Jhumpa Lahiri and the Complexity of Identities
As someone coming of age in the late 2010s India, I grew up on a steady diet of mostly American pop culture and literature. Friends, The Big Bang Theory, and How I Met Your Mother were universal favourites as were artists like Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, and Bruno Mars. Streaming platforms had not taken off, Netflix was still in its nascent stages and the most accessible websites for consuming content were Youtube and Facebook. Naturally, American symbols and stories became part of my life and influenced my language, ideas, the kind of people I looked up to, and the identity I was forming.
For people who grew up around the same time as I did, this obviously led to a feeling of disconnect between parents and their children who didn’t share their views on the casual consumption of alcohol, or their disregard for religion, or their lack of interest in Hindi language cinema or literature. Granted this experience may not have been universal, but the average English-speaking household in urban India experienced at least some of this disconnect growing up. It was at this confusing time that I found Jhumpa Lahiri in my school library.
The Namesake, the first book by the author that I came across, narrated such a story of disconnect. The disconnect between immigrant parents and their children who grew up American and didn’t understand their dedication to “Indian culture”, from their clothes to their morning ritual- biscuits with chai. The disconnect between immigrants and their families back home, who were left out from important occasions like funerals, weddings, and childbirth; only receiving news from brief phone calls and one-line telegrams.
Unaccustomed Earth, and the Interpreter of Maladies, both compilations of short stories by Lahiri, contain many such stories of being Indian outside of India. They describe how the American children of Indian immigrants become shapeshifters, they learn ways to satisfy their parents while enjoying their independence in college and high school. They learn to wear their Indian identity like a mask at home and take it off when outside. They are high achievers, get good grades and comply at home while pursuing every activity their traditional parents would swear they would never indulge in, outside of it. These children walk a tightrope between the Indian values they inherited with the American values they imbibed growing up.
Ironically enough, it was in these characters who were lost and unmoored that I found myself. I related with these people who struggled with defining their identity and figuring out where they fit, in a world seemingly full of options. While the internet provided me with the freedom to choose what values I held dear; in my fondness for chai, for all Indian food, for colourful fabrics, and ancient mythology, I was indelibly Indian.
