Complexities of Cross-Cultural Interaction in Jasmine and the Tiger's Daughter

Exploring the Cross-Cultural Dilemma in Bharati Mukherjee's Novels

by Nishu Anand*, Prof. Anjana Vashistha Rawat,

- Published in Journal of Advances and Scholarly Researches in Allied Education, E-ISSN: 2230-7540

Volume 19, Issue No. 6, Dec 2022, Pages 34 - 39 (6)

Published by: Ignited Minds Journals


ABSTRACT

A substantial portion of a person's beliefs, morals, behaviours, and attitudes are shaped by the society in which they were brought up during their formative years. These qualities have an effect on the way a person thinks, as well as the way that person approaches the world around him in general. An contact between cultures takes happen when one individual is presented with the values and beliefs of another society .Assimilation into American culture creates tension in many of the immigrant protagonists, which in turn leads to tension, an offshoot, resulting from Cultural Interaction. In its discussion of the novels chosen for this study, this chapter makes an analysis of the characters who come across Cross- Cultural Conflict. Bharati Mukherjee, much like a large number of other post-modern writers, has focused on the challenges and difficulties experienced by Indian immigrants living in the United States or elsewhere in the Western world. The ladies in her books go through a cross-cultural dilemma that is portrayed vividly in her writing. She, herself, as an immigrant, had a tough time adapting to the culture, customs, and traditions of the country, and this is what she portrays via the cultural crisis experienced by her female heroine

KEYWORD

cross-cultural interaction, Jasmine and the Tiger's Daughter, beliefs, morals, behaviors, attitudes, society, immigrant, cultural conflict, adaptation

INTRODUCTION

The immigrants frequently attempt to find a synthesis between the culture to which they were born and the culture to which they have adapted. On the other hand, this has led to peculiar psychological traits that are unheard of in either of the two civilizations. Therefore, the solution to this issue is to maintain as much of one's own culture as is humanly feasible while yet residing on foreign ground. Time and distance have both been conquered by man thanks to his insatiable need to learn about the unfamiliar and the far away. Some people have travelled to far-off nations in the hopes of finding wealth, others in the hopes of realising their ambitions, and yet others on a mission to discover who they are and find some level of consistency in their lives.

Culture, customs, and traditions in Bharti mukherjee

Bharati Mukherjee, much like a large number of other post-modern writers, has focused on the challenges and difficulties experienced by Indian immigrants living in the United States or elsewhere in the Western world. The ladies in her books go through a cross-cultural dilemma that is portrayed vividly in her writing. She, herself, as an immigrant, had a tough time adapting to the culture, customs, and traditions of the country, and this is what she portrays via the cultural crisis experienced by her female heroine. One of the most well-known authors who came to the United States as a foreign national is Bharati Mukherjee. She had early exposure to Western culture and maintained that connection throughout her life. She was raised with a western upbringing despite the fact that she was an Indian. She is an ethnic artist who looks past the immigrant's sense of isolation and dislocation in order to explore "psychological development," particularly among women. The status of Asian immigrants in North America is the primary focus of her writing, and she pays special attention to the ways in which South Asian women are evolving as a result of their experiences in the Western world.

Cultural conflict in the jasmine

In the film Jasmine (1989), directed by Mukherjee, the protagonist, Jasmine, travels from Punjab to California by way of Florida, New York, and Iowa. Throughout this journey, Jasmine has a series of encounters that Mukherjee uses to try and peel back the layers that have been obscuring her multifaceted experiences. A small village in India named Hasanpur in the state of Punjab was where Jasmine, the important figure and storyteller, was thought to have existed. She tells her narrative as a pregnant dame of twenty-four years old, residing in Iowa with her deformed spouse, Bud Ripple Mayer. She also mentions that both of them have facial deformities. having comparable experiences that were consistent with life events that crossed the divide between her childhood in Punjab and her adult life in the United States. These prior narrative quirks serve as the impetus for the events that take place in Iowa. Jyoti becomes Jasmine, then Jazzy, and finally Jane as the story progresses, and so does her name. The protagonist's name goes through several iterations during the book. The narrative shifts back and forth in a whirlwind between India, where she spent a significant portion of her earlier life, and America, where she is living at the moment. The history includes Jyoti's youth spent in a small village in Punjab, as well as her careless marriage to Prakash, who renamed her Jasmine after they were married. Her life as Jane is currently taking place in Iowa, where she is involved in a live-in relationship with Bud Ripplemayer, who works as an agent at a nearby area. She wrestles with the question of whether or not she should be loyal to herself in the midst of the opportunities for independence that the American way of life presents her with. After having her purity stolen from her, she makes an attempt to take her own life. After her initial demonstration of self-validation, she travels to New York and lives with Taylor and Wylie Hayes, where she acts as a gatekeeper to their daughter Duff. In a remote Florida hotel, she suffers an assault at the hands of a revolting monster known as Half Face. In any event, she comes to the realisation that the best way for her to live her life is to turn inward at this particular crossroads.

Dualistic social orders of the east and the west

Since of this, Jasmine is forced to continually rewrite her search for a strong character because she is caught between the dualistic social orders of the east and the west, as well as the past and the present. Jasmine influences both the past and the present while seeking to maintain control over the two universes, one of which is a nativity and the other of which is a replacement. Favourable conditions are provided by the western awareness that her Manhattan directors Taylor and Wylie Hayes exemplify. In the twinkling of an eye, she transforms into a perfect representation of the malevolent and destructive Goddess Kali, ready to exact vengeance on the brute. Dida, her grandmother, is a perfect example of the Indian sensibilities that she was nurtured with, and they value commitment. The narrative centres on Jasmine, a woman who, following the death of her significant other in India, relocates to the United States, where she is lately ambushed but, in the long run, returns to her previous job as an administrator after going through a series of career changes. She inflicts a serious wound on him. The first time Jasmine comes into contact with America, it's like she's trying to pick herself back up via violence. She refuses to acknowledge the reality of the American

We arrive with an eagerness to learn and participate, only to find out that the landmarks are made of plastic and that our prior beliefs have been overturned. There is nothing that is eternal, nothing that is so terrible or so wonderful that it cannot be destroyed.

The characters are aware of the difficulties their personality is experiencing, but they choose to remain detached and aloof nevertheless. As a consequence of all of these factors, the character demonstrates a careless lack of concern and idleness. While the colonised person has feelings of abandonment with the arrival of his mother, the diasporic person has the perception that the land does not belong to him. The impression that one gives of oneself might cause problems for diasporic people. Using Mukherjee's novels as a place of departure, the expert has researched a few topics that are plainly covered, such as adapting to a new population, the pursuit of job, the experience of disappointment, and the shattered hope of a dream. The degree of alienation, rootlessness, and other characteristics like these are the most important criteria for evaluating diasporic composition. Showstoppers by Mukherjee illustrate the hero's physical, social, and mental isolation from both the ordinary public and the bunch of foreigners on the loose. Most often, authors who map the diasporic experience in their fiction or poems are themselves diasporic in their real lives. Along these same lines, self-portraiture may also be seen in diasporic writing. To tell you the truth, Mukherjee operates inside a multirationalistic range using a Creolebase. This range is liberated via a persuasive process of matched disagreement. During the period of time that is spent coming into being, pictures fall into disrepair, shift, dissolve, and consolidate in strange mixes or confused juxtapositions, reflecting a world with several languages and cultures.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

1. To study on Culture, customs, and traditions in Bharti mukherjee 2. To study on New places with the hopes of making their aspirations in jasmine and The Tiger's Daughter

RESEARCH METHOD

The assessment technique in the present examination is exploratory, interpretative, evaluative and intelligent. Different subjects in the picked novel are contemplated.

Research Design

repercussions for all of the individuals involved. Integration of cultures is a trend that can be seen all across the world nowadays. A person will have feelings of dejection, despair, and hopelessness when there is a significant gap in their lifestyle between two different approaches to living. The outcome of this is a jolt to the culture.

DATA ANALYSIS

Challenges that Indian immigrants and immigrants from other parts of the Third World confront

Bharati Mukherjee discusses the challenges that Indian immigrants and immigrants from other parts of the Third World confront while attempting to adapt their lifestyles to those of North Americans. She emphasises on heroines that are emotionally vulnerable, such as Jasmine from the novel Jasmine. She gives a realistic portrayal of the lives of people who are unable to adjust to the new environment in which they find themselves. A significant portion of the works of fiction written by Bharati Mukherjee are intertwined with the author's personal experiences, and the protagonists frequently mirror the author's own ideas and feelings. Her own inner self is represented in her novels, which, as can be seen from the clips of her interview, stress key aspects of her personality.

Majority of immigrants survive by a combination of good fortune:

Bharati Mukherjee is trying to make is that achieving one's dream in the United States is impossible, despite the fact that one may have made significant sacrifices for one's family, spent money that was earned with great effort, and put one's life in danger while travelling to get there. The majority of immigrants survive by a combination of good fortune and kind acts. Some come crashing down suddenly from the sky. A handful are suffering terrible pain. Bharati Mukherjee is certain that large dreams and deeds that are unrealistic in conventional societies should be pursued. However, immigrants lead risky lifestyles since they are unable to seek refuge in their culture's traditional values and do not understand the norms of the society in which they reside.

New places with the hopes of making their aspirations

The struggle of immigrants is that they risk losing their home nation. People move to new places with the hopes of making their aspirations come true. However, once they set foot on foreign country, they are met with a whole distinct sociocultural context. They make no sound in their battle to stay alive. They make an effort to conform to the new society but are ultimately unsuccessful. Their mental state is conflicted, as they experience both a sense of rootlessness and nostalgia. They develop a new personality after they about their own culture. Cross-cultural exchanges are portrayed in a number of Bharati Mukherjee's works, including The Tiger's Daughter, Wife, Jasmine, The Holder of the World, and Desirable Daughters. This is one of the most important topics that modern writers explore. Within the realm of writing that falls under this genre is Bharati Mukherjee. In her search for her own identity, which was complicated by the fact that she was an immigrant, she found herself stuck between two cultures that were in conflict. This is most accurately portrayed in her books. She does an excellent job of capturing in her works this inclination of American society, as seen through the eyes of immigrants living in the United States. People from all around the world now consider America to be the greatest nation.

Cross-cultural in “The Tiger's Daughter” illustrate the racial and cultural mixing

The number of individuals attempting to make their way to this utopia is at an all-time high. The people who moved had a tough time adjusting to the new culture and going through the process of cultural transition. They end up losing touch with the foundations of their indigenous culture as a result of this process. In their quest for identification in a foreign place, Bharati Mukherjee's characters, Tara in The Tiger's Daughter, Dimple in Wife, and Jasmine, the title heroine, all go through the harrowing experience of acculturation. In the book "The Tiger's Daughter," the protagonist, Tara Banerjee, experiences culture shock when she returns to India after an absence of seven years. The author Bharati Mukherjee presents an autobiographical version of herself in the form of the character Tara. Through the course of this work, she illustrates the racial and cultural mixing quite well. The practise of sending one's children away to a foreign country at a relatively young age in order to pursue further education there has become increasingly common among well-off and educated individuals. This definition also applies to the protagonist Tara's father, who fits under this group. Tara, a Bengali Brahmin girl, willingly obeys her father's plan to pursue her further education in New York. Her father made this decision. Tara and her father have no idea what the future holds for their daughter in terms of her destiny. Therefore, the beginning of Tara's path toward acculturation occurs when she is fifteen years old. Tara experiences prejudice on the foreign ground since she is a student. Tara's time at Vassar was almost certainly a mistake, and she misses her family and friends terribly. If she had not been a Banerjee, a Bengali Brahmin, the great granddaughter of Hari Lal Banerjee, or perhaps if the end of her first week (The Tiger's Daughter 10). If she had not been trained to remain composed and ladylike in all emergencies, she would have rushed home to India. Tara is troubled by the foreign dirt, but she is able to handle it thanks to the courage she earned through her upbringing. When the quiet girl overhears her classmates making fun of India and its customs, she snaps and becomes belligerent in defence of her heritage and traditions. Whenever her spirits let her down, she makes a prayer for strength to the goddess Kali. If Tara had remained in the safe environment of Calcutta, she would not have spoken a single word. Tara discovers that she is becoming someone new as a result of her interaction with the peculiar aspects of the alien society. She grows into a woman with bravery, tenacity, and strength thanks to her upbringing. Tara goes through a complete transformation as a result of her year spent in the United States. She is independent in her thinking and gives weight to her own inclinations. She has an own way of thinking. She encounters racial and cultural tensions, which she mulls on in order to independently resolve them. In the meantime, she comes into contact with an American named David Cartwright; he eventually falls in love with her, and she makes the courageous choice to marry him. Tara, who had previously maintained her Indian ancestry, courageously rejects the tradition. She has this notion that the act of getting married will provide a fresh perspective on her life in the United States. There are positive and negative aspects to the alien civilization. On the one hand, it enables Tara to develop into a powerful woman. On the one hand, it removes her Indianness, which is significant since she has broken the societal taboo of marrying a foreigner, namely an American. Despite the fact that Tara and David have a happy life together, she is still wary of David because of his background in the West. When David presses Tara for more specific information on Indian culture, she is unable to convey its more nuanced facets. In this context, Nagendra Kumar makes the following observation: the cultural differences between them are the source of her inability to do so. Marriage in India does not only include the coming together of two individuals; rather, it also involves the joining of two families. However, in Western nations such as the United States, a marriage is nothing more than a legal contract between two people. The fact that Tara and David come from different cultural backgrounds contributes to her feeling of unease. She makes the decision to travel to India after a seven-year absence in order to get over this sensation. An immigrant away from home idealises his native country and cherishes nostalgic recollections of used to illustrate the mindset of an immigrant like Tara. When Tara returns to the nation of her birth, she has no idea that the seven years she spent in the United States have altered her perspective. As a result, her desire of finding peace in the land she was born and raised in is dashed. Even though she is surrounded by friends and family, she has a sense of isolation and insecurity. When she is unsuccessful in establishing a "she reflects on the emotional connection she shares with her friends and relatives:

Where does the strangeness of the ghost first make its appearance? Tara pondered. Does it start in the middle of Calcutta with forty reddish Belgian ladies, their big foreheads expanding behind starched white headdresses, and their long back habits making the Indian sun even more hostile? .. Or did the strangeness become more familiar to her when the winter frost at Vassar set in (The Tiger's Daughter 37)?.

Jasmine is a novel written by Bharati Mukherjee that focuses on the process of emancipating a rural lady from the constraints of a feudalistic society so that she might establish her identity on American soil with her tremendous power. Alongside Jasmine's narrative of her experience as an immigrant, Bharati Mukherjee reveals Jasmine's metamorphosis through the progression of her names: Jyoti, Jasmine, and Jase-Jane. Jyoti is the name that Jasmine receives before she enters the next chapter of her life. This name means "light that lights the house and chases away darkness." This traditional name is also linked to the goddess Lakshmi in Hindu mythology. The phrases "the bruising around her throat was to save her the misery of a dowry less marriage" are evidence that Jyoti comes from a feudalistic community in which females are seen as a "curse." This is demonstrated by the fact that Jyoti is a native of this civilization (Jasmine 35). A woman cannot even begin to think of independence and emancipation when she is surrounded by such terrible circumstances. As Nagendra Kumar says: "A woman in today's patriarchal Indian culture has very little room to discuss issues of liberty and equality in the workplace. This is when the men members of the organisation decide what will happen to their female counterparts " (50). The decision on Jasmine's future is made by Prakash, her male counterpart. In point of fact, he frees her from the shackles of the feudalistic arrangement.

In Jasmine feudal mentality by drawing a connection between India's problems and the mindset of feudal society

lady. It is revealed at the conclusion of the book that he predicted correctly when he said, "You'll enliven the whole planet with your scent." In spite of living in the 21st century metropolis that he does, Prakash is a traditionalist. He asserts that "there is no space for feudalism in modern India," and I quote: He warns Jasmine not to adopt the feudal mentality by drawing a connection between India's problems and the mindset of feudal society. In addition to this, he is of the opinion that Indian women would save their country from its "backwardness." The training that Prakash gives Jasmine not only makes her physically stronger but also gives her the confidence to debate and confront him anytime she is in disagreement with him. According to Pushpa N. Parekh, she gains a realisation via this metamorphosis that enables her to strengthen her voice through speaking later on ". The violent death of Jasmine's husband, Prakash, at the hands of the Khalsa lions marks the beginning of Jasmine's journey. In spite of the teachings that she received from Prakash, she has the desire to perform sati, also known as self-immolation. This demonstrates that her transition from Jyoti to Jasmine is not yet complete since she is still a "quiet lady." However, the gruesome rape that she endures at the hands of Half Face, the captain of the ship on which she gains unlawful admission to Florida, plays a significant role in the last stages of her transformation into Jasmine Goddess. In order to destroy the demon that violated her chastity, Lakshmi has taken on the form of Kali in the form of an avatar, also known as an incarnation. This homicidal inclination reawakens in her the need to define her identity on the foreign ground, and it compels her to abandon the notion of satiation (Self-immolation). While Prakash rescued Jyoti from her existence in a feudalistic environment, Lillian Gordon, a kind woman who assists illegal immigrants, guided Jasmine through the process of adapting to life in the United States. The woman who is described as "voiceless and invisible" is taught how to speak, move, and dress in a manner that is typical of Americans. However, she does not let go of her traditional roots, which serves as a source of strength for her in difficult times. After receiving her first education from Lillian, Jasmine goes on to spend the next five months with Professor Vadhera, who was Prakash and his family's previous instructor. This aspect of her existence is aggravating to her because it forces her to confront the hard realities that Indian immigrants face in their struggle to survive. When she learns that Professor Vadhera is actually a person who sorts human hair, she is taken aback, but she is also forced to face the truth about the situation. After coming to the conclusion that being with the Vadheras will prevent her from finding out more about who she is, Jasmine makes the decision to leave the family.

CONCLUSION

she candidly describes the many stages of her life, from her childhood in Canada through her adjustment to life in the United States. A substantial portion of a person's beliefs, morals, behaviours, and attitudes are shaped by the society in which they were brought up during their formative years. These qualities have an effect on the way a person thinks, as well as the way that person approaches the world around him in general. An contact between cultures takes happen when one individual is presented with the values and beliefs of another society .Assimilation into American culture creates tension in many of the immigrant protagonists, which in turn leads to tension, an offshoot, resulting from Cultural Interaction. In its discussion of the novels chosen for this study, this chapter makes an analysis of the characters who come across Cross-Cultural Conflict. It also examines in detail the fact that these characters come across Cross-Cultural Conflict. This chapter explains the complexities of cross-cultural interaction, which is proven by the career graphs of the characters in the novels, and the chapter's title is appropriate since it does so.

REFERENCES

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Corresponding Author Nishu Anand*

Research Scholar, K.A PG College, Kasganj