousness ”64 Inspite of her seven-•••

year stay abroad, Tara has not matured into an individual with a mind or identity

of her own. She does not possess the strength required to protect herself from

people like Tuntunwala. Her experience with him embitters her to a great extent

and makes her decide to return to David, like a child running back into the

90

protective amis of an adult. Tara is certainly not one of the emergent women of

modem fiction. To her, a father in childhood and a husband in later life are

essential as protectors. She exemplifies Manu s dictum: "pita kawnarye /

bharta rakshati yauvane,"65 She has not been able to develop an individuality of

her own, different from the traditional roles of woman as daughter and wife. This

immigrant does not adapt herself to suit the conditions of the land of her choice

and continues to be rooted firmly in the traditional mould.

Dimple's role expectations are even more traditional than that of Taras. At

the beginning of the novel, she is just waiting for her prince charming - a

neurosurgeon - to sweep her off her feet, so that she could "have a different kind

of life - an apartment in Chowringhee, her hair done by Chinese girls, trips to New

Market for nylon sarees."66 Her parents are busy hunting for the eligible groom,

Her father still circled ads for the ideal boy;"67 but Dimple gets impatient and

This gave "her eyes afeels that twenty years of her life have been wasted.

watchful squint and her spine a slight curve."68 Influenced by the film glossies

that she reads, she believes in the need for physical charms to trap a prospective

groom:

She worried that she was ugly, worried about her star-shaped

Would the now-inevitablebody and rudimentary breasts.

engineer...be disappointed that she wasn't bosomy and fair

like a Bombay starlet? She thought of breasts as having

V69

destinies of their own, ruining marriages or making fortunes.

91

She wrote to well-known magazines asking for beauty tips.

eagerness to get married and all her preparations for marriage, Dimple's problems

only increase after she marries Amit - a consultant engineer. Dimple lacks the

a

inclination to face the reality around her and is never able to delve deep into an

seriously analyse a relationship. She lacks a real open communication

with her husband and instead Uies superficial tactics to please her husband:

Inspite of her

issue or

Dimple took to wearing bright colours: reds, oranges,

purples. She wore her hair up in a huge bun and let a long,

wispy curl dangle behind each ear, like Mrs. Ghose. She even

tried to imitate the way Mrs. Ghose laughed and left sentences

•••

half-finished. She gave up eating her favourite hot green

70chillies.

Having no life apart from that of being a wife, Dimple is unable to be an

individual. Her ideas and tastes are fashioned only by the glamour world of films

Hence, in Amit's absence, she often fantasises about hisand advertisements.

appearance: "She borrowed a forehead from an aspirin ad, the lips, eyes and chin

from a body-builder and shoulders ad, the stomach and legs from a trousers ad and

71restaurant". After endowing him with theseput the ideal man and herself in a

unrealistic physical features, she also wants him to be "infallible, intractable,

„72These romantic expectations lead to terriblegodlike, but with boyish charm.

disappointments in Dimple's marital life. Dimple is thus an individual trapped by

circumstances of her own making from which she cannot find a way out. Being

92

away from her homeland, she is homeless but she fails to adjust to life in the U.S.

or her new home. In addition to this, her personal inadequacies make hei• an

73"outsider" wherever she goes.

Child bearing and child rearing restrict the freedom of women and an

protest against gender related roles by modem feminist

characters. However, in the case of Dimple, no such deeply thought out reasons

impel her to get rid of her baby. Instead it is her obsession with the idea of having

abortion is often seen as a

„74when she goes to the U.S. that makes her decide to

get rid of the baby. To her, "the baby was unfinished business (and, she) skipped

. 75rope until her legs grew numb and her stomach burned." Inspite of her planned

abortion, Dimple does not consider it to be murder as she "had not planned it for

months...(or) used something flashy - a red hot poker from the kitchen or large

everything "nice and new

Inspite of failing to have a meaningful relationship with hersewing scissors.

husband, Dimple goes through the traditional gestures of a dutiful wife like leaving

the tastier portion of the meat for her husband. Dimple and Amit both appear fully

preoccupied with themselves and hardly notice the needs of the other person.

Usually conversation between the two is limited to: "Aren't you going to ask me

77 78"You don’t sound happy to see me back."where I went?" , Dimple is an

extremely unrealistic and neurotic dreamer who is always disappointed with her

life. In the U.S., she thinks of Amit as being a failure: "Here in New York, Amit

79

seemed to have collapsed inwardly, to have grown frail and shabby." Dimple9

aspires to the roles traditionally assigned to women but fails to achieve them

93

because of her innate weaknesses. At the same time, she is incapable of breaking

away from these traditional shackles and forging ahead. Her final protest - the

killing of her husband - is as unrealistic as the life she dreamed about. It is also

with as little reason as her obsession with death or suicide. To kill a husband

80because "he always spilled sugar on the counter" is the final act of desperation of

a truly diseased mind. Amit does not behave in so reprehensible a manner as to be

murdered. Finally, it is only the dream world of ads and T.V. which gives her the

Ml .confidence to kill because "Women on television got away with murder".

After gender-role related titles of daughter and wife, Jasmine - the third

novel - suggests a sea-change in the title itself. The protagonist rises above being

merely a daughter or a wife. Faced with a loss of identity at each stage, Jasmine

manages to evolve a new identity at each stage. Whenever necessary, she frames

From theher own code of conduct to suit the particular situation in life.

unenviable position of being the dowryless fifth daughter of a post-partition- riots-

affected farmer in an inconsequential village of Punjab, she blossoms into the

ambitious wife of an even more ambitious budding engineer who has dreams of

migrating to the U.S. As a child, she had to constantly face the discriminationt

which is an accepted part of a young girl’s life in rural India. In Hasnapur,

82and "the ruby-red choker of bruise around my (her)"daughters were curses,

throat and sapphire finger-prints on my (her) collar-bone"

mother had tried hard to spare her the life of a dowryless bride. Even as a child,

Jasmine shows courage and an indomitable spirit as when she kills a mad dog.

Though brains are considered to be wasted on girls, Jasmine fared well at school

83indicate that her

94

and became the favourite of her Masterji. She shows the capacity to be a fighter

and a survivor. This makes Jasmine's grand-mother warn Jasmine's father, "You’re

84Surprisingly, Jasmine'sgoing to wear out your sandals, getting rid of this one."

mother shows unusual courage in opposing the plans of the family of pushing her

daughter into a hurried marriage with a middle-aged widower. Jyoti, as Jasmine is

first called, belongs to a society where, "bad luck dogged - dowry less wives,

rebellious wives, barren wives. They fell into wells, they got run over by trains,

85they burned to death heating milk on kerosene stoves".

Prakash opens up a new vista of life and experience for her. Her husband was a

modem, city-bred man while she was a traditional, rural girl. Being married to

him, Jyoti felt suspended between two worlds. All the age- touted traditions were

Jyoti’s marriage to

86being flouted by Prakash. "Only in feudal societies is a woman still a vassal," he

explains to her when insisting that she call him by his first name. "We aren’t going

„«7to spawn! We aren’t ignorant peasants, he says emphatically everytime Jyoti

said she was old enough at fifteen to get pregnant. She continues to be influenced

and guided by the traditional upbringing and thinks Prakash is merely a hi-tech

88expert who knew nothing about "a woman's need to a mother." However, with

Prakash’s death, she develops a new sense of purpose and confidence. She decides

to go to the U.S. alone, with the sole purpose of committing suttee in the campus

of the university that her husband had planned to enrol in: "I had planned it all so

perfectly. To lay out the suit, to fill it with twigs and papers. To light it, then to lie

89upon it in the white cotton sari I had brought from home". This macabre plan

95

inspires her to travel to the U.S., inspite of many obstacles. However, after beingm

raped by Half-Face and then killing him, she emerges as Kali - an avenger of evil.

Instead of dying, she decides to live. Jasmine thinks that Yama has deserted her

and this new lease of life is like a rebirth. Her duties as a wife to Prakash are over

when she bums her suitcase and walks out of the motel. Her craving to be a

dutiful wife and later mother finds fulfillment in circumstances totally different

from what she had been brought upto expect. As a care-giver to Duff and a foster

mother to Du, a partner to Taylor, a caring wife who says,

you. Indian wives never eat before their husbands,"

4

experiences the traditional roles of a woman. They are all experienced outside her

"I'll wait supper for

90Jasmine successfully

accepted social mores; "Wife, Did I hear wife?...Marry before the baby%

pleads Bud. Even her mothering is not biological parenting as both Duff and Du

are adopted children. Jasmine is "eager to lavish care on my (her) new perfect

and hence is a good care-giver. "Jasmine is a giver -

recipe-giver, a preserver...She has a vital life-giving force...They all love her and

comes,

„92family a care-giver, a

„93Throughout the novel, Jasmine makes choices and the finaldepend on her.

proof of her capacity for decision making and desire to live her life according to

her own rules is when she leaves Bud for Taylor as she is "caught between the

94

promise of America and old-world dutifulness. jThough Bharati Mukherjee considers her novels to be similar to miniature

paintings where both background and foreground are equally important, her novelsV

revolve only around the lives of the protagonists. This leaves the other women

characters only single- dimensional and flat. A single facet of their personality

96

-shadows all other characteristics: Mrs. Basu's hypochondriac nagging, Mrs.over

• Banerjee's religiosity, Pixie's flightiness, Ina's Americanism or even Mrs. Gordon s

This single facet descriptionconcern for the helpless, illegal immigrant women.

makes it impossible for any of them to develop into full- fledged characters. The

Tara and Dimple have noprotagonists do not forge close links with other women.

sisters while Jasmine's many sisters have no place in the novel. There are

female friends except Vimla who is presented fleetingly as a

Pixie whose relationship with Dimple is a very shallow one.

no

foil to Jasmine and

At no stage is Dimple

able to reveal her opinions or true feelings to Pixie. Even the letter she attempts to

write never seems right. "It was exasperating she thought; all she wanted was to

write to her best friend and it came out absurdly forced and patronizing...there was

95nothing to describe and nothing to preserve". Of the mothers of the protagonists

only Jasmine's mother has some courage and ambitions for her daughter. "Just

96make sure you ace your exams," she advises her daughter after opposing all

odds. Even the friends and acquaintances in the U.S. become mere caricatures by

97being typified to an unbelievable extent like Ina who "wears pants and mascara"

98

and "blew smoke through her nostrils." She thus becomes "more American than

99

Americans (and)...might give Dimple some bad ideas".

A clear line of development is seen in the attitude of the three protagonists.

For Tara, the cultural transplant is unimportant as she lacks the maturity to become

Hence, she is equally rootless in both her native land and the land ofrooted.

emigration. She is not seriously concerned about or interested in the problem of

finding roots or beginning a process of assimilation or acculturation. For Dimple,

97 #

i

the desire to belong is a deep-felt need but her neurotic splintered mind makes life

both in India and in the U.S. equally frustrating. With a tendency to brood and

100dream only of death and suicide, she is constantly in a state of "chuntering". It

is only Jasmine who shows an undaunted spirit and enthusiasm in learning to

survive against all odds. The daughter - Tara and the wife - Dimple evolve into

Jasmine - an individual with a j>ersonality unbound by traditional limitations.

#

ft

#

98

NOTES

Bharati Mukherjee and Clark Blaise, "India is in touch with us" By N.P.

Krishna Kumar Indian Express 13 Sept. 1992 : 16

N.P. Krishna Kumar. 16

In his book Resident Alien. Clark Blaise uses these terms to describe the

uprooting and rerooting of immigrants. In an interview later, he says, "I think it

(unhousement) is a useful word. I wrote a book in which the word occurs all the

time and it was translated into the French as errancy', an interesting take-off" (sic)

N.P. Krishna Kumar. 16

Shobha Shinde, "Cross-cultural Crisis in Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine" and

The Tiger's Daughter'," Commonwealth Writing : A study in Expatriate

Experience ed. R.K. Dhawan and L.S.R. Krishna Sastry (New Delhi : Prestige,

1994)55.

6 Bharati Mukherjee, introduction, Darkness (India : Penguin, 1990) 3.

7 Mukherjee, introduction. Darkness 3.

8 Bharati Mukherjee. The Tiger's Daughter 1971 (India : Penguin, 1990)45.

9 Mukherjee, Daughter 25.

10 Mukherjee. Daughter 10.

1 1 Mukherjee, Daughter 1 1.



14 Bharati Mukherjee, Wife 1975 (India : Penguin, 1990) 46.

15 Bharati Mukherjee. Jasmine 1989 (India : Viking, 1990) 100-101.

99

16 Mukherjee, Jasmine 23 1 .

17 Mukherjee. Jasmine 133.


|gMukherjee. Jasmine 139.

20 Mukherjee, Jasmine 222.

21 Mukherjee, introduction Darkness 3.

22 Mukherjee, Wife 89.

23 Mukherjee, introduction Darkness 3.

Interview. T he. Hindustan Times 9, Feb. 1990, 3.24 Bharati Mukherjee



27 Mukherjee, Jasmine 24 1.


2*> Mukherjee, Daughter 55.



32y




Mukherjee, Daughter 102.


Mukherjee. Daughter 144.

36

38

100

.191

40Mukherjee, Daughter 144.

41 Mukherjee, Daughter 201

42Mukherjee, Wife 3.



45M. Rajeshwar, "Sado-Masochism as a Literary Device in Bharati

Commonwealth Writine : A study in Expatriate Experience

Dhawan and L.S.R. Krishna Sastry (New Delhi : Prestige, 1994) 61.

Mukherjee, Jasmine 61.



Mukherjee’s 'Wife',"

ed. R.K.

46

47

48






54 Jaiwanti Dimri, "From Marriage to Murder : A Comparative Study of

Bharati Mukherjee's 'Wife' and Jasmine’,"

Bala (New Delhi : Intellectual, 1994) 174.

S.K. Tikoo, "The American Dream : Immigration and Transformation

Theme in 'The Middleman and other Stories’," Indian Women Novelists, vol.5. ed.

American Literature Today, ed. Suman

55

R.K. Dhawan, (New Delhi : Prestige, 1991) 222.

101

56 Mukheriee, Daughter 125.

57Mukheriee, Daughter 125.


59Mukherjee, Daughter 130.






Manusmriti

60

62

63

64

65




6V Mukherjee, Wife 4.




73 In her introduction to The Novels of Anita Desai (New Delhi: Prestige,

1988) Usha Bande describes characters who cannot accommodate themselves to

the world of realities as "outsiders" as they can never be a part of this world.



W

Vÿv'ir . •76& Mukherjee, Wife 71.*n

r

102




Mukherjee, Wife 212.

*' Mukherjee. Wife 213.

80


83Mukherjee, Jasmine 40.






89Mukherjee, Jasmine 1 18.




93 Dimri, 174.







*

103

100 Chuntering is a term coined by a psychologist Betty Joseph to describe a

state in which pain is simultaneously inflicted on the self and others - a

combination of sadism and masochism.

0

\%

/

characterised their is -...

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