Tuesday, June 27, 2006
The dilemma of an Indian-American
This fantastic article by Jhumpa Lahiri in Newsweek (a really good author who gave us two immensely readable books ‘The Interpreter of Maladies’ and ‘The Namesake’) is a bit short in length…..but accomplishes something that articles thrice its length fail to! It makes us understand the painful emotional experience initially faced (and sometimes lasting for a lifetime) by an immigrant from India to America, or to use her terminology, the experience an ‘Indian-American’ faces in trying to reconcile the two worlds they live in. By virtue of being an Indian-American herself, she gives the article a much needed flavor of authenticity.
When I was in the land of opportunity some months back, trying to get adjusted into a new way of life, I involuntarily used to wonder about their predicament. The way they would be making efforts to get involved in the new world outside their homes and at the same time, feel comfortable in an entirely different world that awaits them inside their homes. This dilemma is obviously and unfortunately felt the most by Indians who are actually born in America, rather than those who go to the land of opportunity to earn a good living and end up settling there or sometimes return.
This experience is the price they pay (for no fault of theirs) for a better quality of life that America offers in comparison to India. But does this have to continue? Well…this excerpt from the article suggests the answer: ‘Many of these friends proudly called themselves Irish-American or Italian-American. But they were several generations removed from the frequently humiliating process of immigration, so that the ethnic roots they claimed had descended underground whereas mine were still tangled and green.’
As someone rightly said….time alone will take care of some things in life.
This fantastic article by Jhumpa Lahiri in Newsweek (a really good author who gave us two immensely readable books ‘The Interpreter of Maladies’ and ‘The Namesake’) is a bit short in length…..but accomplishes something that articles thrice its length fail to! It makes us understand the painful emotional experience initially faced (and sometimes lasting for a lifetime) by an immigrant from India to America, or to use her terminology, the experience an ‘Indian-American’ faces in trying to reconcile the two worlds they live in. By virtue of being an Indian-American herself, she gives the article a much needed flavor of authenticity.
When I was in the land of opportunity some months back, trying to get adjusted into a new way of life, I involuntarily used to wonder about their predicament. The way they would be making efforts to get involved in the new world outside their homes and at the same time, feel comfortable in an entirely different world that awaits them inside their homes. This dilemma is obviously and unfortunately felt the most by Indians who are actually born in America, rather than those who go to the land of opportunity to earn a good living and end up settling there or sometimes return.
This experience is the price they pay (for no fault of theirs) for a better quality of life that America offers in comparison to India. But does this have to continue? Well…this excerpt from the article suggests the answer: ‘Many of these friends proudly called themselves Irish-American or Italian-American. But they were several generations removed from the frequently humiliating process of immigration, so that the ethnic roots they claimed had descended underground whereas mine were still tangled and green.’
As someone rightly said….time alone will take care of some things in life.
