The Sense of Instability in Bharathi Mukerjee S Jasmine

The Sense of Instability in Bharathi Mukerjee’s Jasmine

Abstract:

Diaspora means dispersion of people, language, or culture that was formerly concentrated in one place. So, diaspora is related with exile, far away from home-land and etc. When an individual or group of people start producing literary production about people or language they may have disinherited but writing in another language, they may be defined as diasporic literature.

The state of exile and the pain of separation is portrayed in Bharathi Mukerjee’s novel Jasmine. Jasminetheprotagonist of the novel undergoes several transformations during her journey of life. Jasmine changes herself constantly between multiple identities in different places and times. She moved from her native land India. The novel begins with India and takes off Europe to America. The novelist shows the most predictable crusade towards Americanisation and its uncertainty. The novelist shows a sense of instability in to her novel. This journey becomes a tale of moral courage, a search for self identity, self-awareness and self-assertion.

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The Sense of Instability in Bharthi Mukerjee’s Jasmine

The word diaspora originates from the Greek word, diasporá meaning, a dispersion (scattering). Diaspora may be defined as dispersion of people, language, or culture that was formerly concentrated in one place. Diaspora means living in-between. Robin Cohen describes:

“Diasporas as communities of people living together in one country who acknowledge that the old country – notion often buried deep in language, religion, custom or folklore – always hassome claim on their loyalty and emotions”

(Global Diaposara: An Introduction. p ix)

In Indian sense Trishanku sorgam. It means neitherin heaven nor in earth. Commonly we know diaspora is far away from homeland or exile. Diaspora concept is first used by William Shakespeare in English literature. His play Hamlet contains diasporic concept. We understand Prince Hamlet situation. He says that:

“To be or not to be - that is the question” (Hamlet 3.1. 111)

Bharathi Mukerjee handles same situation in her many novels especially, in her novelJasmine. The title The Sense of Instability in Bharathi Mukerjee’s Jasmine conveyshow the protagonist Jasmine suffered, why she suffered and how she recovered and restored. The word sense means feeling and instability refers to unsteadiness. It is quite opposite to steadiness. Instability is based two types. They are geographical instability and psychological instability. Geographical instability means physical instability. It is related with place and not stable in one place. Psychological instability refers to fickle mind or weak mind.

Exile is a kind of journey. There is a difference between journey and exile. Journey is natural one but exile is forced one. Exile occurs whether by external or internal urges. External refers to political calamity, religious rigidity, violence, racial problems, violence, riots and etc. Internal means psychological problems, just like escapes from personal problems, escapism, aloofness and etc. Jasmine life has both external and internal exile.

The novel opens with:

“Lifetimes ago, under a banyan tree in the village of Hasnapur, an astrologer cupped his ears – his satellite dish to the stars – and foretold my widowhood and exile. I was only seven then, fast and venturesome, scabrous-armed from leaves and thorns”.

(Mukerjee’s Jasmine3)

Jasmine, the title character and narrator of Bharati Mukherjee's novel, was born 18 years after India's Partition Riots, or approximately 1965, in a rural village called Hasnpur. The time of her Indian birth would have been one of political and social upheaval. Two wars between Pakistan and India were fought that year. The Partition Riots, which play such a key role in Jasmine's family's plight, were an attempt to create separate Muslim and Hindu States.

Jasmine family, like many Hindus at the time, left behind relative riches in exchange for squalor during the Partition Riots. It was a time of violence and upheaval. Families abandoned not only material wealth, but culture also. When Jasmine is suddenly widowed at seventeen, she seems fated to a life of quiet isolation in the small Indian village where she was born. But the force of Jasmine's desires propels her explosively into a larger, more dangerous, and ultimately more life-giving world. In just a few years, Jasmine becomes Jane Ripplemeyer, happily pregnant by a middle-aged Iowa banker and the adoptive mother of a Vietnamese refugee.

Birds can freely fly. They do not have any passport and visa. Such a case is not possible for human beings. Migration and immigration are very difficult for us. We have a lot of restriction, distraction and destruction. These restrictions are on the base of safety, security and integrity. Though we think globally we live locally. Jasmine is not a free bird but she is a suffering bird. Her life is not colourful bur she has lot of calamities.

She moves her places rapidly. It causes her instability. Physical instability makes her mental instability. It gives her insecurity and loneliness feelings. Fixed place gives fixed mind. Actually, she is not a cheat but she becomes cheat for the sake of identity. She changes her face, place, style and etc. Jasmine, is also known as Jyoti, Jase or Jane. Finally, her ecliptic life is changed into colourful life.

Displacement is quite opposite to placement. It always gives displeasure and depression. It suffocates those who comes from others countries and to a new country. It makes people as cattle and their lives become battle. Struggle is common in their life. Displace never allows them to settle in one place. So, stability is a mirage for them. For Jasmine stability is a question mark and instability is an exclamation mark..

Rushdie says in reference to diasporic writers, a haunting of the mind:

“It may be that writers in my position, exiles or emigrants or expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into pillars of salt. But if we do look back, we must also do so in the knowledge – which gives rise to profound uncertainties – that our physical alienation from India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we will, in short, create fictions, not actual citiesor villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind.”

(Rushdie,Imaginary 10)

Jasmine’s decision to fulfil her husband’s anxiety:

”I had not given even a day’s survival in America a single thought. This was the place I had chosen to die, on the first day if possible. I would land, find Tampah, walking there if necessary, find the college grounds and check it against the brochure photo. Under the very tree where two Indian boys and two Chinese girls were pictured,smiling, I had dreamed of arranging the suit and twigs. The vision of lying serenely {….} (Mukerjee Jasmine, 120-21]

Transgression,trans-migration and transformation are played vital role in Jasmine’s life.

The transformation of Jasmine from Punjabi to an American is very effective. The immigrants, who are trying to establish their identities. It is not easy to overcome oneself from the roots and tradition of the culture that one comes from. No doubt the liberated Jyoti, Jasmine, Jase and Jane, who makes a life time for every name for every enthusiastic immigrant. Jyoti does her best to introduce herself into the alien society as an immigrant: the culmination finally indicated in Jasmine’s pregnancy with the child of a white man – Bud. This journey becomes a tale of moral courage. Jasmine is the complex and alternating nature of identity of a woman in the sense of instability.

For Jasmine nothing is stable: everything is in instable or in motion. Jasmine has many transformations and finds a new an American identity. Her story is a great fable she is an able person. She becomes an American no longer than immigrant. Jasmine is the transcended person because her life is transparent. In grammatical sense at first her life is just like a phrase. It means she does not have subject (life), verb (instability) and complete meaning (widow). At last it transforms into the clause. It refers to she has subject (life), verb (stability) and complete meaning (wife). Her question mark life alters into exclamation mark.

Cohen says that,

“A member’s adherence to diasporic community is demonstrated by an acceptance of inescapable link with their past migration history and sense of co-ethnicity with others of a similar background” (Global Diaspopra: An Introduction, pix)

Survival for struggle and search for self-identity are the two eyes of jasmine. Though she has third eye there is no sight. Renaissance, reformation and restoration are the three eyes of Jasmine. Renaissance means rebirth of Jasmine. That is Joti becomes Jasmine. Reformation implies to a born Indian becomes an American. Lastly, Restoration refers to a widow becomes again a married woman.

This is Jasmine’s story, who cuts her tongue, burns her past, sheds her cultural baggage, changes her clothes, alters her walk and her name. This is the process from instability to stability. Jyoti, born Punjabi, is a survivor she changes everything. The quality remains constant. She has such ability. She acquires the desire and desirable identity of Jase or Jane. An uncivilized Punjabi Indian becomes an Ultra-modern American.

Joti, is an Indian term. It signifies light. Later she changes her name as Jasmine. It points out a kind flower. It good odours spread over everywhere. That is why she moves or shuffles everywhere. Her physical causes mental instability. Face is the index of mind just like place is the status human being. Change place gives change of mind. Change of mind yields change of attitudes. Change of attitudes brings change of identity. Change of identity creates change of environment. Change of environment paves change of new life.

Speaking of Indian migrants Rushdie writes that

“our physical alienation from India almost inevitably means that we will not capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we will, in short, create ficiions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of minds”

(Rushdie,Imaginary 10)

Stability is based on residency. In Jasminethe protagonist does not have any permanent address. Address indicates a person’s identity. Location is the backbone of individuality. Jasmine is just like a gypsy, who does not have any proper place or fixed place. So, instability is inevitable for her. She is not astaging water but she is the running water. At last she is accumulated in a grant dam.

The will power [fate] causes for her sufferings. Her will-power [moral courage] gives success on her sufferings. At the beginning of the novel her life is a lightlesshouse. At the end of the novel her life is like a lighthouse. Shakespeare in his Hamlet simply describes:

“Frailty, thy name is woman”. (Hamlet, 1.2.27)

Jamine does know anything in America and anybody in America. She knows only one thing that is every problem has a solution within it. So, the problem of her instability also has a solution within it. A blasting start paves her sure fire success. It means a bomb-blasting start gives her bombastic success. We can proudly say fidelity thy name is Jasmine.

Works Cited:

Brah, Avtar, Cartographics of Diaspora: Contesating Identities (Routledge, 1997).

Cohen, Robin, Global Diaspora: An Introduction (UCL Press, 1991).

Mcleod, John, Beginning Postcolonialism, Viva Books, New Delhi, 2011.

Mukherjee, Bharati.Jasmine (1989), London: Virago, 1998.

Rushdie, Salman.Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981 – 1991

London: Granta Books, 1991.

Shakespeare, William, Hamlet,Ed. by Aniket Jaware, Darkling Kindersley Pvt. Ltd., 2008.

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S.RANGARAJAN,

Asst. Prof. of English,

Sri Sankara Arts & Science College,

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India.

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