Leaving
Aloo’s migration is propelled by both “push” and “pull” factors – a rude refusal of the fulfilment of his dreams in the “homeland” coupled with rosy dreams beckoning from America. Drawing on (and adapting it to the “diasporic” context) Spivak’s reading of the Tagore story, “Didi” , in “The Burden of English” , we may say that while Aloo is pushed into a “dynamic (diasporic) future”, his mother remains in a “static culture”; however, such an analysis must be complemented by a proper understanding of the emotional complexities woven into the fabric of the family. The mother does not want to deny her son the passage into the diasporic future, but she also knows that the “leaving” would be a leaving for ever: the son’s promise of return is utterly fragile. It’s on the sacrifice of her “dynamic future”(through remarriage after her husband’s death) that the very possibility of the son’s passage into a glorious diasporic future is based. So, the son does not leave only a place, but also a time-it is, in a very complex sense, a symbolic ‘matricide’ that is, as Julia Kristeva points out, indispensable for the emergence of the male individual as a “subject” in the patriarchal order. The emergence of the diasporic male subject is inextricably linked with the abandonment of a past that is coterminous with the mother’s sacrifices and compromises with life made for the offspring.
Loose Ends
In this story, Mukherjee casts an oblique light on the diasporic people from the perspective of the dark world of the mafia and hired assassins in America. Jeb’s and Jonda’s relationship collapses; Jeb is entrapped in the labyrinth of the underworld, while Jonda fails to get an employment at the “turbaned man’s” establishment. On the other hand, the Patels are enjoying a sunny and happy togetherness which deepens the envy and exasperation of Jeb. Here we may dwell on Zygmunt Bauman’s speculations on the ‘stranger’ in the age of globalization. As he rightly observes, the nation-states are no more able to offer their subjects individual security, specially economic stability, and this instability in the fragile ontology of the postmodern state is what leads to the mythologization of a collective insecurity which operates on the basis of the hostility towards the strangers. The Cuban Chavez or the Indian Patels enjoying joie de vivre are the political “Others” of a collective self that has become fragile, fragmentary, chaotic, thanks to the underside of the global economy filled with- to quote Jeb’s expression-“snakeshit”.
Squatter
The sheer physicality of the process of acclimatization in the host country that is essential for the immigrant’s adaptation is foregrounded in this ostensibly humorous narrative. As the boys rightly surmise, Nariman’s funny tales are never simply funny – acutely poised between humour and satire , the story of Sarosh is both a critique of the immigrant’s obsession with adaptation and that of the mythic multicultural “mosaic” of Canada. Sarosh is a failed immigrant, finally returning to the homeland that is “real” and would never(alas) obtain the “imaginary” status for him. The story is a narrative of a malady, for which there can be only Dr. No-Ilaaz, no remedy. The problem is not merely that of a lavatorial inconvenience, but the very hostility to the “foreigner” (or the “ethnic”) underlying the multicultural facade of Canada- the unadaptable immigrant is fired by the supervisor. There is the constant play of double meaning on the word, “squatter”- it’s not just associated with the lavatorial ordeals of Sarosh; rather, it’s the overt commentary on the Canadian attitude to the Third World immigrants who are seen as “squatters”, the unwanted ones taking possession of the country. We are not just offered glimpses of the lavatorial problems of Sarosh but rather led into the lavatory of the discourse of the multicultural mosaic, through a narrative cast in the guise of a cautionary tale to the young people throbbing with “diasporic” aspirations.
-----Anway Mukhopadhyay

Blossom

"She had the power to see and the power to fight;she had the power to feel pain and the power to heal."

"Blossom" by Dionne Brand is a story of a woman whose distrust of whites is not based on some personal craziness of hers,it is based on historical practice and historical events that place her as a black woman in the world at that point of time.

The figure of a West Indian domestic is treated by Brand in a radically different way,much more militant and politically oriented.In "Blossom"-Priestess of Oya,Goddess of Winds, Storms and Waterfalls,the eponymous character,Blossom, is also a new immigrant in Toronto and works as a domestic in order to survive.She enters a new world where she is jilted by a man,baby sits for whites in oriole,tries to learn to type and also becomes a secretary.She also tries to sell old furniture and so as to earn fast money she also joins the pyramid scheme,but she ultimately gets cheated by her girlfriend Fancy Girl.She finds herself surrounded by loneliness all around.Later,in the story she works for a doctor.Blossom makes her struggle against sexual and racial discrimination heard loud and clear ,following her employer's attempt to rape her.Blossom also frees herself from her exploiting husband,Victor.

Blossom's real struggle however leads her back to ancestral spirits.She is a woman of mighty cresilience and quick action.This is seen when Blossom decides to move out of her employers house and chooses her own dwelling place(in spirituality).She refuses to play the part of the hermit crab,thinking "Living wasn't just for slaving...harder you work,the less you have..."

She has buoyancy.She never thinks of dying and her anger is the anger about silence and injustice...The whites in the story are not Blossom's only antagonists ,though the whites might read the story that way.What Blossom hates is the suffering of black people and her hatred turned her into the priestess of Oya,in whose presence she becomes a" warrior knife" and "not even snarky white people could keep Blossom under".


Archna Olive Toppo
PG I

MARIGOLDS

Mr Chetram's very existence reverberates with the “...the history of this strife,-this longing to attain self conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better truer self”; W.E.B Du Bois, The Souls Of Black Folk. Incarcerated by claustrophobia, away from home , his life is punctuated by misery,squalor and sordidness. The angst of the migrant, entrapped in an alien land, often surfaces in the sudden acts of violence. An attempt to reassert his existence as a human being, in the dystopia of stasis Chetram is seen to destructively break the doll's head and even beat up his wife unnecessarily towards the end. Chetram's enunciation of the melancholy encompassing “The incurable distress of a vacant,bright Sunday!” turns our gaze to the much similar monotony of Jimmy's(Look Back In Anger) life prompting him to resort to anger and resentment “God how I hate Sundays!.......A few more hours and another week gone. Our youth is slipping away.” It is the emptiness of a nonfunctional life that instills morbidity in both these characters.The atmosphere of chaos and discord is occasionally painted with the positive images of the “school garden” and the dream of a “vast, open field of heavily blowing marigolds”. The 'marigolds' symbolize a deep yearning to escape from the limbo of nonexistence,of inaction. However, the act of mouthing the flower even before his wife could know about it brings about a crashing of the unrealized moment of the dream scape. Thudded into a realm of confusion, unable to associate with the “imaginary homeland”...”Silence” is his “secret weapon”.

Sayanti Mukherjee

PG I

Marigolds

Subramani’s Marigolds constructs a man, who is desperately attempting to comprehend and negotiate the “fetid” bleakness of his life, from a postcolonial Fijian girmit vantage point. Chetram’s experiences, however, are representative of universal anguish and ennui of modern existence. In this existential realm of limbo or “self-made prison”, there is “nothing to be done” (Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett) and there is an understanding of the fact that “words are never concerned with truth, never with adequate expression” (On Truth and Lies in an Extra-moral Sense, Friedrich Nietzsche). The collapse of communication and activities inevitably leads to a breakdown of relationships, as Chetram’s wife “pulls the orhini over her head” to shield herself from his gaze; his mother only exists to tease him with her insanity; his quiet brother resists the “tremors of brotherly love” that Chetram feels; and, his precocious nieces despise him for being old.

In the postcolonial imagination, possessing a house symbolizes the purest indicator of forging a positive identity and a contented life, as has been seen in A House for Mr Biswas. Yet, in this story, even after building a house of his own, Chetram is denied any scope of private redemption through the motif of a “dried-up flower bed” – an emblem of nihilistic frustration of life energy, personal desires and domestic harmony. However, what proves to be especially catastrophic is Chetram’s attempt at “suppressing all aggression”. Herein, the numerous references to toilet activities in the story sardonically point at the mislaid release of psychological repressions through visceral functions of the body. Though, Chetram occasionally finds rescue from these tormenting anxieties of his repressed inner life through dreams, for the most part, he suffers, surrenders and even embraces the futility of his life. Even his beautiful Felliniesque dream of flying is unceremoniously terminated by the “reproaches from the shadow”. This shadow signifies a postmodern fragmentation of the self and the creation of an alter ego. Unfortunately, in the case of Chetram, his alter ego is the product of his darkest instincts that express itself in sudden bouts of irrational violence and cruelty, like breaking the head of a doll or mouthing flowers in a fit of insecure rage. Chetram’s postmodern angst proves to be doubly painful, in the context of the bitter “historical basis” of his girmit reality. Thus, his aggressive activities are directed towards his wife, signifying a subaltern’s Will to Power that seeks validation by subjugating other social and cultural groups that are further marginalized than him. Though Chetram attempts desperately to avert a total union with his alter ego, the experience of being overlooked by his peers and mocked by his students finally sends him to the precipice of a dizzying realization that his “whole existence has been in bad faith”. All of Chetram’s inner tensions are further released by alcohol and he tumbles into a point of no return. The implications are devastating; in spite of his attempts to “run”, the shadow of his alter ego – “a wiry creature in a hippie blouse” – has finally caught up to him. This can only have disastrous consequences, as Chetram loses all his deference for family values, culminating in his final brutal abuse of his wife. The mock “serenity” has finally gone from their days, leading to the ominous realization that “There is no alternate life: a hundred years of history on these islands has resulted in wilderness and distress”.

Abira Nath

PG I

Canadian Experience

Standing before the oval-shaped mirror, barely managing to see himself, the protagonist of Austin Clarke’s ‘Canadian Experience’ stood and simply laughed at himself; laughed at the “morbidness of his own thoughts” as the author writes. For a man, who migrates to another country leaving behind an apparently prosperous life on the Barbadian plantation of his homeland, in search of better prospects, morbidity is all that this alien life has to offer him. Being torn apart by a crisis of identity as a black man in a white land, he lives in penury with the dreams of a brighter future shattered. His ‘otherness’ has not just turned him into an alien but has ripped his self esteem apart. It is only his own laughter that helps him get through the ironies of reality—a reality consisting only of disappointments. Even the actress next door with “cold sores” on her spine faces a similar predicament of trying to make her ends meet by going for auditions one after the other and taking long baths just to make sure she looks just right cause “you never know what the directors are going to ask you to do.” This statement gives us a glimpse of the ugliness of reality that even this young actress has to face to find a ‘room of one’s own’—to quote Virginia Woolf.

The man is caught in a tussle with himself as the elevator goes up and down. The corporate woman he sees in the fourteenth floor and the flowers and the floor in its entirety intimidates him and paralyses him with fear. He is unable to bring himself to attend the interview because of the fear of rejection—the same rejection that he deals with in his everyday life. Ultimately he is seen standing at the train station looking at the oncoming train and the author takes a full circle by bringing us back to the same reflection that the man had seen of himself, of himself in the eyes of the driver and we are left to draw our own conclusions when we are told that he simply “steps off the platform”---maybe making us aware of the dreadful consequence of a ruthless reality.

Ishita Chakravarty

PG II

Blossom and Marigold

Blossom

She upholds the diasporic experiences of a female black emigrant which is doubly painful due to the twofold struggle,to cope with the material and spiritual insecurities of exile and at the same time to fulfill the demands of family and work.In her fight against “Suffering” she refuses to be a silent and docile victim of a white man’s sexual abuse and also to be economically and emotionally exploited by a black husband.Being separated from her “homeland” and also from the white Canadian community this “Suffering” represents the “double-consciousness”(W.E.B Du Bois,The Souls of Black Folk).On one hand she has to escape from the gaze of her white “boss-man” who perceive her as a sex object and on the other she has to cope with her poverty-stricken life and also to fulfill her desire to get settled in a family life,like any other Trinidadian woman.W.E.B Du Bois states in The Souls Of Black Folk that such “double aims” result in the shattering of “courage and faith and deeds”.However,when Blossom faced this she resorted to her nativity and returned back to that forefather of Caryl Phillips’ Crossing the River.This forefather who is Africa itself,connects with her through that mother language which had been long forgotten.This connection also imparts her some weapons of protest to fight.

Like Afua Cooper’s Negro Cemeteries Dionne Brand’s Blossom acknowledges and re-establishes native African culture,exhibiting her culture pride. “Obeah”,previously considered to be malignant is redefined here and used as a weapon of protest,much like in V.S Naipaul’s The Suffrage Of Elvira,transforming her from an ordinary voiceless Black emigrant to Oya,a warrior spirit and also a spirit of transition.Again,like in Afua Cooper’s Woman in Wail Brand has used dance to express repressed emotions and as Blossom presents “a new way of thinking/a new way of living”.

In her shift from a phase of resistance against exploitation to that of a self-assertion Blossom resembles the history of the “Black Atlantic” where she emerges out of her momentary identity crisis,blankness and hopelessness to “the new negro” (The New Negro,Alaine Locke).She raises her voice against enslavement and stereotyping,subverting the image of servility and inferiority.

Marigold, the other face of Blossom.

The “double-aims” of Blossom is also carried on in Marigold through Mr.Chetram.Though like Blossom he faces an identity crisis,unlike her Mr.Chetram could not hear a nativist call back from his “homeland”.His hyphenated identity pushed him into a “double-consciousness”(W.E.B Du Bois,The Souls of Black Folk) where he can not structure his life to normalcy as he feels estranged from everyone,even his wife and mother.While the warrior spirit of Oya within her made the female black self “blossom”,the “marigold” dreams of Mr.Chetram could not finally be”afloat” out of the “labyrinth”.While the former had fought for her emancipation,the latter always lied “to hold,to maintain serenity,accepting countless humiliations without rebelling,suppressing all aggression out of fear…”.However,it will not be right to say Chetram had no freedom et all as Jean-Paul Sartre states that freedom is the amount to make choices and not being able to avoid making choices and Chetram made the choice to surrender to “humiliations”.He was too preoccupied with “the look” of others (Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness) and the existential angst in him make him hugely conscious of what others feel for him or how they perceive him,compelling him to stand “alone in the staff room toilet”.In Being and Nothingness(chapter III),Sartre states that an escape from anguish is possible through action-oriented constructs such as visions and here Chetram’s dream of marigolds is his flee from a state of dystopia which do not lead him to any meaningful end.Instead he meets “failed dreams of completion” (Sartre) where all his efforts to transcend are doomed to “nothingness”.Though he rigourously tried to force order onto nothingness,ultimately his “whole existence”succumbs into a “bad faith”.Such experiences of recurring terror,loss and unsettlement result in discrepant temporalities which permanently eradicated “serenity” from Chetram’s life.He is forever entrapped in a life where freedom will never come,where nothing happens (as in George Lamming’s The Emigrants) except for some “futile gesture.”

Debanjana Nayek

PG I

Blossom

Dionne Brand’s Blossom: Priestess of Oya, Goddess of winds, storms and waterfall, tells the story of Blossom, a Trinidadian woman who maps out a mystical life, freeing herself from the pangs of the “nothing ain’t breaking” despair of the life in Canada. The story begins with a mystical and supernatural strain, where we learn that Blossom’s place is the "obeah house". Blossom had an indomitable spirit, “nothing not even snarky white people could keep [her] under”, she keeps trying to form a secure life for herself in the unknown land, takes courses to help her find work and also baby-sits. In spite of constantly failing, facing hardships like white rapists as employers she doesn’t allow her spirit to be shaken. Finally after continuing for ten years, at the age of thirty-six she decides to “figure out she life”. Blossom suddenly feels very tired and old. She discovers the uselessness of her marriage to Victor and of her life of hardships and “nothing shaking”. The sudden realization of the void and the nothingness of her life shake her and the violent rage and repressed emotions and desire bursts forth, breaking her. She screams and cries uncontrollably, but gets a grip on herself and turns to spirituality to guide her through.

Blossom creates a bifocal perspective, not only is she a Black immigrant but also a female. Her repeated failure to create a life for herself makes her create a powerful alter ego. This new self which she embraces is drawn from her native Trinidadian roots- its language and its beliefs, “Oya was a big spirit Blossom known from home.” Oya the Goddess of the winds, storm and waterfalls possesses her. Oya helps her view the traumatic life lead by the Black people. The knowledge strengthens and helps her rise above her grief. She enters Oya‘s “lovely womb of strength and fearlessness”. The transformation in her is marked by the way she dresses in bright colours-yellow and red, symbolizing joy and war against suffering. The Apollonian-Dionysian juxtaposition is seen in her, where she speaks in native African tongues, liberating her self from the cruel world, drawing in the strength from the Goddess Oya. Blossom entwines her powerless self with the powerful warrior Goddess-uniting the sacred and feminine in her. She becomes a force with the "power to fight, power to feel pain and the power to heal." The transformation in her, her understanding of the plight of Black people and her escape into trance like state helps her earn “fame as a obeah woman”. She rises above the marginalization and the vacuum which represented her life in Canada to an independent powerful woman who learns to “live peaceful” and have “speakeasy business”.

The city beyond its social, historical and political dimensions and its role as a crucible, offers Blossom an ideal projecting canvas for the construction of a self-image. The cityscape provides the opportunity to recompose the inner and aesthetic space, mapping out new territories for the self. Blossom's double-consciousness(Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B DuBois) helps her balance her identity as the Black immigrant and the powerful Oya and enables her to create her new self.

Suchismita Dattagupta

PG II

Marigolds

"Marigolds" is a story of an "unaccommodated man",whose whole existence has been in bad faith.The story, at the end reveals that he is a migrant, one might say that this is the story of a migrant/uprooted community but in my opinion the alienation faced by the character stems from his inability to connect with other human beings (including his brother, and his daughters.,his wife,his colleagues.)He is trapped in his own consciousness.The character is acomplex one..While from the beginning we find a streak of violence within him(reflected in his act of knocking down of the doll's head whose gaze reminded him of his wife's controlling gaze.)Yet he is a man who has not lost all his sensibilities;he single handedly tended the school's garden,he brings a marigold for his wife after knocking down the doll and in a typical modernist style ,precociously comments on the'" film of tears in her glassy eyes." "Marigold" significantly brings out the issues of gender,generationality and family.The narrator's ageing mother leaves his house accusing him of neglecting her, the narrator cannot communicate with his neices who in turn accuse him of smelling like an old man.His marital life is completely broken down .His wife cringed with fear when she saw a knife in the hands of her husband and kept herself locked for hours and the violent abuse she is subjeced to ,by her husband ,at the end of the story.The violence and the complete crumbling down of of the family is seen as part of the customs and history he had inherited.as he states;"there is no alternative life,a hundred years of history on these islands has resulted in the wilderness and distress". It is interesting that such a morbid story is entitled 'Marigold" a very bright flower ,which is used mainly in religious occasions across north India. he writes ,"with my eyes shut Imuse about the marigolds,groping through a labyrinth which is now a crater ,now atomb ,waiting for the delirously happy state of being suddenly afloat.............I propel myself higher with my elbows-its one skill i'm sure of-into a vast,open field of heavy blowing marigolds.acres of succulent plants,the size of sunflowers,blazing maddeningly in the sun,still straining for growth ". In his dreams ,the marigolds symbolise his burning desire to escape .Bringing a marigold for his wife may be seen as an attempt on his part to share his dream with his wife.However his act of mouthing the marigold states that the dream can never come true.

Drishadwati Bargi
PG I

Blossom

'Blossom' traces the story of the Trinidadian immigrant in the city of Toronto and how she negotiates with the different ruses of the migrant experience in the metropolis. Unlike the two other stories, this is a story of success, albeit a painful one. The author focuses on the space of the metropolis and how it is inflected by the outsider/migrant. There seems to be a parallelism between the act of walking or dwelling in a city and the gradual development of her identity vis a vis the urban spacce. This is marked in the parade of Blossom, Peg and Betty with placards saying that Dr so and so is a white rapist. This small act of resistance is in fact an assertion of their citizenship. It is an instance of making claim of the space. This spectacle of power was strong enough to displace the Doctor's family altogether.

What is striking about the story is the inscription of the myth of the African goddess Oya in the urban space of toronto. "At first she did not know who it is, and is then she realize that the scream was coming from she and she couldn't stop it" -- this is the moment which transforms her. It is only after this momentary loss of sanity or reality that "she feel sheself flying around the earth and raging around the world and then, not just this earth but earth deep in the blackness beyond sea."

What follows is a struggle between suffering and Blossom in which Blossom dances to re integrate herself. "So she roll and dance, she grain-self into a hate so hard, she chisel sheself into a sharp hot prickle and fly in suffering face."

In this hyper real state, Blossom gains her identity which the real world denied her. Thus empowered with the counter-myth of goddess Oya, who presides over winds, storms and waterfalls. (I am describing the myth of Oya as a counter-myth because it challenges the myth of the Canadian metropolis vis a vis its claim of a multicultural city and the myth of the new break which permeates the consciousness of the Caribbean people.) This recourse to the counter myth enables Blossom to set up her own small business in toronto. In this way, Blossom forms her own subculture in the city with the other migrants, some kind of an esoteric society whose significance could only be grasped by those who have similar experience. This bar cum temple is not only a site of resistance but a site of rejuvenation for Blossom as well as other migrants which defends them from destabilising effect of migrancy, the place in fact is a place of re-rooting.


Drishadwati Bargi 
PG I

The similar voices in the three short stories

The short story form in allowing the possibility of presenting a ‘slice of life’ is significant with respect to the comparison of diasporas. It provides evidence of further signifiers of the 'continuous process of identification’ (Stuart Hall, Cultural Identity and Diaspora) especially in the consideration of lives in a post-immigration phase; early diaspora studies concentrating on presenting transoceanic identities based on significant ‘nodes’ of the past give way to focussing upon the present states of realising the falsity of hopes of a better future. In this respect, representation of a ‘slice of life’ in the cityscape offers a voyeuristic gaze into efforts to cope (or the inability to cope) with the realisation of this futility.

Dionne Brand’s Blossom- Priestess of Oya, Goddess of Winds, Storms and Waterfall provides a crucible of such emotions; it’s scope widened by the presence of a female protagonist creating a bifocal perspective: Blossom is not only an immigrant and a part of the wider cultural identity of the ‘black Atlantic’, but she also searches for self sufficiency against the challenges of gender based oppressions. Her repeated failures in her efforts at adjusting to the ‘rational’ society leads to an imagining of a Dionysian alter ego which in turn is created through a reawakening of memories of a forgotten culture and its language: “Oya was a big spirit Blossom known from home.”

The image of Oya itself contrasts the state of limbo with an unshackling of the body and spirit to find a ‘power to feel pain and the power to heal’. This juxtaposition of the Apollonian and the Dionysian states is observed in the breakdown of the short story structure in itself; the static structure of prose is commingled with semblance of performance poetry that can be traced to the voices in the poems of Una Marson and Louise Bennet. Therefore, language as the instrument of translating reality and as a repository of culture is observed as well. Both Blossom’s persona and the form of the short story undergo a metamorphosis to accommodate the memories of culture and her refashioning of the self on the lines of her ancestry. It allows a 'double consciousness' (W.E.B Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk) balancing the Apollonian and the Dionysian strands so that the immigrant woman can make sense her hyphenated identity as a part of ‘rational’ modernity and as an heir to the ‘black Atlantic’ cultural identity.

Austin Clarke’s Canadian Experience presents the other side- the inability to accommodate oneself, resulting in a complete subversion of the spatial-temporal flow wherein the clock itself serves the function of a mere reminder of futility. In the preference given to the pronoun ‘he’ rather than a definite name is enmeshed the proof of shredding of notions of a definitive identity. The frequent references to his laugh itself echoes out of darkest corners of existential pathos, while the attempts to mould a ‘white mask’ perspective with his ‘black skin’ only aggravates the dark humour . Within the state of limbo, the only companion he has is an actress: both linked by the common factor of ‘decrepitude’ and failure, resulting in a larger common identity of their own. In fact, the dark humour coupled with his warm memories creates a twilight moment at six-thirty and is followed by a characteristically modernist twist; the fact that Pat finds a job creates a sensation of feeling betrayed, of being left alone in the bubble world of their rooms that can no longer contain the darkness growing within him. Hence, he performs the ‘act’ of throwing her out of his life until the leitmotif of the laugh of existential pathos overcomes him, merging the darkness within him with the light of the oncoming train.

This element of nihilism serves as a signifier in the process of identification, stretching the cultural identity of the Canadian-Caribbean immigrants and the ‘black Atlantic’ identity to a larger web that encompasses the ‘girmit consciousness’ (Vijay Mishra, The Girmit Ideology Reconsidered) of the Fiji-Indian diaspora. In this respect, Subramani’s Marigolds provides a ‘slice of life’ that allows a comparison with the short stories of Dionne Brand and Austin Clarke; Blossoms attempts to realign herself with reality can be juxtaposed with the protagonist’s efforts at creating a garden of utopia to escape the pains of rationality, while the protagonist of Austin Clarke’s short story could certainly have voiced the expressions of a ‘pathetic freedom’ and the search for ‘diurnal sounds that signal the passage of hours.’ It is also significant to note the in spite of the unity of content, the three short stories bear a diversity of perspectives: the third person narrative of Dionne Brand and Austin Clarke’s stories offer a contrast to the first person narrative of Subramani’s Marigolds.

The marigolds serve as a physical substitute for imaginary notions of escape into a utopia -the ‘girmit consciousness’ or “falsification of reality… (which) was necessary to keep the psychic totality of these displaced Indians intact” (Vijay Mishra) .That Dharma does not accept the marigold together with the speaker’s failure to raise a garden represent the breakdown of all essential communication and the shattering of hopes of sharing and nourishing the imaginary utopia- an escape from the persistent state of dystopia. Subramani pulls the voyeur into the personal spaces of their relation, focussing on the inner world of consciences and the silent chaos raging within it; in order to distinguish between dreams and real existence, the actions of the protagonist seek a confirmation of being alive in the sights, sounds and sensations of a wasteland coupled with a struggle to articulate resulting in anguish and anger. Whether the anguish arises from the inherited nihilism as children of indentured labour ("everything, history and customs, had prepared me for this impasse") or whether it is a self-deception akin to figure of the 'angry young man' cannot be accurately apprehended. Nevertheless, both have their sources in the state of limbo, a ‘hopeless gulf’, that is also shared and experienced by Blossom and the identity-less character of the two other short stories. Moreover, Subramani’s short story throws up the significant question of new margins for the consideration of a larger cultural identity based on post-immigration mindscapes.

Moinak Choudhury 

PG 1

Blossom, the enigma of a soul

Dionne Brand's Blossom tells the story of the vigorous Trinidadian woman who gradually figures out a transcendental life for herself freeing herself from the pangs of despair and clutches of a failing life in the Stranger Land. The very beginning of the story initiates the presence of a feminine aura and the lurking of something supernatural in the story, and her place being called the "obeah house" implants the magical world of the black people to be the essential identity of the mysticism.

An invincible spirit of life within Blossom is what guides her actions in the unknown land far away from her home,as she tries to keep up with the ever failing attempt of creating a secure and meaningful life in Toronto. Her sudden transformation at thirty six years of age begins one morning when she suddenly feels very tired and old and discovers the uselessness of her marriage to Victor and of her life in hardships and hardwork. Her realization of the void breaks her to the core. In the violent behaviour with screams that announce heartrending protests, and the uncontrollable tears that follow, a search for herself begins ; and she grows older in the mind. As a way to liberation,she connects deeply with her native roots and her 'she' self as she feels the dominating presence of Oya, the goddess of winds, storms and waterfalls she had known since old days, in her life. She realizes the plight of the Black race that she feels Oya shows to her. Her learning to rise above grief, makes her strengthen a contact with the larger cause of living for humanity as the meaning of existence. She is seen to engage in wild dance and enraptured celebration every night for she feels possessed and climbs "into Oya lovely womb of strength and fearlessness." Her dressing up in colours against suffering, speaking in old African tongues trace a liberation of the self from all worldly ties; essentially guided by a mother woman power who serves to be the strength of her voice. She finds strength to inculcate the force of life within her. Her warrior like disposition reminds one of the assertive ancient warrior race of women, the Amazons. Her revelry echoes a spirit that unites since the old Grecian times, the sacred and the feminine. She becomes the woman larger than life with the "power to fight, power to feel pain and the power to heal." Her wildness, her dreams, her mourning, her crying for the plight of her native souls and her 'fame as a obeah woman' makes her the mystical voice of ancient spirits in search of a greater life. Her presence becomes a mark of profundity and a celebration of the woman spirit making a mark in the heart of the Canadian world,erasing her void and marginalization.

Manjima Biswas 
PGI

Canadian Experience

Portrayed entirely in the gloomy hues of grey, black and brown, Austin Clarke's "Canadian Experience" is a poignant tale of a man vacillating between his survival needs and the sense of 'otherness' that torments him in the city of his dreams. He is disillusioned that nothing really has changed. As the 'black' man in the white country, he stands aloof in the crowd battling the self imposed exile, as lethargy and a sense of defeat creep into his sordid life. Low self esteem and rootlessness hang over him like a canopy. The elevator moving up and down represents the tug-of-war that is raging within himself; the pain of existence and the emancipation from the bondage of life. His cynical laughter that has been a characteristic mark of his character accompanies him till his last step towards evasion in the process of bringing down the burden of his identity crisis.

Rudrani Mukherjee

PG I

Blossom

Migrating from Trinidad to Toronto, in Dionne Brand's "Blossoms", the protagonist suffers a double marginalization being a 'black female'. Decentralized that she already is, the physical abuse by the white doctor adds on to her suppressed crisis and aggravates her insecurity. The daily struggle for existence as an outsider shapes up the rebel within her with the determination to assert her existence. Her fatigue and dormant anger born out of events of repeated disgrace (physical and economic exploitation), monotony, restlessness and acute loneliness bring to mind Yvars in Albert Camus' "The Silent Man" - "...his teeth still clenched with a sad, dry anger that darkened even the sky itself". From the neglect and humiliation emerges the spirit of Oya in her. The once deserted, gullible Trinidadian, confronting her existential crisis, Blossom, blooms into an independent woman manifesting streaks of the awe-inspiring Goddess, radiant in her flamboyance.

Rudrani Mukherjee

PG I

Blossoms

In Blossoms we see Blossoms really trying to fit. When she marries Victor, it was her way of trying to merge-in. However this short story has something which neither Canadian Experience nor Marigolds has, that is an undying spirit. Here we find a Black woman who other than facing an identity crisis, for she neither can return to Trinidad and nor Canada would accept her whole heartedly, goes back to her African past and becomes a Obeah woman. She identifies with a higher being, the goddess Oya. This helps her gain a certain kind of independence: independence from both the whites and also from gender politics.

Shafia Parveen 

PGI

Canadian Experience

"Canadian Experience" identifies one of the difficulties within the multicultural system: the inherent hierarchy is race and class based. Here is an immigrant from Barbados who wanted to live his “Emigrant Dream” but on coming to Canada he faces disillusionment. He is unable to fit into his new environment. The very first scene is very important for it displays Du Bois’s double consciousness. The protagonist seems to be working under an invisible gaze and hence his discomfort and realization: the realization that he is too black, the realization that he may not get a proper job. The sense of splintered sensibility is brilliantly depicted in the following lines: “its reflection of his body tears into strides and splatters his suit against four glass panels and makes him disjointed”. His laughter has a strange eerie feeling to it which reminds us of Clov’s “brief laughter” in Beckett’s Endgame, the laughter that fills up the gaps of uncomfortable silence. Pat stands for Canada herself, her getting the job at the restaurant shows how white skin was a currency in Canada and helped people to advance their future based on it. After spending eight futile years in Canada his disillusionment and failure leads him take his own life : a reassertion that at least in a white country he still has control over something- his life.

Shafia Parveen 

PGI

Marigolds

The three short stories can actually be seen as the three ways that emigrants adopt to cope with their new Home. While Subramani’s Chetram resorts to a fretful resignation, Clarke’s protagonist unable to fit in commits suicide and Dionne Brande’s Blossoms resorts to a “positive regression”.

Subramani’s Marigolds seems to be a parody of Wordsworth’s Daffodils as here the marigolds with their bright yellow colour stand as a telling contrast to Chetram’s colourless, tired, squalid existence. The physicality found in Lamming’s The Emigrants crops up here again displayed by Chetram. Lamming writes: “we were all going to wait to see what would happen”, here Chetram has nothing to look forward to. We see he beats his wife at the end for almost no reason but here Chetram doesn’t beat his wife to feel “that he has arrived”, the reason why Una kills Queenie in The Emigrants,but rather to break out of the cycle of monotony. Here is a man unable to cope with his surrounding and can only say “

Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm….“

Shafia Parveen 

PGI

Blossom and Canadian Experience

BLOSSOM

The story telescopes on the most common problems faced by female black migrants- thwarting of hopes and expectations for which they migrated from their homeland to a foreign country, watching the “white people live” while they sink deeper and deeper in the pit of poverty, stagnation n deprivation and encountering the “double jeopardy”(to quote Tony.C.Bambara from The Black Woman) of racial discrimination and sexual exploitation. The exploitation arises from multiple quarters for Blossom. In the words of Gloria Anzaldua in Borderlands, “the males of all races hunt her as prey”- the 'white' master who tries to abuse her sexually and the 'black' husband who exploits her economically, “drinking Blossom liquor” and having a “good time”, while she slaves day in and day out, until one day. All the dejection and subjugation that she “put up with”, ‘storms’ out in the form of violence and seething rage, tearing down the apparently calm “domesticated” exterior with vengeance.

Blossom’s seeking refuge in Oya, the deity she “know from home” is her way of reconnecting and re-membering with the “the place she miss”(a line from Brand’s first novel In Another Place, Not Here). This relocation happens in dreams, where her suffering merges with the “black people suffering”, where her sordid present entangles with that of her dark ancestral history, until the act of “mourning “ transcends into the act of “borning”, of rebirth, of ‘blossoming’, of breaking away from entrapment n suffering n of breaking into a dance of “freeness” n joy . The rising of Blossom, phoenix-lie from a voiceless, impoverished Black woman to an economically empowered Obeah woman is an envisioning of Band’s emphasis on the urgency of resistance and survival, embodied by Oya, the warrior spirit of rebirth and rejuvenation.

CANADIAN EXPERIENCE

The nihilistic wail of a failed Barbadian immigrant transforms into a reverberating laughter as he lives the “tale told by an idiot” in a hostile foreign soil, in the story of Austin Clarke. Estranged from his roots, living in a decrepit house in Canada, he can only laugh at the enormity of his fallacy, laugh because he is “afraid to cry” as Sam Selvon says in The Lonely Londoners, or because there is nobody to hear his cries . He has left the ones who would behind, far behind, across the Atlantic, in the “stinking dirt” of his plantation that was his own, for a life of “advancement” in Canada. He constantly gauges himself from the white man’s perspective, an ‘expertise’ that he has acquired from his long “Canadian experience”, comparing wistfully his unusual, rather colourful attire with that of a white man’s formal black suit, making mental notes of the expensively dressed men and women and his obvious distinction from them. This pervasive viewing of oneself from the perspective of the ‘other’, which denigrates one’s own worth in one’s eyes, much in the manner of Prufrock, leads to the inevitable ‘Prufrockian Paralysis’ that the Barbadian encounters in the lift. Unable to step out, “He stands his ground”, even a simple word “BANK”, seems threatening, “cheerless and frightening”. Austin Clarke through his protagonist chronicles the psychological “decrepitude”, suffered by migrant identities in self-inflicted exile, the life of the unaccomodated man in an unaccustomed earth.

Taniya Neogi
PG I

On The Short Stories

Dreams,-- obscure, entrapping, form the very core of all the three stories...

MARIGOLD
Chetram has become a part of the Fijian history of diaspora Indians. A hundred years move into a flux, and become one with his being. The entrapment that he has created for himself has no way out. Life becomes a 'mela', an obscurity of memory. Death is the only smell. Marigolds, with their colour and fragrance are only but dreams. Confusion looms large, as the images form the same waning meaninglessness of Steinbeck's 'Chrysanthemums'. The bursting forth of the tension, the emotions, the rain, would never come to Salinas Valley. In Subramani's story, however, even the garden could never arrive. Rain comes, but only to wash away dreams. Chetram meets his 'other'-- the one wearing the hippie blouse, and the attempt of breaking out is violent-- physical, accompanied by smell of urine, sweat, vomit, gorging food, alcohol. The red, fiery clouds accumulate. The lull is yet to be broken.


BLOSSOM
She made a living out of her hysterical, feverish dreams. The dreams again form a movement that breaks the linearity of history. Blossom loses her Canadian and Trinidadian identities through her violent dreams. She identifies, and 'becomes' that 'Africa', that Stuart Hall indicates to be the only sharing attribute of the Black Atlantic diaspora. An 'Africa' re-gained, re-identified, through imagination. An Africa that is Oya herself. Languages are formed, and placed into history. Dances become the language of freedom-- "Freeness" itself. The colonial limitations of the English language are broken. "We shall overcome" gets a more soulful rendition-- a rendition in a violent seeking of identity and freedom, defeating "Suffering" of the "Black people", destroying whites-- an identity of anger, of violent negritude.



CANADIAN EXPERIENCE
Life becomes an irony-- a morbid laughter, in the story by Austin Clarke. Time has lost its meaning, as the confused clock sits in anticipation, ready to serve 'alarms' in George's bored existence. He has left his ancestral lands, his roots, in search of of his colonial dreams, which have failed him. Eight years, and yet, George is too black to wear brown. As he breaks out into a sardonic laughter on his own life, he tries to carry on a losing existential battle, one shared with the many Italians, Greeks, Portuguese in Canada. Even the white Pat has "cold sores" in Canada. That Canada can never suit George. Food, physicality, materialism, existence itself-- become a glaring farce. George is very troubled in his psychotic dreams of chains and machines. He still carries on his cynical laughter, even as he ends his life. "Decreptitude" wins. However, Sisyphus had this same mocking laughter, as he defeated pity.


-DHRITIMAN GANGULY,
PG-I

On the short stories

Marigolds
Chetram has lived for years in what Jean-Paul Sartre famously called ‘bad faith’. He has let himself epitomize the “Being-for-others”, succumbing to the lure of false serenity. However, his predicament is not just personal but also historical. In the “island”, distanced from the “imaginary homeland”, he is still haunted by the ‘residual’ elements of his cultural past. Inertia and paralysis of life have ossified his subjectivity, providing him with escape routes only in dreams and fantasies. He lives on the blurred borderline between the real and the imagined, and his trial to effect an ontological shift from the Being-for-others to the Being-for-Itself – or, in other words, to live in “good faith”- only culminates in a projection of “pathetic freedom”. The unnegotiated shadows in his dreams are neither exorcized nor granted a liberating role. Inhabiting a spatio-temporal limbo, he is denied both a horizon of togetherness and a self-sustaining solitude. Deleuze and Guattari, in A Thousand Plateaus, celebrates the “plateau” that is always in the middle, never at the beginning or the end. However, one may argue that, for Chetram, the “plateau” of history is consternating, not liberating. While his wife has settled herself in the circularity between deterritorialization and reterritorialization, or to use Homi Bhabha’s metaphor, the time of scattering and the time of gathering, Chetram is locked in the wound of a primordial, almost mythic moment of cultural displacement- for him, there is no passage from this blackhole of wounded subjectivity to the solar circle of completion represented by the marigolds. Like Benjamin’s Angel of History , he can only helplessly watch his wings troubled by an alien storm, while under his feet the wilderness of fractured histories continues to cherish the silence of barrenness.

Blossom
Blossom’s narrative upholds the cathartic power of what Ashis Nandy, in Time Warps, calls the “unhistoricised pasts”, for a people uprooted from not only their place of origin, but also the cultural milieu where their own cosmology operated conveniently. At the same time, the liberation of Blossom’s female subjectivity through the possession of Oya , the goddess of turbulent natural forces, signifies the peculiar kind of emancipatory potential that Charlene Spretnak claims “goddess spirituality” to have for the female subject. The story also challenges the Enlightenment discourse of rationality and the concepts of “secular history” . Expelled by Western History which, as Michel de Certeau points out, always “objectifies” the past , the narratives of Blossom and the black women like her can be redeemed only in a different temporal modality that acknowledges the past in the present, a mythic time where moments of psychic purgation are salvaged from the emancipatory storm of Oya’s dance and constellated around the wound of Blossom’s (black) female subjectivity. It is interesting to notice that unlike the storm of “progress” sent from the heaven that does not let Benjamin’s Angel of History gather the fragments from the debris of the past, Oya’s storm is redemptive, it is this almost chthonic storm, rather than the “secular” sanity of a surreptitiously racist West that helps Blossom in picking up the fragments of selfhood and arranging them into an ontological stability. Dionne Brand, in her own unique way, challenges what Dipesh Chakrabarty has called the “everyday subalternity of non-Western histories”, drawing our attention to “other constructions of self and community” that the metanarratives of Western history seeks to peripheralize as myth, or- “stories”.

Canadian Experience
“The son of a Barbadian plantation owner”, the protagonist of the story comes to Canada only to be disillusioned. Everyone can’t channel roots into the “unaccustomed earth”, especially when that earth is obstinately hostile to the newcomer. The actress is also frustrated, as far as her artistic ambitions are concerned, but she still manages to get a job, while the Barbadian immigrant can only be sucked into a nihilistic despair. He is actually a failed immigrant. It’s not that he lacks adjusting capacity, but the demands of the host society are too heavy for him. Stuart Hall has focussed on the New World myth’s mysterious presence in the Caribbean, which engages the Caribbean people in perpetual cycles of migration. A persona non grata in an apparently accommodative host country whose racism works silently and secretly, the immigrant’s “journey to an expectation”( to use Lamming’s words in The Pleasures of Exile) ends in disaster. A lack of formal education coupled with impractical ambitions subjects him to an inevitable failure in job-hunting , and he, now, can’t help but regret for having ignored his father’s advice, though he seems anxious to hide this regret from himself. His fate emblematizes the unsettling supplement to the glorious narratives of immigration, the cases of failure, for whom there is no possibility of either assimilation into the “new” land or ‘return to a native land’, that Cesaire himself , in Discourse on Colonialism, recognized to be impossible. The immigrant’s inglorious life story falls into the “crater of silence”(a la Amitav Ghosh), remaining “untranslated” by the host society like that of the Turkish worker in John Berger’s A Seventh Man.At least for him the “third space” is not productive, but rather an apocalypse of meaning.


Anway Mukhopadhyay
PG II