Review and Analysis of the Literature on Immigration - Essay Example

Literature of Immigration: Rohinton Mistry’s Short Stories ‘Squatter’ and ‘Swimming Lessons’ Rohinton Mistry is a Parsi1 born in India and settled in Toronto. The majority of his works, namely the novels Such A Long Journey (1991), A Fine Balance (1995) and Family Matters (2002), deal with the experiences and identities of the Parsi community in India. However, there are three short stories in his Tales from Firozsha Baag (1987) which deal with the immigrant experiences of the Indian Parsi community in Canada. According to Nilufer Bharucha, Mistry has transcended both the self and the other. The self being the persona of the writer and also his Parsi self; the other being the wider world. Here all three have come together in an epiphanic moment that speaks across national, ethnic and gender boundaries, with a voice that cannot be denied. (Bharucha 209) The issue of immigration in the case of Mistry may be a complex idea as he is also a Parsi whose forefathers have migrated to India from Iran. Moreover, the diaspora issue may be just one among the many concerns of Rohinton Mistry. The stories that are analysed here, namely ‘Squatter’ and ‘Lend Me Your Light’, exhibit a unique stand of the doubly displaced Parsi Indians in Canada. My contention is that the stories , though not similar in their treatment, are on the theme of the inescapable ambivalence related to the immigrant experiences and responses.. ‘Sqatter’ is an immensely engaging story in which the issues related to immigration is presented in a very humorous but matter-of-fact manner. The scatological imagery of a post-colonial citizen in Canada is what constitutes the story. The story relates to the experiences of Sarosh, who finds his stay in Canada a natural phenomenon, like any other Parsi, except for one thing. Before he migrated to Canada, he had declared that he would come back to India if he fails to become a true Canadian in every sense within ten years’ time. The one thing that made him feel that he was not yet an authentic Canadian was that he failed to use the European closet. He could empty his bowel only in the squatting position, despite his attempts to seek some sort of aid from the Immigrant Aid Society. So, he decides to come back to India, but once he was on his flight to India, he manages to perform in the toilet the Western way, as the plain takes off. Anyway, he decides to come back to India. He is presented in the end as a person disillusioned by all his endeavours in life. ‘Lend me Your Light’ as the name suggests is a philosophical enquiry to human existence the way writers like Rabindranath Tagore did, in a humanistic manner that tethered on concepts like universal brotherhood. In this story, Kersi is a brooding youngster analyzing his choice of immigrating to Canada. The other two major figures in this story are Percy his brother and Jamshed, Percy’s friend. Percy decides to stay in India and dedicate his life for social work in Indian villages. Jamshed, who had already migrated to the U.S and made a good fortune there, is anti-Indian to the core. Kersi is ambivalent regarding his relationship to India, but he cannot afford to hate India the way Jamshed does. He opts the easier way out, to migrate to Canada, instead of toiling in Indian villages like Percy. The fact that Percy’s friend and co-worker Navjote gets killed by moneylenders makes Jamshed disapprove of his work as futile, but Kersi is more concerned about the work his brother does and is disturbed about his better life in Canada. He reflects, “… my brother waging battles against corruption and evil, while I was watching sitcoms on my rented Granada TV…” (Mistry 184). In both the stories, the protagonists are very much attached to the life in India, a place the Parsis have taken to perceive as their homeland. Creating a homeland in Canada is their predicament in an age where religious fundamentalism has estranged them from the dominant sects in India. Unlike in many cases where people migrate to places like Canada where they just hope to build a better life, the Parsi characters depicted in both the stories have to deal with the issue of maintaining their Parsi identity, which made their stay in their previous homeland, India, a difficult one as well. The way Sarosh looks at his experience of immigrations is different from Kersis’s outlook, ideologically. Sarosh is more concerned with getting acclimatized to the new environment in Canada. Even as he makes use the material benefits in the new land, he develops a neurosis regarding his Indian identity which he gets reminded of every time he uses a toilet. The Indian identity that the Parsis have created for themselves stays in his psyche. He realizes that it is as easy an affair as he thought to change himself altogether. The attitudes of the people around him remind him that he will never be accepted as a Canadian. The Immigration Aid Society’s outlandish contrivances are presented in the story in a cynical manner, and their failure shows the cold indifference he meets with when he is longing for acceptance and confirmation as a Canadian citizen. While Sarosh struggles hard to gain the status of a hundred percent Canadian identity, Kersi undergoes an existential crisis. He is the one who listened to the story of Sarosh from the storyteller Nariman Hansotia, and he has come to terms with the possibilities of rejection from both his constructed homeland and the land to where he has migrated. He is ideologically intrigued when he is to take the decision of migrating. Once a person removes her/himself from the nation s/he becomes reluctant to enter it again, no matter how much the nations matter in their imagination. Unlike Sarosh, Kersi is able to settle down in Canada, and does not carry the heavy burden of proving to himself the task of losing his Indian identity and gaining the Canadian identity. He is more concerned about the land that he has left behind, which too had been an adopted land for his forefathers who have struggled hard to make their homeland. While Sarosh goes back to India as an unhappy man who realizes that his multiple identities refuse to fade in, Kersi has accepted life as it is, as many diasporic individuals are forced to do. The life of Sarosh is more like a fable, as exemplified by the oral narrative Hansotia weaves, while Kersi represents the real aspects of life. While the scatological imagery in ‘Squatter’ refers more to the post-colonial, post-national experiences, ‘Lend Me Your Life’ is a romantic search for universal values in a world filled with too much reality. The Indian life presented in the latter story saddens Kersi, and he even find to enter its combat zones. The way he sees himself betrays his existential angst: “I, Tiresias, blind and throbbing between two lives, the one in Bombay and the one to come in Toronto” (180). Sarosh is the one who sees himself as the hero of a tragic-comedy for whom “life in the land of milk and honey was just a pain in the posterior” (168). Sarosh’s life fades into indifference and oblivion, while Kersi’s life, moves on to the real issues related to immigration, as it is revealed in the last story of the collection ‘Swimming Lessons’, that all the stories were written by Kersi, who send it to his parents for their approval. Even as the cultural conflicts in Canada and other non-Indian locale brings the Parsis back to the ‘imaginary homeland’2 of India, the way in which the they confront other sorts of cultural conflicts in India has to direct them to a fastidious preservation of the Zoroastrian faith. According to the Post-Colonial critic Bill Ashcroft, In diasporic writing….sort of two magnetic poles affect the writers. That is, being drawn to the homeland and being released to the discourse of possibility, when we are saying that people like Rushdie, and to some extend Rohinton Mistry, even Amitav Ghosh, are writers who are facing two directions. But that is not disempowering. That is a sort of ambivalence. (Varghese 90) ‘Squatter’ and ‘Lend Me the Light’ are the stories of immigrant experiences, of occupying transnational spaces, while the men and women who are involved in this process have to deal with the complex, ambivalent identities they have created for themselves. The protagonists of these stories, Sarosh and Kersi, though not presented as walking metaphors, are representative of the two sides of this ambivalence. Even as his love for Canada does not let Sarosh break free of his attachments and connections with India, Kersi fails to come to terms with the identities of both the worlds though he learns to fit in to the demands of life anywhere. Mistry has not talked on length about the immigrant experiences in all his works, but the two stories analysed here are strong statements of his views on the topic. Works Cited Bharucha, Nilufer E. Rohinton Mistry: ethnic Enclosures and Transcultural Spaces. New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 2003. Mistry, Rohinton. Tales From Firozsha Baag, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1998. ---, Such A Long Journey. London: Faber and Faber, 1992. ---. A Fine Balance. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. ---. Family Matters. London: Faber and Faber, 2002. Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands. London: Granta Books in association with Penguin Books, 1991. Varghese, Jose. “Theorizing Post-Colonial Transformation: A Dialogue with Bill Ashcroft” in Haritham, Number 17. Kottayam: Mahatma Gandhi University, 2005. Read More

The Indian identity that the Parsis have created for themselves stays in his psyche. He realizes that it is as easy an affair as he thought to change himself altogether. The attitudes of the people around him remind him that he will never be accepted as a Canadian. The Immigration Aid Society’s outlandish contrivances are presented in the story in a cynical manner, and their failure shows the cold indifference he meets with when he is longing for acceptance and confirmation as a Canadian citizen.

While Sarosh struggles hard to gain the status of a hundred percent Canadian identity, Kersi undergoes an existential crisis. He is the one who listened to the story of Sarosh from the storyteller Nariman Hansotia, and he has come to terms with the possibilities of rejection from both his constructed homeland and the land to where he has migrated. He is ideologically intrigued when he is to take the decision of migrating. Once a person removes her/himself from the nation s/he becomes reluctant to enter it again, no matter how much the nations matter in their imagination.

Unlike Sarosh, Kersi is able to settle down in Canada, and does not carry the heavy burden of proving to himself the task of losing his Indian identity and gaining the Canadian identity. He is more concerned about the land that he has left behind, which too had been an adopted land for his forefathers who have struggled hard to make their homeland. While Sarosh goes back to India as an unhappy man who realizes that his multiple identities refuse to fade in, Kersi has accepted life as it is, as many diasporic individuals are forced to do.

The life of Sarosh is more like a fable, as exemplified by the oral narrative Hansotia weaves, while Kersi represents the real aspects of life. While the scatological imagery in ‘Squatter’ refers more to the post-colonial, post-national experiences, ‘Lend Me Your Life’ is a romantic search for universal values in a world filled with too much reality. The Indian life presented in the latter story saddens Kersi, and he even find to enter its combat zones. The way he sees himself betrays his existential angst: “I, Tiresias, blind and throbbing between two lives, the one in Bombay and the one to come in Toronto” (180).

Sarosh is the one who sees himself as the hero of a tragic-comedy for whom “life in the land of milk and honey was just a pain in the posterior” (168). Sarosh’s life fades into indifference and oblivion, while Kersi’s life, moves on to the real issues related to immigration, as it is revealed in the last story of the collection ‘Swimming Lessons’, that all the stories were written by Kersi, who send it to his parents for their approval. Even as the cultural conflicts in Canada and other non-Indian locale brings the Parsis back to the ‘imaginary homeland’2 of India, the way in which the they confront other sorts of cultural conflicts in India has to direct them to a fastidious preservation of the Zoroastrian faith.

According to the Post-Colonial critic Bill Ashcroft, In diasporic writing….sort of two magnetic poles affect the writers. That is, being drawn to the homeland and being released to the discourse of possibility, when we are saying that people like Rushdie, and to some extend Rohinton Mistry, even Amitav Ghosh, are writers who are facing two directions. But that is not disempowering. That is a sort of ambivalence. (Varghese 90) ‘Squatter’ and ‘Lend Me the Light’ are the stories of immigrant experiences, of occupying transnational spaces, while the men and women who are involved in this process have to deal with the complex, ambivalent identities they have created for themselves.

The protagonists of these stories, Sarosh and Kersi, though not presented as walking metaphors, are representative of the two sides of this ambivalence. Even as his love for Canada does not let Sarosh break free of his attachments and connections with India, Kersi fails to come to terms with the identities of both the worlds though he learns to fit in to the demands of life anywhere.

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