International Journal of The Frontiers of English Literature and The ...

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International Journal of The Frontiers of English Literature and The Patterns of ELT

January 2013

www.englishjournal.mgit.ac.in

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Diasporic Consciousness in the works of Anita Nair Dr. Maya Vinai Bits-Pilani. (Hyderabad Campus)

e-mail id: [email protected]

Since the last quarter of the 20th century, South Asian writing has increasingly received greater acclaim all over the world. The success of Rushdie, Roy, Desai and Adiga enormously boosted the entire corpus of Indian writing in English. There has also been a tremendous change in the patterns of publishing and distribution of Indian writing in English over the last two decades. A remarkable feature of the 21st century writers is that they are not only involved in the process of creative writing but are also involving themselves in advertising, publicity, pricing, sales and follow-up of their books. The benefits an Indian English writer enjoys is enormous: like prestigious awards, world-wide audience, huge-prize-money, translations and film-adaptations. This has made both writers as well as publishers very enthusiastic. Within the faction of Indian English writers, there are rifts and clashes between home-based writers and the diasporic writers, between regional language writers and Indian English writers. And unfortunately, this ‘insideroutsider’ debate has been raging across literary circles for more than three decades now. Till the present century, the diasporic writers have been dominating the literary firmament, and the success ratio mostly remains tilted towards that of the diasporic writers. However the most contested issue in this remains as to how can a writer occupying a privileged position in the West write about the East?

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Nair and establish that this consciousness has provided her with a healthy location for recreating

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This paper seeks to locate the presence of diasporic consciousness in the works of Anita


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home, country and her own identity. Nair recurrently comes up a narrative of dislocation and attempts to recreate an identity not just for her characters but herself too. This chapter also tries to bring to light the fact that the subjective location of the author- her identity, her politics-is an integral part of the manner in which representations are mediated within narrative spaces.

The term diaspora has become popularand fashionable and is widely used in the media and popular parlance as well as in scholarly literature. The popularity of the term does not however, mean that there is consensus over its definition or clarity in its usage. Etymologically, the term diaspora is derived from two words dia and speirein, which literally means ‘to spread’ or ‘to scatter’ or ‘to disperse’. It was originally used to refer to the dispersion of Jews after Babyonian exile in 586 BCE. Critic Clifford argues that the peculiar feature of diasporic community is a formation of a double consciousness that enables the individual to transcend disappointments by emphasizing the strengths of self and community. According to him:

Experience of loss, marginality, and exile (differently cushioned by class) are often reinforced by systematic exploitation and blocked advancement. This constitutive suffering coexists with the skills of survival: strength in adaptive distinction, discrepant cosmopolitanism, and stubborn visions of renewal. Diaspora consciousness lives loss and hope as a defining tension. (312)

Though Anita Nair is classified at stay-at-home writer by the literary circles and academic institutions, Nair’s fiction strongly exhibits the diasporic consciousness. Born in

glowing terms in which she describes the landscape and the obeisance she pays to the rich January 2013


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her heart holds a fond longing for her native home-state, Kerala. This longing is evident in the

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Shornoor, a small town in northern Kerala and brought up in Avadi, 22 kms away from Chennai


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cultural heritage of Kerala in her narrative. In her Introduction to the anthology Where the Rain is born: writings about Kerala (2002) Kerala looks and feels like paradise on earth: “Nowhere else in the world have I seen so many hues of green. The velvety green of the moss on the wall.The deep green of the hibiscus bush.The dapple green of the jackfruit. The jade green of the paddy. . . Leaves.Parakeet’s wing.The frogs.The opaque green of silence.” (i)

Anita Nair’s Kerala is an imagined space, recreated from memory, nostalgia and the oral narratives of the people she loves. Kerala, its villages, art forms, ayurveda, dance-drama, monsoons, snake-shrines, coconuts, elephants, jackfruits all form the backdrop of her novels. It is this part-real, part-imagined land which is the source of her inspiration. But unfortunately, for people who reside within the territorial borders, a migrant remains an outsider or a visitor in spite of the latter’s attachment to the land or the local customs. The obsession with Kerala gives her work its concrete specificity; it also limits the scope of her narrative and her range as a creative writer.

Ironically, Anita Nair, who is not an exile, does not choose to settle down in the land of her dreams in spite of its excellent topography. The reason behind this is the economic gains the host state provides and the fact that social reality of Kerala is quite depressing. The most literate state which has a unique higher female ratio is also unfortunately the state with highest suicide rates, highest liquor consumption, and mad-houses overflowing with people having psychiatric problems. (Jacob 176) The politics of the state leaves a lot to be desired. One half of party tickets is given to older generation (grand-old men and women in their late 80’s and 90’s) who contests

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background. (Outlook 40-41.) In an interview with William Wolok writer Anita Nair voices the

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and re-contests till their death-bed. The other half goes to candidates who have a criminal


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divide between the real and imagined Kerala, “to live there is to be disenchanted, because it’s a beautiful place with a lot of ugly things.” (http://nd.edu/~ndr/issues/ndr27/William%20Wolak/extended%20interview.html) Anita Nair’s perception of the “ugly things” becomes clearer in her Introduction to Where the rain is born whereby she says that when Kerala is offered to the world it is: “a package wrought of colour, traditions, dainty foods, coconut lined lagoons and ayurveda …What of the total lack of industry, high unemployment, a competitive and conspicuous consumerism, bureaucracy, corruption, or the stifling conservative attitudes…” (ix)

The narratives and reconstruction of home land (read as home state) of such writers who are not forcefully driven out of their roots and culture are in Achebe’s words, “generally less painful and more playful, less emotional and more intellectual” (Achebe105).Though a writer leaves his home for the metropolis, the metropolis provides him/her with a congenial and healthy location for recreating a vision of home, country and even his/her identity. Such a reconstruction proves a source of understanding and awareness, even empowerment. It is only those who are pushed out of their home and land against their will, who undergo a serious fracture of their self or psyche. This kind of dislocation is painful because it entails abandoning what one has grown up with, of being rooted in a definite place and climate within a network of social and cultural relations, which are crucial to defining one’s self.

In spite of being a migrant, Nair’s work approximates the condition of the artist in exile. For her exile, is more of a condition of the soul than a political reality. Migrants carry with them

of religious beliefs and practices, a framework or norms and values governing, family and January 2013


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a socio-cultural baggage which among other things includes- a pre-defined social identity, a set


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kinship organization and food habits. Her books like The Better Man, Mistress, and Lessons in Forgetting show how the experience of displacement and migration can be both emancipatory as well as a harrowing experience.

Also, unlike the conception of most of the people regarding the trauma of exile, homelessness and relocation, Nair shows how this state of mind can afflict any individual within the particular state or country. Even an average metropolitan person can experience something like diasporic exile. In SankaranRaveendran’s words: “The pain, anxiety, fear and insecurity that Indians have to pass through in their daily life, especially for those who live in States other than their own, generate a dense form of diaspora. The situation of those outside India is an “attenuated and alembicated” form of the dense forms inside India.” (Sharma 135) The migrant, on returning back to his village, becomes alien to the culture and customs of that particular village. Though the inhabitants of the village acknowledge him/her and involve him/her in ceremonies and rituals, an opaque barrier still remains which prevent them from treating the metro-returned person as one among them. Thus migrant is deemed ‘an outsider’ which gives him/her the feeling of non-belonging and a no-whereness. In The Better Man we find Mukundan trapped in a similar situation. In a letter to his friend Anand in Madras we find him describing his retired life in his village Kaikurussi thus:

As for me, I’m pulling on in this place. I’m slowly getting used to village life. Believe me; it is nothing like what you see in all those Malayalam movies you like to watch on the video. I can understand your curiosity as

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to what I do all day. Actually, come to think of it, there isn’t any fixed

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pattern to my day here… It is very different, and very often I wish I could return to an office routine. It gave a structure to my existence. (121)

In The Better Man painter Bhasi, who is forcibly evicted by the local big-wigs of Kaikurrussi for the construction of community hall project faces a similar predicament. The natives of Kaikurrussi find it most suitable to deprive Bhasi of his land to build a community hall because he is not a native of the village. The pain and anguish he suffers on being told to leave the land he loves is unbearable for him. The villagers feel that because Bhasi is a settler he would have no qualms over leaving the land of Kaikurrusi. To which Bhasi retorts:

So is that what it has been reduced to? That as a native you have certain rights, and as a settler I don’t. I love this village, this land, more than anyone else in the village does. I love it as if it were a living being. But because I am not a native I’m dispensable. How am I going to make you or anyone else understand what Kaikurussi means to me? What can I say to you who see this land merely as mud, grass and trees, of the bonding the land and I share? (311)

Nair’s migrant consciousness is evident from the continuous evocation of the motif of return to the homeland in almost all her major novels. As a child, the thought that ‘one day we would return to Kerala’ persistently haunted Anita. (http://www.samayiki.com/2009/02/anitanair-interview/) And this motif is manifest in her characters like Sethu and Mukundan in The

to economic reasons. Though Anita Nair is sympathetic towards this nowhere man she has no January 2013


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home, tinged with nostalgia, define many of the characters who are compelled to stay back due

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Better Man, Koman and Sethu in Mistress and Jak in Lessons in Forgetting. The glorification of


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qualms in portraying the ridiculous lengths they go to create this sense of belonging while staying in an alien land. In Lessons in Forgetting, Prof. Jak, living in the U.S, refuses to repair the leaky tap in the garden because he wants to hear it drip, which reminds him of the kitchen tap in the house he grew up in. Furthermore he even disallows his wife to clean up the bird shit in the patio because it reminds him of the backyard of his house in Mylapore. (151) Nair demonstrates how migrancy can be both emancipatory as well as painful. Thus throughout Anita Nair’s novels we can trace a double consciousness pervading her writings or a like/dislike relationship which can be construed as a byproduct of the ideological construct fashioned by external stimuli and inner consciousness.

Due to her unique insider-outsider status, Nair assumes a vantage point whereby she can contemplate on the socio-cultural aspects of a society without being consumed by the myriad debates on class, caste and gender by various groups. In Rushdie’s terms a writer like Nair: “speak properly and concretely on a subject of universal significance and appeal” (12) Nair can surreptitiously sneak in, observe and discretely withdraw without getting involved in the vortex of political activity. And it is perhaps this which has helped her to perceive the great bridge which exists between the Kerala myth and reality. In the author’s words from Where the Rain is Born: writings about Kerala, it is the “craving to read beyond lines and see beyond what is on display. To probe beyond the surface and tap into the seams of everyday. To shrug aside recycled nostalgia and to see Kerala for what it truly is.” (Introduction ix) Herbrief stint in Kerala while completing her education has actually equipped her for her task as a creative writer by providing

occasional visits to Kerala with her brother as a child she consistently gathered snippets about January 2013


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dynamics that operate within the territorial borders of the State. Besides this, during her

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her with the historical background as well as an intimate understanding of the caste and gender


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the various myths, traditional beliefs and folklores from her parents and relatives. Furthermore she is an avid and extensive reader of Malayalam literature and follows all the literary trends of Kerala.

In a sense, Nair is a product of three cultures and her knowledge of five languages gives her a distinct advantage over homegrown writers rooted in their culture that they almost blindly worship. To borrow Salman Rushdie’s from Imaginary Homelands words: “If literature is in part the business of finding new angles at which to enter reality, then once our distance, our long geographical perspective, may provide us with such angles.” (10). Said too affirms this view in his work Reflections on Exile and other Literary and Cultural Essays (2001) whereby he says that by crossing borders of several kinds, a person breaks “barriers of thought and experience”, which opens up new ways of understanding people and situations. (185) The distance also provides these creative artists with a sense of order and a pattern and a sense of control unavailable to most artists located within the confines of a socio-cultural context.

Anita Nair feels that even though the landscape of Kerala figures overwhelmingly in her writings she needs to keep a physical distance and write outside her home state. In her perspective: “You will be limited if you’re in the middle of things.” (http://www.hindu.com/2006/02/12/stories/2006021205380200.htm). If we look at any native Malayalam writer say for instance writers like M.T Vasudevan NairorMalayatoorRamakrishnan their writings are heavily influenced by the ideology of the Left which makes their works totally predictable. But a writer like Anita Nair enjoys a critical distance from the local politics and

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to persuade one as an authentic account of that life. Through the character of Comrade Jayan,

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affiliations of the State machinery. Hence, her portrayal of the contemporary life in Kerala tends


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who personifies the communist ideals, Nair shows how easily these ideals are eroded and watered down due to the compulsions of real politic. “The party understands that certain projects need the backing of capitalist enterprise. The party encourages us to support such ventures. At least then some of the bourgeois wealth will reach the needy masses.” (307) I am not for a moment suggesting that Nair’s is a value-neutral account, but gently reminding the reader of Ngugi’s conviction that “every writer is a writer in politics.” But in Nair’s case, her politics does not get in the way of a comprehensive treatment of the socio-cultural phenomena she chooses to deal with. Furthermore her familiarity with three cultures has given her a strong multicultural perspective. Hers is “an awareness of simultaneous dimension, an awareness [that is] contrapuntal.” (Said 2001, 186)

One of the major endeavors of many migrant and diasporic writers is their search for roots and identity. Anita Nair is no exception to this. It is one of her pre-occupations, evident from her fictional works. Nair’s works are shaped by the active engagement with the dominant cultural forms to establish a space for oneself. Occasionally her creative endeavors are devoted in settling her crisis within her own self to ascertain the cultural space which she wants to call her home which perhaps is the dilemma of every kid whose parents have left their home state for better employment opportunities. In an interview with Wollok, the author admits: “in India people maintain an identity because of the language they speak…Though you might be Indian, you feel that your roots are in the state where you were originally born. So Kerala is home for me; everywhere else is just a place to live.”

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(http://nd.edu/~ndr/issues/ndr27/William%20Wolak/extended%20interview.html)

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On the one hand she adores her native land Kerala, but on the other she seems to be disturbed by the inherent politics of the place. Within the parameters of her own hometown, she is an outsider who makes a few sporadic visits. And it seems very likely that the cottage built by her in Mundukottukurrussi is to battle this deep insecurity within the recesses of her heart and perhaps reinforce this link to her roots and foster a sense of belongingness. It is the impending diasporic consciousness and insecurity of being thrown out of the host state that makes a person invest in one handful of soil in the land of their forefathers. A similar sentiment of joy is expressed by Salman Rushdie in his collection of essays Imaginary Homelands: Essays and criticism1981-1991 on being claimed by his land of birth, Mumbai. “I felt as if I was being claimed, or informed that the facts of my far away life were illusions, and this continuity was the reality.” (154) It is the same need to reclaim her identity in Kerala which is depicted in Anita Nair’s fiction through characters like Mukundan and Koman. And perhaps it is the same longing for one’s own land that has compelled Nair to stay back in India rather than chose any other foreign location to comfortably emigrate to like most of the Indian English writers do so after attaining their initial bouts of success in the literary world.

The power of modern literature lies in its willingness to give a voice to what has remained unexpressed in the social and individual consciousness. Anita Nair’s unique sociohistoric location, her versatility with different cultures, delineation of themes, her representation of women all make her fiction an interesting document on the Kerala reality, the caste gender

truths or readymade slogans. It is like an ear that can hear beyond the

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Literature becomes important not when it reproduces established values, given

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dynamics of contemporary Kerala in particular. As noted critic Satchidanandan says:


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understanding of commonsense knowledge, sociology or politics, like an eye that can see beyond colour spectrum perceived by politics. (167)

Works Cited Achebe, Chinua. Home and Exile. 2000. New York: Anchor Books, 2001. Print. Ananthamurthy, U.R. quoted by K.C Belliappa,’ Problematising Indian Writing in English’, The Journal of Indian writing in English. 30.2 (2002): 6-11. Balachandran, K. (ed). Critical Essays on Diasporic Writings. New Delhi: Arise Publishers, 2008. Print. Bhabha, Homi. K. Nation and Narration. London: Routledge, 1997. Print. - - - The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Print. Clifford, James. ‘Diasporas’, Cultural Anthropology. 9.3(1994): 302-38. Jain, Jasbir. Writers of Indian Diaspora.Jaipur :Rawat, 1998. Print. Jacob, T.G and P. Bandhu.Reflections on the Caste Question: The Dalit Situation in South India. Bangalore: Nesa, 2002. Jayaram .N .The Indian Diaspora. New Delhi: Sage Publications , 2004. Print. Jeffrey, Robin. Politics, Women and Well-Being: How Kerala Became "A Model". Delhi: OUP, 2003. Print. Mohanty, Niranjan. Indian Writing in English: Canonizing the Human Factor. Points of View. 15.1 (2008): 65-73. Nair, Anita. The Ladies Coupe .New Delhi: Penguin, 2001. Print. - - - The Better Man. New Delhi: Penguin, 2003. Print.

- - - Goodnight and God Bless. New Delhi: Penguin, 2008. Print.

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- - - Lessons in Forgetting. New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2010. Print.

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- - - The Mistress. New Delhi: Penguin, 2005. Print.


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- - - Where the rain is born: Writings about Kerala. New Delhi: Penguin, 2002. Print. Narsimhaiah, C. D. Makers of Indian English Literature. New Delhi: Pencraft International ,2003. Print. Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and criticism1981-1991.London:Granta, 1991. Said, Edward.Reflections on Exile and other Literary & Cultural Essays. London: Granta.2001. Satchidanandan .K. Indian Literature: Paradigms and Praxis. New Delhi: Pencraft, 2008. Print. Sen, Amartya. On Economic Inequality. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1973. Print. Sharma, S.K. “Divergent Trends in Indian Fiction in English.” The Commonwealth Review 15.2 (2006):12-24. Reddy, Sheela.‘Midnight’s orphans’ Outlook. 25 February 2002.

Internet sources: http://www.hindu.com/lr/2005/11/06/stories/2005110600120200.htm. http://www.samayiki.com/2009/02/anita-nair-interview/ http://www.makarand.com/acad/IndianEnglishanditsContexts: Re-presentingIndiainourtime.htm. http://nd.edu/~ndr/issues/ndr 27/William%20/Wolak/extended%20-interview.html. http:www.indereunion.net/actu/Anita Nair/interAita.htm. http://www.hindu.com/2006/02/12/stories/2006021205380200.htm.(dated22-2-10)

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http://meenu.wordpress.com/2010/05/02 interview-with-anita-nair.

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