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