A Study of Diasporic Consciousness and Experience in Arranged Marriage in Indian English Fiction

In this time of globalization, the terms like transnational‘s, Diasporas, expatriates, transients, and so forth have turned out to be exceptionally basic marvels and the difference between them is regularly obscured. A striking element in this time of globalization is the "transnational development of individuals" and the "...intensification in the making of differing diaspora populaces in numerous areas, who are occupied with complex relational and intercultural associations with both their host social orders and their social orders of cause" (Tambiah 2000: 163). Khaching Tӧlӧyan in his diary, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies (1991) affirms the criticalness of the terms of the two sides of the colon. „Transnationals‟ are transients who make and keep up numerous ties over a few national limits alongside their homes. The idea of „Daispora‟ which is being utilized broadly in the scholarly world in the course of the most recent two decades or thereabouts, generally followed back to later piece of nineteenth century to allude to the dispersal of Jews as far as outcast (galut) and aching for their arrival to the country. From that point forward this term has been utilized variedly. From 1960s to 1970s, the traditional importance of diaspora was named as the scattering of Africans, Americans, and Irish. From 1980s onwards, this term was utilized as „expatriates‟, „expels‟, „political refugees‟, „alien residents‟, „immigrants‟, „racial minorities‟, and so forth. From the mid-1990s, „diaspora‟ remains for the general population who live outside their national regions (Cohen 1977: 9). Uma Parmeswaran, a prominent Indo-Canadian essayist has featured the diasporic consciousness as takes after: The first is sentimentality for the country, deserted blended with fear in unusual land. The second is a stage in which one is so occupied in acclimating to the new condition that there is minimal imaginative yield. The

begun partaking in the bigger universe of legislative issues and national issues. The activity taken to enhance the state of such women propelled her to compose Arranged Marriage, a show-stopper to portray the story of misuse and boldness of migrant women. Chitra Banerjee Divalaruni has a high rank in the contemporary hover of Indian Diaspora for being an extremely sharp eyewitness of life of the Indians, particularly Bengali women, in the United States of America. Through the characters of her stories in Arranged Marriage, Divakaruni investigates the issues of identity emergency, enthusiastic confinement and non-correspondence, the experience of movement, and so forth. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni has a place with the original of Indian immigrants in the United States who has spent a piece of her life in India and has conveyed the stuff of her local land seaward. She has acutely watched the postcolonial society of India also the difficulties of diaspora abroad. With this perception, she has depicted the dread of alteration, battles and sufferings of her characters, both from India and abroad, legitimately. The point of convergence in all stories in Arranged Marriage is the issue of alteration emerging from cultural variety experienced by an Indian lady when she advances toward the west, which is in vital subject in the mosaic of American Indian culture. Like other diasporic writers, Divakarini expounds on „human predicament‟ and the emergency of identity in the alienated place where there is America however she has made it her country. Identity emergency, alienation, and sentimentality are the main qualities of her writings. It is the difficult anguish of diasporic identity and the feeling of alienation that Divakaruni centers around in her accumulation of short stories, Arranged Marriage. The South Asian Diaspora is as of now one of the world‘s biggest Diasporas. The diasporic Indian writers of the original like Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni have built up their qualifications by winning various scholarly honors and respects. Divakaruni's Arranged Marriage is set in the two India and America and it presents Indian-conceived women who are torn between the estimations of Old and New World and who are attempting to cut out their very own identity. Also, the stories of the accumulation Arranged Marriage, address the issues, for example, bigotry, interracial connections, monetary divergence, premature birth, and separation. Indeed, Divakaruni‟s Arranged Marriage is stories about women – women in affection, women seeing someone, and women in difficulties. The stories evoke tenderness of every lady's battle while attempting to adjust to alien culture. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni‟s writing confirms that diaspora isn't simply diffusing or scattering yet a network of consciousness that envelops different clashing attributes. Being a settler in USA, Divakaruni through the stories of this accumulation, appears additionally a combination of outsider experiences, particularly those of Indian women.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, a productive identity in the domain of Indo-American writing, contributes various books which are set in the two India and America and broadly include Indian-conceived women torn amongst Old and New World qualities. In Arranged Marriage the stories mirror her standing worry with the circumstance of Indian Immigrants in America, especially Indian women split between the estimations of India and those of the America. The present investigation rotates around the foreigner women‟s lives delineated in the chose stories entitled "A Perfect Life", "Garments", "The Ultrasound" and "The Word Love", wherein the nation, America, has been depicted as a land brimming with open doors for the settler women bothered and broken by their marriages arranged in some way or another in India. The worry of this investigation can likewise be summed up in the expressions of Divakaruni, as she expresses that: One of the things I needed to center around in this book is the women who come here: how their lives have changed. Furthermore, you can‘t say to improve things or for the more awful; they increase certain things, and they lose certain things. It‘s an extremely powerful and regularly difficult process yet in addition an exceptionally thrilling, fiery process, and for some women it is an open door for new strengthening and opportunity. At the point when Divakaruni‟s female characters in any of these stories go to bat for themselves, America is given an unmistakable role in their enlivening. As Anju, one of the two heroes in the story "The Ultrasound", properties her feeling of equity and women's liberation to America, it is a reasonable verbalization of the manner by which each freed female character from Arranged Marriage appears discover flexibility and arousing by disposing of India and grasping America. America itself is seen not just as the nation that holds numerous openings, yet in addition as a legendary "guaranteed arrive" (AM 293), in a large portion of the stories of Arranged Marriage, the United States of America remains for opportunity, illumination, and guarantees of children's story satisfaction. A lot of Divakaruni‟s writing depicts the United States as a place of refuge and a guaranteed arrive for her outsider characters. In her stories the United States is over and again blessed with such established legendary terms as the guaranteed arrive, the land past the seven oceans, and the pixie kingdom. Clear pairs are likewise developed between the United States and India, with the United States being enriched with the vast majority of the positive and saving graces and India being depicted as the retrogressive and the malevolence needing

man in a similar flat without being hitched to him, which has been a significant stunning viewpoint from an Indian point of view. The diligent memory of her mother‘s basic living and her instructing of customary qualities to her turns into the deterrent in her interracial connections.

The scene of contemporary writing has been affected by the rising tide of globalization; writings are presently crossing the outskirts of countries and societies as recently rising writers express horde voices of those once thought about the subaltern. At the peak of this new abstract wave is another age of South Asian Female writers who have started to make their remarkable check upon the universe of the novel. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is one of such novelists she has risen as a noteworthy novelist in the class of South Asian Diasporic writing. Her record of the experience of the Diaspora and its belongings upon women not just furnish the perusers with knowledge into the lives of 1.5 million South Asians who live in the United States, yet additionally gives a model which one can all the more likely comprehend the procedures through which minority characters are built. Despite the fact that South Asians contain such a huge (and consistently expanding) bit of the U.S populace, still they have not gotten what's coming to them of centered consideration. The domain of South Asian diasporic written works however now more common than any time in recent memory, is still generally unfamiliar in its abilities and substance. The experience of the south Asian outsider lady remains to some degree a puzzle. Underway of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, one can portray the South Asian diasporic experience in the United States. This experience, normal to all diasporic networks, is made by the steady swaying between conflicting originations of race and culture, time and geology. Because of existing in this "in the middle of" room, the South Asian lady living in America builds up an adjusted consciousness so as to identify with her South Asian culture while in the meantime adjusting to her present American environment. The women in Divakaruni's writings are gotten between the customary traditions of south Asia from which they have emigrated and their present experiences with the more westernized culture of America. While living in such an "in the middle of" room, the self-impression of these women are drastically modified, for the way in which they see themselves changes because of the indeterminate idea of their interstitial condition and subsequently the characters move towards a condition that is more mind boggling and variously partitioned. Along these brought together nor half and half, yet rather divided. As the women see both their race and sexuality through new and diverse focal points over the span of the writings they come to understand that the thought of a solitary identity is an error and that the truth of the South Asian diasporic experience is the indeterminacy of multiplicity. This multiplicity is a noteworthy situation for the characters for as their diverse consciousness repudiates each other the women are left unverifiable with regards to the idea of their personalities and not knowing where they fit in American culture. However incomprehensibly this various consciousness shows up at last to be a positive mental component, a conceivable answer for the strains that emerge from culturally diverse adjustment. The women that Divakaruni make are equipped for living in a world in which the individual exists not as a Unified One, but instead the same number of, bound by no fringes and interminable in the conceivable outcomes of making consciousness and concocting characters. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's accumulation of short stories 'Arranged Marriage' mirrors the changes of the diasporic South Asian women. The basic topic of her short story accumulation 'Arranged Marriage' is as the name proposes conjugal connections as they are found in South Asian people group where all things considered the training is that guardians mastermind marriages of their youngsters. In any case, migration has enlarged the psychological skylines of the general population from the east, and Divakaruni too addresses this training through these stories. After their presentation toward the west in different ways e.g working outside the home, their expanded freedom, especially in basic leadership, and so on., influences them to react contrastingly to the conjugal circumstance too.

Divakaruni is a much commended diaspora essayist whose pre occupation is to manage authenticity looked by the settler women and women in customary Indian culture, not at all like alternate writers. This is apparent from her stories like The Bats, Clothes, Maid Servants story, ultrasound, Meeting Mrinal which has Calcutta as its topographical locus and Silver Pavement, A Perfect Life, Doors, Affairs which has the US as its land setting. Divakaruni, by painting the lives of the women in detail, focuses to the substances of life after marriage: the vast majority of these women who ended up disengaged both geologically and inwardly. They progress toward becoming organizations of aloof enduring both in India and abroad similar. Marriage for the most part fixes women, and they are brutalized and minimized and

of the contrary societies and the steady idea of being caught in a climate which they are not completely prepared to acknowledge due to a feeling of affectation. As a women's activist author, she could consider them to be her neighbors and could feel for them in their little delights, distresses, and could uncover the pretty narrow-mindedness and solid bond which rules human life, the cruel substances looked by Indian women once they are hitched, and the fierceness and certainty from the male centric society‟s glaring and deciding their rights as human. Regardless of whether the women needed to get away from the organization of marriage, she must choose the option to remain as a uninvolved sufferer. In the story "The Word Love", the champion begins living with a man. Love is an enchanted word and it is difficult to characterize it effortlessly. She acknowledged westernization in totality that she began to live with her beau outside the establishment of marriage. Be that as it may, here past (her way of life) defeats her. She recalls how her mom had gone to considerable lengths to bring her up after her father‟s passing. Mother – little girl relationship is very extraordinary in Indian culture. She laments for concealing the association with her mom, anyway she at long last faces the rage of losing her mom on admitting reality.. Her beau on knowing her relationship says "it was never me, was it, never love. It was dependably you and her, her and you".(70) Thus parental love settles on her take a choice to live alone. The author here powerfully the authenticity show in Indian culture where the general public is a shut one and it is altogether different to acknowledge relationship outside the organization of marriage any such relationship, regularly result in traditional viciousness, social rejections from the general public and even deserting from guardians and relatives.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is one of those energetic identities who have been enjoyed the realization of the Indo-American writing. Bewilderment by the demise of her granddad, and the trap in her distress a long way from family, were two seriously enthusiastic experiences which actuated her to write to protect recollections and deal with her sentiments. Divakaruni‟s interest in women‘s issues is seen in her writings as well as in her additional artistic exercises. In 1991, the creator aided the Advisory leading body of "Maitri" in the San Francisco Bay Area and "Daya" in Houston. Both are the associations that assistance South Asian or South Asian American women who end up in injurious or aggressive behavior at home circumstances. Fiction by South Asian writers frequently centers around connections and arranged marriages, for example, Jhumpa Lahiri‟s novel The Namesake and Arranged Marriage a short story women‟s unrest without basic leadership powers. The Booklist audit can likewise be summed up in acclaim of the imaginative stories as it terms them, "Perfectly wonderful stories . . . . Divakaruni not just passes on feelings with shocking precision, she additionally changes the external world into impressions of the spirit" (qtd. in AM). The women in Arranged Marriage are depicted as solid and willing to change their circumstances throughout everyday life except in some cases they do likewise feel themselves caught in a fantasy of spouse, mother, and girl in-law. Divakaruni herself concedes that, "Not in such profundity, but rather regardless I need to comprehend my characters and their focal clash and what they need" (Dill n.p.). While Divakaruni‟s female heroes are balanced and thoughtful, her male characters appear to be generalization and level. In an exposition entitled "What Women Share" she even goes to the degree of invalidating the male depiction of women characters as delineated in the stories: But when I read the sagas and other exemplary writings of Indian culture, I was astonished to discover couple of depictions of kinships among women. I wind up concentrating my writing on fellowships with women, and attempting to adjust them with the clashing interests and requests that come to us as daughters and spouses, sweethearts and moms. (Divakaruni) The relationship of the Indian women to marriage is that one zone which characterizes the mind boggling account of sexual orientation, movement, ethnicity, and women's liberation. Oxford Dictionaries characterize marriage as, "The legitimately or formally perceived association of a man and a lady (or, in a few purviews, two individuals of a similar sex) as accomplices in a relationship" (OD). A standout amongst the most huge, overwhelming and holy organizations, marriage involves a significant role in Indian culture and it assumes a conclusive role in human connections as well. Depiction of marriage in Indian novels is a repetitive topic and it is the component in Indian writing in English which gives it a common Indian sensibility. In this association Meenakshi Mukherjee sees: "Among exactly hundred and fifty novels distributed over the most recent thirty years, one finds barely two dozen books where a marriage function has not been depicted" (qtd. in Rajeshwar and Piciucco 29). The marriage plot serves the writers in two diverse ways: It is a sort of encouragement and outlet for their very own disappointments, and as a mirror to residential/familial conditions, it turns out to be right around a definite archive speaking to the requests of authenticity. Divakaruni‟s portrayal of a considerable lot of the wedded heroes is as though the marriage has turned into their fait accompli. At the point when asked by Donna Seaman whether, "Marriage and family life are at the heart of your work". Divakaruni replies as: I surmise that leaves my cultural foundation. Family is integral to the conventional Indian childhood, which is the manner in which I

from a family first, and after that you‟re a person. Presently having lived in the West for quite a while, I don‟t concur with that totally, yet family still stays, vital to me. (qtd. in Seaman 157) Arranged marriage brings out pictures of cold and decision less associations in which individuals, all the more regularly women, are upheld into marriage. Notwithstanding generalizations, arranged marriages in some shape are as yet the standard in numerous if not most nations, including India which is frequently viewed as the vanguard of arranged marriages. As Kathleen Glenister Roberts and Ronald C. Arnett‟s book entitled Communication Ethics: Between Cosmopolitan and Provinciality, uncovers that, "In spite of Western impacts and famous media pictures, an expected 95% of the marriages in India are as yet arranged" (qtd. in Roberts and Arnett 35). The present investigation delineates the establishment of marriage above and beyond and demonstrates it as a relationship which hinders the people or women efficiently from circumstances and assets that are regularly accessible to individuals from a general public, or deny their full access to different rights which are basic to social joining inside a specific culture. In Arranged Marriage Divakaruni has rebuilt the sentimental marriage plot with its establishing in the reasonable detail of everyday life, to uncover, now and again, the disjointedness or silliness of got custom, and to attempt and build a stage toward flexibility and selfhood. In contemporary circumstances, an extensive stream of women‟s stories has started to question and scrape at the importance of customary qualities and structures which simply cause and propagate women‟s mistreatment. The present investigation includes the stories entitled "The Bats", "The Maid Servant‟s Story", "Silver Pavements Golden Roofs", "The Disappearance" and "A Perfect Life" to satisfy the desired angle that is to uncover Indian arranged marriage as an underestimated relationship, still unexplored and in this manner here lays the significance and significance of the work. The plain first story of the accumulation entitled "The Bats" demonstrates the power battle amongst man and lady in a run of the mill conventional way, which comes about into an alienation of their wedded life. "The Bats", reminiscent of Henry James‟s What Maisie knew, utilizes a tyke storyteller to recount the account of her father‘s manhandle of her mom in honest terms: "Things fell a ton when Father was near, possibly in light of the fact that he was so huge" (AM 2). The storyteller (the girl) keeps on portraying the situation of her mom as, "That year mother cried a great deal, evenings. Or then again perhaps she had dependably cried, and that was the principal year I was mature enough to take note. . . . a yellow smear with its edges turning purple. It resembled my knee did after I chanced upon the chipped mahogany its cliché portrayal of lady as frail, powerless, and an impediment in man‟s life. This sort of persecution has additionally been challenged by Simon De Beauvoir in the accompanying terms: A lady isn't conceived: she progresses toward becoming, is made a lady. This is to state that the socialization of lady renders her a lady with certain evidently "characteristic" characteristics shortcoming, foolishness, tolerance et cetera. All these assistance male centric guys to contend that women should be restricted to the home (they are not solid to "go out" into the world), be secured and controlled. Her sexuality and desires are made and regarded as subservient to that of the male‟s. . . . Gendering is a routine with regards to control, where manliness is constantly connected with the specialist. (qtd. in Nayar 83) Kate Millett‟s book entitled Sexual Politics, arranged at the intersection of scholarly and cultural feedback and political hypothesis, had likewise propelled a noteworthy feedback of authoritative male writers like Lawrence, Norman Mailer and Henry Miller. She expressed that in progress of the male creators savagery and intimidation have been utilized "to maintain pictures/generalizations so that the male‟s control over sexuality is never extricated" (qtd in Nayar 88). The picture of a merciless male transforms into the fakeness male in "The Maid Servant‟s Story", where a respectable broker appears have an adoring association with his significant other, until the point that it is uncovered that he tiptoes in the protection of night to look for a sexual contact with the wife‟s house keeper. "The Maid‟s Servant‟s Story", the most complex story from the account point, the hero knows about the unfortunate scene in her mother‟s life that changed her, which enables her to comprehend her mother‟s remove. The story inside a story turns into a wakeup call, as the hero considers: I think about whether the story (however not planned in that capacity by my close relative) is a notice for me, a review of my own life which I thought I had molded so astutely, so uniquely in contrast to my mother‟s, yet which is just a reiteration, in an alternate raga, of her lamentable melody. Maybe it resembles this for all daughters, bound to decide for ourselves, again and again, the men who have crushed our moms. (AM 167) In this setting some ongoing exchanges of marriage has been introduced as they accept that "the matrimonial relations are simply legally binding married couples authoritatively get for their selective utilize their partner‟s sexual properties" (qtd. in Pateman 154). The words, happening toward the start of Shashi Deshpande‟s Roots and Shadows that, "Behind the façade of sentimentalism, assessment and convention, what was marriage all things considered, however two individuals united after merciless bartering to meet, mate and imitate with the goal that the ages may proceed?" (qtd. in Singh

In a way The Arranged Marriage is an accumulation of stories which speaks to clashes and problem experienced by Indian women living in India or abroad. It is a reasonable depiction of women living in India under the shadows of male centric social molding, their interior conflict between the expectation for change throughout everyday life and their profound established conventional programming of qualities. There are issues of digestion whether it is about post marriage modifications or migrant experience in the new culture. Now and again they submit to the conditions and surrender to the predetermination and a portion of the characters are making bold activities to satisfy their own decisions and benchmarks which assist them with creating their own identity. The arranged marriage was a gathering of practical stories managing the individual and social difficulties of Indian women living in the USA and Calcutta. In one of her meetings she says "First, I trust an essayist should draw new limits and I needed to have a go at something new". In one of the audits by the San Francisco narrative it says "flawlessly recounted stories of changed lives. Both freed and caught by cultural changes on the two sides of the sea, these women, battle savagely to cut out their very own identity". (San Francisco Chronicle). In Arranged Marriage, Divakaruni "delightfully recounts stories about the settler ladies who are attempting to cut out and identity of their own." (Holf 1). Practical setting of the geological region Calcutta and USA, breathes life into the characters and carry the city with its hues residue and streams, the old society stories and traditions all go before the perusers like a movie. The delight of marriage chimes and the on edge family all convey life to the stories Arranged Marriage. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni‟s heroes in Arranged Marriage are instructed women, either contemplating or doing theses in America and they are flawlessly calm with life in America however they are as yet associated with Indian sets of principles and convictions. The media in the United States have offered Indians the expression „model minority‟ speaking to high instructive status and solid budgetary achievement. In this way the Indian people group in America has expanded its self-esteem and certainty and has advanced socially and monetarily from the prior immigrants from India.

1. Alison B. Carls (1989).. ―An Interview with Bharathi Mukherjee‖. The Massuchesetes review. Winter 1988-89. Print. Desire. Bachelor thesis, Petra Christian U. 2006.Web. 12 Sept. 2013 . . 3. Arthur, Kateryna (1988). ―Twice Removed : Aboriginal and immigrant writing in Australia.‖A Senseof Exile:Essays in the literatureof the Asia Pacific Region. D. Bruce Benett. Vedland: University of western Australia Press 1988.Print. 4. Ashcroft, Bill (1998). Gareth Griffiths & Helen Tiffin, eds. Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies. New York: Routledge, 1998. p.68. 5. Banerjee Divakaruni, Chitra (2000). Sister of My Heart. New York: Anchor Books, p.186. 6. Banerjee, Debjani (2000). Home and US: Redefining Identity in the South Asian Diaspora through the Writings of Chitra Banerjee and Meena Alexander‖. Diasporic Imagination Asian American Writing. Vol.2. Fiction: Novels and Short Stories.Ed. Somadatta Mandal. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2000.Print.

8. Brah, Avtar (1997). Cartographics of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. p. 183. 9. Bullock, Marcus Paul, Paik, Peter Yoonsuk (2008). eds. Aftermaths: Exile, Migration, and Diaspora Reconsidered.USA: Rutgers UP, 2008.Print. 10. Cheung, King-Kok (2000). ed. Words Matter: Conversations with Asian American Writers. USA: University of Hawaii Press, Web. 21 Dec. 2014. 11. Chitra Benerjee Divakaruni (1998). ―The Mistress of spices‖, Swan Publications, London– 1998

Research Scholar, Young Scientists University, USA