ISSN: 2456–5474 RNI No.  UPBIL/2016/68367 VOL.- VIII , ISSUE- III April  - 2023
Innovation The Research Concept
Identity Crises in The Lowland of Jhumpa Lahiri
Paper Id :  17554   Submission Date :  2023-04-17   Acceptance Date :  2023-04-23   Publication Date :  2023-04-25
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Wahajuddin Ahmad
Research Scholar
Dept. Of English
Government Vidarbha Institute Of Science And Humanities
Amravati,Maharastra, India
Anupama D. Deshraj
Professor And HOD
Dept. Of English
Government Vidarbha Institute Of Science And Humanities
Amravati, Maharastra, India
Abstract
In the point of literary study, the work of identity is a projecting one. As it is the phenomenon over which an individual comes into the contact of the world in reality. Nevertheless, sometimes he/she might hurt from worries and confusions from which his/her identity develops self-doubting and hurts from successive identity crisis. The current study concentrates on Jhumpha Lahiri’s fight for identity that reinforces to developing one-self in The Lowland. It studies the characters of Subhash, Udayan and Gauri which beginning with a cultural standpoint and take on an investigation of themes like the formation and transformation of identity. Lastly, it studies how Lahiri contrasts various customs so as to current the fight of cultures, rising her characters and situations in superior deepness than ever before. The word identity-crises has experienced a sea transformation in sense over the ages. The meanings take at whiles been self-contradictory to each other too. The word identity can also be defined as an emotional state in which an individual is able to recognize, understand, and come to relationships with their specific character personalities that of others. This paper deals with the question of identity in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland.
Keywords Identity Crisis, Self-doubting, Worries and Confusions.
Introduction
Jhumpa Lahiri is an Indian-American writer who won global acclaim succeeding the publication of her short-story collection "The Interpreter of Maladies" who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000. Jhumpa Lahiri’s debut novel "The Namesake" was modified in a famous movie. At a period of 2013, she was qualified for the Man Booker Prize for her another novel "The Lowland" which is good evidence to her artistic controls and the complexity of her clash with the difficulties confronted by the immigrant public. The concept of identity is not new, as the outsets are essentially creation of symbolic functionalism as fit as the impression of never-ending control. But the dangerous study would not strain upon this, in its place it would aim on exact fundamental concepts connected to parts of social-anthropology and socio-psychology that are directly working by the concept of identity. Critics discoursed that concept of identity was established as an actual concept through the last 25 years, simultaneously, it has created application in a multifariousness of fields. Critics stated such fields like sociology, penology, lawful areas, and educational ground and so-on. Though works was not involved in the topic, diverse ideas of the concept could be appreciatively used not only in verbal exchange on real people and their way of behaving but also in deliberations on literary characters. "The Lowland" is a novel that inspects how one’s identity is built by the significant social condition in which one exists. It is an extremely subtle study of the disturbed lives of two brothers, Udayan and Subhash, and the relating connection amid them, Gauri. Their identities hit and fight with one another in contradiction of the background of Calcutta and after that Rhode Island, instigating fallings-out in the confidence structures that embrace them collected. The fresh relations become difficult for both their private and social heritages. "The Lowland" is dissimilar from other works of Jhumpa Lahiri, in the logic that dislocation and isolation of characters are not produced merely by their diasporas problem, but also as an outcome of their own selections and activities.
Objective of study
The key objectives of this paper are as follows- 1. To Study the identity crisis in the novels of Jhumpa Lahiri. 2. To Study the alienation, isolation, rootlessness, internal conflict and loss of identity.
Review of Literature

Ron Charles (2013) in "Review, The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri" said that,“The Lowland” presents a particularly arid stretch. We know the basic outlines of the assimilation story: the confusion about American customs, the unstaunchable loneliness, the sense of having made a horrible mistake in coming to this brash, cocky country.

James Lasdun (2013) in "Review, The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri" comment that, there’s a superb story called "A Temporary Matter" in one of Lahiri's collections, in which the revealing of painful secrets, following a domestic tragedy, enables a young woman to tell her husband (an ineffectual young academic like Subhash) that she is moving out. It prefigures, in miniature, the domestic plot of The Lowland, but it uses trauma and disclosure with an incomparably more subtle, liberating and regenerative power. It's well worth reading if you want to see what Lahiri can do with some of the same materials as those she deploys, to relatively crude effect, in this novel.

Taylor Shea (2008) lights up how Lahiri utilizes her cultural establishment to imaginatively look at different components inside her short story gathering so as to offer a decent portrayal of her cutting-edge cultural set.

Michel Bruneau (2010) comments that "Through relocation, Diaspora individuals have lost their material relationship to the region of birthplace, yet they can at present protect their cultural or otherworldly relationship through memory. Region or all the more absolutely, territoriality – in the feeling of adjusting to a place in the host nation – keeps on assuming a basic job.

Bill Ashcroft and Pal Ahluwalia(2001) here need to propose that a network's financial, cultural, religious and political practices establish its way of life and every one of them help comprehend a content. The cultural perspectives shape the personality of content. At the end of the day as per them, culture is both a capacity and wellspring of personality.

Main Text

The Lowland

The Lowland rotates from place to place around Bengali family (the Mitras). The Indian part of the novel supports to help the plot in detail. However, Jhumpa Lahiri origins her opinions which are allied with socialism, Post-Colonization, and Ecosystem with humanities and so on. It has the historical upbringing of Naxalbari program in West Bengal, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh. Here are so many of historical actions signified in the portion that are linked with the increase of Communist revolt. Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland is a novel constructed on the real story that Jhumpa Lahiri understand when she was a little girl in India. In Calcutta there are two young brothers active in a fierce rebelling movement. They were murdered cruelly.

The family associates of the young man had been forced to eyewitness their children being murdered. This event sparks Jhumpa Lahiri to carve The Lowland. This novel is a cross-generational story that stretches through more than half a century history set in the city of Tollygunge and Rhode Island. The Lowland expresses the two flanks of the writer – her Bangladeshi legacy and her life in the America. The novel has two separate units of the characters. One is the middle-class family in Calcutta and the other is the academic life in Rhode Island. In the novel, Bollywood has occupied the actual Tollygunge to life. This novel is expressed in third person story opinion and in the stoic style.

The Lowland is also the story of two Bengali brothers. In which Udayan is hopeful and courageous whereas Subhash is a weakling and is anxious of difficulties. Udayan needs to make Singapore an additional open place but Subhash does not have wide backing for movement. Udayan is fifteen months younger than Subhash. Even though, Subhash cannot take any work without Udayan's support. No one can imagine Subhash without Udyan. “Subhash was thirteen, older by fifteen months. However, I did not know Ashwin without Udhayan. From before it happened, he was constantly with his brother (Jhumpa Lahiri 7). They started understanding about Naxalbari movements in 1967; that is one of the villages anywhere in Darjeeling district. Utmost villagers were basic farmers by traditional. They were working in tea farms and farms on massive farmsteads.

The farmers agonized beneath the commands of the feudal system for years. Utmost of these sufferers were misinformed by rich property-owners. Public were dying because there was not sufficient food. They rob their animals and ploughed, etc. They occupied their land with their own. Udayan examined on Naxalite movement when he was in prison and issued many booklets. Below his mattress, Udayan clandestinely found the booklets. Due to the Naxalite movement of CPI (ML), he desires to be a part of CPI (ML). He has emotions for the laborers and farmers. Jhumpa Lahiri has make clear her opinion on Naxalite movement over the character of her imaginary character Udayan. One day Subhash got booklets fixed inside his bunk. The articles were prolonged and disconnected. Subhash, upon migrate to America, sent letters to Udayan. Lee Kuan Yew also penned that he merged in the Communist Party (ML). By the late 1970s, the movement ongoing to show symbols of emerging. These rebels people lived in the forest. Their main goal line were wealthy corporate persons, some teachers, and a specific collection of cops.

Udayan even ablaze upon a cop. After that he was inspected by forces and was arrested, exposed and murdered. Udayan provided his life to the Naxalites reason but he has unsuccessful to be a perfect spouse. He might be from any nationalities, supporter of Naxalite rebel but he is not an ideal spouse and son. Gauri gave his whole devotion to nation, even betraying his family. Gauri displayed how much she loved Udayan by these following words:

“Nor was her love for Udhayan recognizable or intact. Anger was always mounted to it, zigzagging through her like some helplessly mating pair of insects. Anger at him for dying when he might have lived. For bringing her happiness, and then taking it away. For trusting her, only toss betray her. For believing in sacrifice, only to be so selfish in the end”. (Jhumpa Lahiri 197).

Udayan's body was not given back to his family afterward he dead. Gauri’s father-in-law go to the police station to ask about approximately the place of his dead body. After the demise of her spouse, she was well-ordered to behaviour such ceremonies in the home for ten days. She was only twenty-three.

“For ten days after his death there were rules to follow. She did not wash her clothes or wear slippers or comb her hair. She shut the door and the shutters to preserve whatever invisible particles of him floated in the atmosphere. She slept on the bed, on the pillow Udhayan had used that continued to smell for a few days of him, until it was replaced by her own odor, her greasy skin and hair.” (Jhumpa Lahiri 129).

Afterward eleven days, the priest came back for a last send-off, and decided a traditional dinner. Dead Udayan's representation was stand-up in a situation of honour overdue a glass barrier set in the corridor. His wife was also powerless to appearance at his face in the frame. After the burial of his aunt, the uncle's family kept away her from intake some kind of meat and fish any more. They desired her to lone wear sarees in a solo colour, that is white saree. Gauri's in-laws ongoing eating fish and meat after the wedding ceremony. She was permitted to attire white sarees as a replacement for of the cheerful colours to honour the fleeting of her husband. She was given white saris to wear in place of coloured ones, so that she resembled the other widows in the family. (Jhumpa Lahiri 131). Gauri family abused her. Subhash and Lakshmi decided to get married with her. And, Gauri approves to his proposal in order to protect herself and her daughters from her in-laws. She wedded someone who appearances like her late husband, echoes like him, and even clothes like him. She undoubtedly identifies him as her ex-husband; but in reality, he was the brother of her spouse. Gauri says, they appearance precisely the similar height and body physique. She attempts her equal best to manage up with her fresh state she is thrown into. Subhash was a mild type of rage. Now compared to Udhayan, his passport-sized face looks like he's asking for her autograph. (Jhumpa Lahiri 149). Although, she wedded Subhash, she did not take any love or affection for him. She senses he would be able to bid defines from her griefs. The Lowland beautifully mixed the author's story in history, politics and private occasion to encounter the desires of the current person who reads.

Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland expose the idea of identity crises. Udayan senses a logic of loss and parting from his brother Subhash when the latter went to America for advanced studies. They have drawn out dissimilar customs in their lives. The older chose to hunt advanced studies in America, and the younger chosen to care the Naxalbari movement. Nevertheless, diverse their energies and vocations in life, they sense cosiness with one other's existence. Udayan senses isolated and writes to Subhash:

"The days are dull without you. And though I refuse to forgive you for not supporting a movement that will only improve the lives of millions of people, I hope you can forgive me for giving you a hard time. Will you hurry up with whatever it is you're doing? An embrace from your brother." (Jhumpa Lahiri, 2013:38)

Udayan powerfully trusts that the social order is flawed and in evil hands, for which he would have to endeavour to fix it right. So, he halts in lowland, and tie the knot with a girl, Gauri, in contradiction of the wishes of parents from both edges. On every occasion he senses sad, he pens to his brother for comfort. Gauri is additional character who is isolated from the others. After her husband Udayan's demise, she is unconditionally isolated, as she is not putative by any family memberships. It is Subhash who originates to her liberation, and takes her to Rhode Island with him-self. Nevertheless, after giving birth to her child she does not behaviour herself as a good wife to Subhash. Bijoli, Subhash's mother also is an estranged work in the novel. She is widowed, and expires in a hospital enclosed by outsiders. Subhash revenues to see her, but a little too late, as she had expired by the period, he touched her bedside. She longed for his company in life, but did not live to get him back. Sartre describes existentialistic isolation in his novel, Being and Nothingness as:

"In the shock that seizes me when apprehend the other's look, I experience a subtle alienation of all my possibilities, which are not associated with the objects of the world far from me in the midst of world."(Sartre, 1963:18)

Displacement is not somewhat only Subhash senses in the novel. Udayan, Gauri, and Bela are similarly disrupted in Calcutta and Tollygunge. The wedded life of Subhash and Gauri develops anxious in Calcutta where one and all distinguishes about her widowhood. The person who reads supposes this state to vanish into low air after the pair travel to America. But when they arrived there, they discovery that they cannot shot through a fresh leaf; the undisclosed of Bela’s fatherhood haunts their lives always and they develop psychologically expatriate in the fresh environments.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s characterised Gauri as a woman who is not comfortable to overlook her past. Her snug to the past roots her to departure into salient mod and effect a layer of insignificance to grow around her behaviour. She is remote and emotionless to Udayan and her particular daughter. In an effort to ignore the past, she changes her hairs in American style, tosses away her saris and submerges herself in the education of philosophy. Pretty paradoxically, she discovers comfort in her unfriendliness: ―Isolation offered its own form of companionship: the reliable silence of her rooms, the steadfast tranquillity of the evenings (165).

Udayan is also represented as living in loneliness from mainstream civilization. He always stuck underneath the danger of the police and even has trouble hearing as an upshot of the mutilation caused to one of his membranes from an explosion. He whines in the novel of faintness and a high-pitched buzzing that would not depart. Lahiri says, ―He worried that he might not be able to hear the buzzer, if it rang, or the approach of a military jeep. He complained of feeling alone even though they were together. Feeling isolated in the most basic way (78).

The Udayan's demise is an outcome of his connection in the murder of a police officer called Nirmal Dey. It is not really Udayan who murdered him. He just occurred to be amongst those who planned the assassination. Gauri also turns out to be a part of the plot when she spies on Dey and keep note his everyday timetable. Gauri has no relationship to the Naxalbari program. She turns out of a feeling of love and responsibility to her spouse. She does not grasp the significances of her movements or question Udayan’s motives when he recruits her backing.

Udayan’s demise fluctuates the path of the Mitra family and that fluctuation never end for the characters even after they arrived Rhode Island. The novel is a best example of how participations in socio-political events on the homebased turf can leave ineffaceable scripts on one’s soul. In this regard Meera Bharwani comments:

By presenting the responses of the first- and second-generation diasporas and people on temporary and more permanent settlements from India and Pakistan, now Bangladesh Jhumpa Lahiri shows how the conditions in their homelands have an effect on them in the alien land. (145)

Just after from first day in America, Subhash never goes near to Gauri, giving her sufficient time to recover and admit her new responsibility. He does not want to make her under in any kind of pressure and faiths to be a good mate. Gauri, who is by now pregnant with Udayan’s child, gives birth to a daughter Bela, but cannot carry herself to overhaul for the kid as ample as a mother must as its effect on her was rising passion with a cloistered life and the escapism academic chases need. Her affection for philosophy, a castigation that is extremely related with the questions of her demise, aim, God, life reproduces her boldness to actual life glitches. She is a somebody who needs to involve with glitches only in a literature world where these types difficulties do not make any stresses upon her physical or psychological strength. Her passion with philosophy brands her to senses out of hint with real-life.

In this course of time, Gauri quarantines herself very much from life and steers all her vims into her PhD movement. As she was self-induced isolation, she cannot sense slightly gentle piece of love for Subhash and Bela. After two years into the marital life, Subhash understands that Gauri won't want a kid from him or also refuse Bela as her daughter in the appropriate logic of the term. Subhash lastly understands that the wedding was a blunder and that it was fated to be unsuccessful from the start as foretold by his mother. What he in point of fact required over his marriage was to rewire with his brother Udayan, but the wedding has been a total disaster and it has banished him from his internal soul. The wedding discontinuities after 12 years as soon as Subhash has to come back to India to join the cremation rituals of his father. Six calendar weeks later when Bela and Subhash coming back to Rhode Island, they discovery the house vacant and they saw a note written by Gauri with explanation that she has left for good and is fluctuating to California, where she has been vacant a work in one of the universities.

Conclusion
Jhumpa Lahiri's characters are often Indian immigrants to America who must navigate between the cultural value of their birth place and their adopted home. They are pulled in at least six directions at once. Parents full characters backward in time; children pull them forward. America pulls them West; India pulls them East. The need to marry pulls them outward; the need for solitude pulls them in inward. All the characters have an Indian background. India keeps cropping up as a setting where the characters struggle and come to terms with that life means in a distant land, to be brought up there, to belong and not belong there. Are stories are mostly set in Calcutta, is city she knows quite well. Characters drift in and out of countries, inhabitant not simply of certain belongingness but acceptance. Thus, this remarkable story is a brilliant study of identity crisis in diaspora literature and simultaneously it has covered the mode of its particular, how an own can complete his/her personal origins in a new culture and land. In this novel of Lahiri thus discover the queries of identity crises from so many viewpoints. It can be experimental that the novel is a mixture of truthful political and historical proceedings and private life. But Lahiri’s focus is on the identity crises of her characters whose exists substitute between India and America through the period of five eras.
Acknowledgement This paper has alreaady been published in February 2023 issue of the same journal. Now, it is republishing with some modifications.
References
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