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Hemant Gahlot |
- Hemant Gahlot
Professor of English, Govt Madhav Science College, Ujjain
Resistance could
be inward as well as outward. Both have some certain motif. An outward
resistance could be rejection of some traits that exist in the outer world but
would not coincide with the likes and dislikes or expectations of an
individual. Likewise, the inward resistance can be typified by rejection or
avoidance of a thing that does not go well with the conscience or the inner
world of a person because of preferences, perceptions or typical idiosyncrasies
of an individual living in a particular type of a social or cultural setup. In
a society where the world is envisaged as ‘global village,’ circumstances do
keep taking turns that move the hinges of a personality framework thereby
causing untoward outcomes out of a simple pattern of life. One such product of
a cosmopolitan culture is Nilanjana Sudeshana Jhumpa Lahiri.
Popularly known as
Jhumpa Lahiri, she is an American author of Indian origin whose parents
migrated from Kolkata, India, to London, UK. Her very first novel “The Namesake,”
on the lives, perspectives, troubles and tribulations of an Indian couple who
migrated to the US, caught the attention
of avid film-makers like Meera Nair, who made a movie in 2007 by the same name
that stood the test of time, money and popularity in an unprecedented manner,
nationally as well as internationally. Beginning with “The Interpreter of
Maladies” that spells her signature Bengali background in short stories where her
protagonists as well as sundry characters allow the readers to have a glimpse
of representation of cultural, social and linguistic resistance perpetuated
throughout in their mundane actions.
With
the publication of “In Other Words,” Lahiri has brought about a subtle analysis
of the layers of resistance one undergoes in an alien land. A short but
powerful narrative deftly deals with the moments of her Italian rendezvous
narrating events that uphold the tantrum of resistance by an individual forced
(sometimes by one’s own queer choices) to live in an unfamiliar linguistic and
geographical terrain. A language, specially a foreign language, resists throughout
the process of learning, whatever be the cause. We know that our mother tongue
interferes with whichever new language we try to acquire. Our socio-linguistic
background also provides us with the kind of resistance that hampers the
learning of a foreign language. So it was with Jhumpa Lahiri too. During her
first encounter with a home tutor in Brooklyn, she finds it a difficult task to
begin learning a new language with a tutor. She was then a grown up woman
expecting her first baby and already an established writer of fiction in
English who had married an American and been living in the western hemisphere
since her childhood. She attended Italian lessons at home. Participated in
literary festivals in Rome with a poor command of the language she adored but
that whole endeavour proved insufficient to her expectation. With two more home
tutors in a span of some five years and lots of literary writings and publications,
she finally concedes to the idea that to perfect her Italian she must go to
Italy.
In fact, it was
her love for Italian that pushed her towards relocating herself in Rome with
her family. ‘In Other Words” is an exploration in the linguistic, social,
cultural and personal, rather familial resistance experienced by an individual,
both as a real as well as a fictional character. It is an interesting tale
unfolding Lahiri’s marathon efforts made by her in learning the Italian
Language.
The
first chapter is an analogy between the learning of language with the process
of swimming. The first attempt (in swimming) is slow but consistent and
requires some encouragement, which she obtains from two friends in her fictional world. Although, these two friends
accompany her in crossing the lake – (symbolically the learning of Italian,)
but soon she realizes that she alone has to make her umpteen efforts for
crossing the lake. As the realization dawns upon her, she musters up all the
strength and finally reaches the other shore where a single cottage awaits her.
This single cottage – the Italian language – is her object of exploration and
she has reached there with commitment and conviction of a learner. The whole narrative
is a landmark of her expressive prowess:
“I
arrive on the other side: I’ve made it with no trouble. I see the cottage,
until now distant, just steps from me. I see the small, faraway silhouettes of
my husband, my children. They seem unreachable, but I know they’re not. After a
crossing, the known shore becomes the opposite side: here becomes there.
Charged with energy, I cross the lake again. I’m elated.” (In Other Words, 4-5)
This
autobiographical work is full of Lahiri’s personal experiences in learning a
foreign tongue through which she reveals the perils of migration with a deep
understanding and unprecedented intensity. It would be worth mentioning here
that Lahiri’s fascination for Italian was not a new fangled obsession for the
sake of becoming bi or trilingual only. The true mastery of the language
escaped her for nearly twenty years until she decided that she would cross the
Atlantic to fulfil her dream of learning Italian first hand.
The
first encounter of resistance is explored in the chapter entitled ‘Exile.’ As
pointed out earlier, Lahiri’s migration leading to linguistic dilemma had been
an ingrained experience embedded in her very genes. To this, she refers in the
beginning of the chapter recalling Dante’s patient wait for nine years for
speaking to Beatrice and Ovid’s* exile to linguistically alien land. Of her own
Bengali mother who, residing in the USA, always composed her poems in Bengali. This
made her second language acquisition not only necessary but also inevitable to
the extent that during the process of learning her second language became her
first language of expression. But this was not the end of things for Ms.
Lahiri. The love at first sight with Italian began back in 1994 during a visit
to Florence with her sister but found culmination some decades later in her
determination to learn the language in its natural environment. Lahiri abhors self-learning
because it ‘seems detached, wrong. As if I were studying a musical instrument
without ever playing it.’ (23) The strong urge to be well versed in Italian
takes her where the language is actually being used i.e. to Italy because ‘to
learn a language, to feel connected to it, you have to have a dialogue, however
childlike, however imperfect.’ (25) Lahiri’s fascination for the language finds
free expression throughout the book. She perceives her love for Italian as
infatuation which ‘will become a devotion, an obsession,’ (17) And the simple
reason behind this attachment is this that Italian seems to her like ‘a
language with which I have to have a relationship. It’s like a person met one
day by chance, with whom I immediately feel a connection, of whom I feel fond.
... I realize that there is a space inside me to welcome it.’ (16-17) Consequently,
whenever she thinks of Italy, she hears ‘certain words, certain phrases.’ (18)
She calls herself a ‘linguistic pilgrim to Rome,’ and prepares herself to face
the challenges of learning Italian to the extent of attaining expertise like
the natives or at least close to them. The early phase of resistance is battled
out with slow but sincere and industrious efforts. ‘I read slowly,
painstakingly. With difficulty. Every page seems to have a light covering of
mist. The obstacles stimulate me. Every new construction seems a marvel. Every
unknown word a jewel.’ (38)
*Ovid’s language of exile (imposed by the emperor) was Latin which
he not only adopted to his own poetic purposes (a poet par excellence as he
was) but also perfected both the elegiac couplet and the hexameter as
all-purpose meter and as an instrument of fluent communication.
The
linguistic resistance she experienced during her visits to the literary
festivals in Rome and during her learning sessions with three different
home-tutors at three different time- spans comes to a halt at the end of the
first week in Via Giulia. The action is sudden, spontaneous and largely
overwhelming too. Here is how she narrates it: “That Saturday I do something strange,
unexpected. I write my diary in Italian. I do it almost automatically,
spontaneously. I do it because when I take the pen in my hand, I no longer hear
English in my brain. ... I write in a terrible, embarrassing Italian full of
mistakes. Without correcting, without a dictionary, by instinct alone. I grope
my way like a child, like a semi-literate. I am ashamed of writing like this. I
don’t understand this mysterious impulse, which emerges out of nowhere. I can’t
stop.” (56-57)
It
was like melting of the ice of unfamiliarity. Real acquaintance, polishing, and
refining the linguistic variations was still a little distant to her. But she
left no stone unturned – she would wake up in the middle of the night, compose
a paragraph or so in Italian and continue her uphill task with her innermost
strength with renewed energy. It was like passing through a sweeping transition,
a drastic state of groping in the dark. But the road ahead was full of rewards
and hence a suitable catalyst to keep her working.
Right
from her childhood, she belonged only to her words. Uprooted from her culture
and country of origin, her very existence depended solely on the existence of
the words. A word to Lahiri is equivalent to life, “What does a word mean? And
a life? In the end, it seems to me, the same thing. Just as a word can have many
dimensions, many nuances, great complexity, so too can a person, a life.
Because ultimately the meaning of word, like that of a person, is boundless,
ineffable.” (84)
When
a person is endowed with such great passion for words and writing, a linguistic
resistance, howsoever hard, cannot be a hindrance in achieving the desired
goals. On the contrary, greater the resistance, harder the effort to overcome
it. Language is the tool through which she expects to attain the perfection and
grandeur in her works. And despite all the innovations in the field of language
learning, one is always short of reaching to the heart of the language,
specially a foreign language. If the objective is to gain commercial aims
fulfilled, a foreign language can be learned and applied to the purposes with
some ease, but if one is to write a literary piece in a foreign language, it
requires a lot more than mere understanding of the syntax and semantics of the
target language. Even after years of working with it what one gets to is a
petite understanding of the subtle nuances of expressions that would make an
impact on the readers. A complete perspective, an entire landscape always eludes
even the most ardent connoisseurs and most dedicated learner. Lahiri states
that she devoted almost half her life to learning Italian but all she could lay
her hands on was a small patch of linguistic skills. The main course of the
language was still far from her reach. She confessed that almost halfway
through the book, which she wrote in Italian: “I can skirt the boundary of
Italian, but the interior of the language escapes me. I don’t see the secret
pathways, the concealed layers. The hidden levels. The subterranean part.” (90)
Another
instance of linguistic resistance is gently touched upon by the author when she
contemplates the translation of her first book in Italian into English. Initially
she thought she, being a bilingual or rather trilingual, would be the most
natural person to translate her book herself. But soon realizes that this is
not her realm of choice because, “On one hand, the translation doesn’t sound
good. It seems insipid, dull, incapable of expressing my new thoughts. On the
other, I’m overwhelmed by the richness, the suppleness of my English. Suddenly
thousands of words, nuances, come to me. A solid ground, no hesitations. I
don’t need a dictionary; in English I don’t have to clamber uphill. This old
knowledge, this skill, depresses me.” (112) In fact, her own efficiency in
English becomes a barrier to her and she had to resist its coming to the fore
during her Italian adventure. She further explains that: “Compared with
Italian, English seems overbearing, domineering, full of itself. I have the impression
that English has been in captivity and, having just been released, is furious.”
(113) The efforts made by her bear fruits and she learns that while attending a
literary festival in Capri where she makes a presentation in Italian and is
being translated into English for the benefit of the audience. “Listening to my
interpreter, I trust my Italian for the first time. Although he’ll (Italian) remain forever the younger
brother, the little guy pulls through.
Thanks to the firstborn (English) I
can see the second – listen to him, even admire him a little.” (116 Italics
mine)
The
cultural resistance involving a bonding with the Italian is brought to fore in the
chapter entitled ‘Second Exile,’ which is about what she felt when she came
back to America after a year’s stay in Rome. This one-year association with
Italian generated in her a close-knit relationship with the language to the
extent that she began considering it her ‘second child,’ first being the
English. In America she felt like she is alienated in the absence of Italian
and a new fear gripped her of losing the control and attachment with the
language that she so desperately
learned, published and nourished as her own. Lahiri’s encounter with a
journalist from Milan provides her with an opportunity of actually understanding
her connection with Italian. “In
America, my Italian sounds jarring, transplanted. The manner of speaking, the
sounds, the rhythms, the cadences seem uprooted, out of place. The words seem
irrelevant, without a meaningful presence. They seem like castaways, nomads.”
(120) This psychological distance is actually annoying and frustrating as well,
although, it was not something new to Lahiri. She recalls how her parents felt
when they had first landed in America and would read a letter that came from
home written in Bengali, a hundred times before they put it back in a safe
place because, “When the language one identifies with is far away, one does
everything to keep it alive. Because words bring back everything, the place,
the people, the life, the streets, the light, the sky, the flowers, the
sounds.” (121) However, the occasions of going away from her native language
occurs not once but many a times, so much so that she feels exiled forever.
“Those
who don’t belong to any specific place can’t, in fact, return anywhere. The
concepts of exile and return imply a point of origin, a homeland. Without a
homeland and without a true mother tongue, I wander the world, even at my desk.
In the end, I realize that it wasn’t a true exile: far from it. I am exiled
even from the definition of exile.” (124)
The
physical appearance of a person at times reveals his/her cultural upbringing
too. Lahiri’s rendezvous with Italian brought her to such cultural and social
confrontations that hit her hard for her uncompromising love for the language.
Once, while she was visiting a departmental store she tried to explain things
in Italian to the salesperson who, despite her fluent Italian took her to be
foreigner, though her husband, Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, an American journalist
of Guatemalan and Greek descent and who sparsely speaks Italian, is oftentimes
taken to be a native because of his name and his looks. She felt the same
estrangement in America as well as in India for different reasons. While her
physical demeanour becomes a barrier in Italy, her name creates the same kind
of ripple in America – Jhumpa Lahiri – all the rough and tough consonants,
difficult to be pronounced easily. Thus,
the cultural benchmarks over which she has no control whatsoever also produce
resistance in achieving her goals of obtaining a native or equal-to-native
identification in a foreign land. One interesting anecdote will bring the point
home, which occurred in Flaminio neighbourhood in Rome at the time of presenting
her latest novel in a bookstore. “Before the presentation begins, a man whom my
husband and I have just met asks if I am going to make the presentation in
English. When I answer, in Italian, that I intend to do it in Italian, he asks
if I learned the language from my husband.” (132) An unseen wall always stands
between her and the rest of the world whether in America, Italy or India
exerting a resistance which she alone can handle in her own unique way – by
writing consistently and continuously what she feels at the core of her heart,
to express her deep, inner voices and exist in words. She gave vent to this
paranoia in a very subtle manner in the following lines:
“I’m
a writer: I identify myself completely with language, I work with it. And yet
the wall keeps me at a distance, separates me. The wall is inevitable. It
surrounds me wherever I go, so that I wonder if the wall is me.
I
write in order to break down the wall, to express myself in a pure way. When I
write, my appearance, my name, have nothing to do with it. I am heard without
being seen, without prejudices, without a filter. I am invisible. I become my
words, and the words become me.” (133)
This
linguistic resistance, however, proved benevolent in some ways too. For once,
it provided Lahiri an opportunity to see herself differently, or to be more
precise, to see her own desired image of a person who was a little upset with
her bilingual status. With Bengali as her mother tongue and English, her
stepmother, she found Italian – the language she desired and adopted. Within
this triangle, English remains her base – the foundation of her linguistic
preferences while Bengali and Italian form the two arms of the structure. The
former is a fixed point while the later may, someday under altered conditions,
abandon her. Yet, the clearly distinct and correct voice of English, her
stepmother will always be there. Adversity is the best teacher and Lahiri’s
Rome venture did bring the essence of the maxim home. Although, everyone is
aware of the troubles and travails of venturing into an unknown land, Lahiri
was no exception. Sheila Pierce narrated in her article on Jhumpa Lahiri that
during her Rome sojourn Lahiri too experienced occasional racial
discrimination. She recalls Lahiri telling her that a native stranger in Rome
at a traffic signal, after rolling down his car window, had yelled at her, “Go
wash yourself!” (Financial Times: May 22, 2015) Apart from trifles like these
Lahiri’s venture into the world of Italian words and narrative exploration was
a journey of accomplishing a deep desire to be able to express herself in a
language she so dearly loved and adopted for her literary pursuits. The resistance she faced made her stronger in
acquiring the skills to the extent that it culminated into writing a book of
international calibre with thumping applause amongst the Italian readership and
scholarship. ‘In Other Words’ has become a sought after work in Italian as well
as in American academics wherever the twain of English and Italian languages
meet.
REFERENCES
Lahiri
Jhumpa, In Other Words first
published in Italian as In alter parole by Guanda, Milan 2015, Tran by Ann Goldstein,
first published in India by Hamish Hamilton, by Penguin Books India 2016.
WWW.barclayagency.com for Financial Times, May 22, 2015
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