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| Sutanuka Ghosh Roy |
Sutanuka Ghosh Roy
ABSTRACT:
It has been famously
argued that race, class, gender—all play their respective part in the formation
of identity. Immigrants throughout the world suffer from an identity crisis and
this same operates at multiple levels of signification. The third world
diasporic writers take up the burden of representation and use it as a tool of
defining the self. Meera Sayal, a post-colonial writer of Indian origin shares
the experience of growing up and living in an environment with a language and a
culture which are not hers, aims to define both the land and the self as part
of the nation of her origin.
In her novel Anita and Me she is critical of the myths, traditions, culture and
heritage of her native place of origin. This paper aims to show Anita and Me as a study of this cultural
or mythical standing which is at times taken up as the very foundation, the
base of identity of her protagonist.
In Search
Of Her Real Self: A Study Of Meera Sayal’s Anita And Me.
The
phenomenon called the New Indian Diaspora was the outcome of post-independence incertitude.
Diasporas are people who have migrated from one country to another due to
reasons which may be historical, political or personal. Confronted with an
alien culture, they reinvent their circumstances by mixing and matching their
new environment with the native cultural sediment in them. The immigrants tend
to see the new culture in terms of the old one. All their age-old beliefs face
the challenge of re-definition under the pressure of the new surroundings. It
is natural, therefore, for such situations to give rise to feelings of
ambiguity and namelessness. Consequently, there arises a need to cope with
their ever-shifting identities.
A post-colonial writer of Indian origin, Meera
Sayal shares the experience of growing up and at the same time living in an
environment with a language and a culture which are not hers, aims to define
both the land and the self as part of the nation of her origin. In Anita and Me (1996) she has taken frequent
recourse to personal memories which adds perspicuity and piquancy to what might
otherwise have relapsed into a conventional immigrant narrative. In Anita and Me Sayal’s concern is to
dredge out if possible, the ‘truth’ of ‘ identity’, a ‘truth’ manifested in
trauma and desire, a truth that baffles the symbolic order of language itself.
We are to remember that globalization has marred the slightest possibility of
the concept of permanent identity itself. As a third world diasporic writer,
she has taken up the burden of representation
as a means of defining the self.
Meera Sayal’s protagonist Meena in Anita
and Me reveals clearly how the younger South Asian generation in the West
has to face some unique challenges which affect their identity. Even though their
generation enjoy many advantages over their immigrant parents, such as security
and infrastructure built by their parents, in most of the cases…the younger
generation in the West finds identity exploration and formation a real
challenge because of the dual socialization and social prejudice that exists in
the society. Sayal shows that this young girl is firstly socialized into two
distinctive cultural traditions, one of the home and another of the school and
of the wider society of Tollington where Meena is growing up. According to
Guhman,
The home emphasizes the
religion ,culture and traditions of the ‘sending’ society, whereas school
stresses the norms, values and attitudes deemed important by the ‘receiving’ society.
(32).
Meena is a typical case of an Indian girl
born and brought up in Tollington, struggling to create an identity of her own,
caught amidst the discrepancies between Western and Eastern culture. The chief
reason why’ identity’ is now so much in focus is because of the uncertainty and
diversity that characterizes modern identity, Kath Woodward opines…
We can also link the heightened
concern about racial zed and ethinicized identities to another feature of
contemporary life. This is the impact of large-scale migration of people and
rapid social and technological change and the uncertainty these have resulted
in. The effect of a mix of old and new identities in a context of social change
is to produce more uncertainty ( 130-131) .
Meena’s parents are
‘middle-class’ and are more or less accepted in British society because they
keep a low-profile. Her mother Daljit grew up in a small Punjabi village near
Chandigarh. When she came to England with her husband she wanted to find a
place which reminded her of the village in which she was born, with fields,
trees, light and space. Even in England she chooses to wear traditional Indian
clothes outside her workplace ( as a teacher).
And, It was her duty to show them that we
could wear discreet gold jewellery, dress in tasteful English without an
accent. (25).
She is the perfect Indian housewife, who, to Meena’s
embarrassment, grows her own herbs in the front garden:
It was a constant source
of embarrassment to me that our front garden was the odd one out in the
village, a boring rectangle of lumpy grass bordered with various herbs that
mama grew to garnish our Indian meals.( 25)
For Daljit food is
something more than just something to fill your stomach with. It is seasoned
with memory, something their far-away mothers made and something that connects
her to her home.
This food was not just
something to fill a hole, it was soul food, it was the food their far-away
mothers made and came seasoned with memory and longing, this was the nearest
they would get for many years, to home (61).
Mr Kumar, Meena’s father was in his
youth offered a role in a film but her grandfather refused to let him go. When
Meena hears she feels sad and frustrated and imagines how different her own
life could have been….
But if I was
disappointed, I could not begin to imagine how papa must have felt. (82)
Meena is totally ignorant
about her father’s profession. All she knows is that he works in an office. Her
mother tells her the exact cause why they had left their homeland, they were “
poor and clever”, (212) which is a deadly combination in India. Sayal herself
says,
I hope that people will
come away feeling they have seen another side of the Asian experience. But it’s
not just a British-Asian story. We live in an increasingly shrinking world,
made up of nations who come everywhere. This is a story about all of us, and
how we adapt . (Syal 2008).
Meena’s family is a typical
open-hearted warm immigrant family where the door is always open, food is ready
and there are always a host of relatives who hang around . What is typical of
all Indians all over the world whether they are in America or England or
South-Africa, they look up to their own culture, own language, tradition and
rituals of which they feel proud, they always cling to their roots. The second
generation is however exposed to the rugged individualism of the West, are much
more self-centred as they have no obligations to support their own parents or
distant relatives. They live in the bubble of their own inflated ego. As Meena
says,
……I’ve always been a
sucker for a good double entendre; the gap between what is said and what is
thought, what is stated and what is implied, is a place in which I have always
found myself. I’m really not a liar, I just learned vey early on that those of
us deprived of history sometimes need to turn to mythology to feel complete, to
belong.(.10)
This mapping the transition is one of
the primary tasks of Sayal as a diasporic writer. Meena’s parents are expecting
her to pass the 11plus and go to the Grammar School. But in the months before
her big exam, Meena meets Anita, a blonde, a spoilt brat from a dysfunctional
neighbouring family. She is just mesmerized by her. She starts to idolize her. Meena
thinks of her as a role model. She
chooses Anita Rutter over her aunt’s children Pinky and Baby. She feels:
I was happy to follow her
a respectable few paces behind, knowing that I was priviledged to be in her
company . (38)
My life was outside the
home, with Anita, my passport to acceptance, (148).
By imitating Anita Rutter
blindly Meena signals her identity to others. They form a gang. The Wenches
Brigade. Afterwards Meena steals the
sweets from their neighbour Mr Ormerod’s shop, Anita takes them. Meena takes
this as a golden opportunity to become friends. She feels this is her route to
become involved with the English culture. When Anita says,
Yow coming then’ (38).
She is too happy and
excited that an English girl has started to talk to her. She feels
now she can possibly fit into the British culture. Anita becomes her new
goddess.
I had wondered what I
done to deserve it. (18).
However when Mr Ormerod
goes to Meena’s house to speak to her father about this incident she
bluntly blames it on Pinky and Baby, saying that she is innocent , it is they
who stole it. Meena does this to impress her idol Anita and it does impress
her. This incident makes her feel different, as her home is totally different
to her social life.
I pocketed the two
shillings, grasped the tin and staffed it down the back of Baby’s pink jumper.
(155)
She steals her mother’s powder compact and
“ begged Anita to make me
up like Babes, the blonde pouty one, from Pan’s People (144).
Meena enjoys her new sense of belonging. She
starts disliking the spicy Indian food which her mother made with all
enthusiasm in the world. Like a rebel she protests,
I don’t want that …that
stuff ! I want fishfingers ! Fried ! And chips ! Why can’t I eat what I want to
eat? (60)
Meena’s mother on the
other hand is stunned by her daughter’s
behaviour. She says:
I will never understand
this about the English, all this puffing up about being civilized with their
cucumber sandwiches and cradle of democracy big talk, and then they turn round
and kick heir elders in the backside, all this It’s My Life, I Want My Space
stupidness, (58-59).
Her parents wants
her to grow up in a dignified way, in an Indian way and are ready and glad to
help her to do them.
It
has been Sayal’s endeavour to negotiate between her ‘ inner’ forms-her
childhood memories and her Indian experiences, and her ‘outer’ one, her British
milieu. She treated her expatriation as a mode of meditation between the two
languages and cultures inhabited by her. However Meena chooses to curve a
diasporic British identity. She wants to get rid of her Indian values in favour
of Anita’s freer behavioral system. The intense and passionate relationship of
Meena and Anita is played out against a background of conflicting cultures
within Tollington.
With Nanima’s arrival, Meena
transforms/undergoes a metamorphis. Nanima is an embodiment of India. The very
figure of Nanima stirs the Indianness in her. She for the first time feels that
India is where she belongs---her heaven as well as her haven. This makes her
search for a culture and heritage which is not British but all Indian.
Nanima was indeed some
kind of sorcerer (209)
Nanima’s magic-wand
instilled in her a search for identity of her own. Meena discovered herself…
Maybe now things would be
different; I would no longer be Anita’s shadow but her equal,... (237-38)
Meena is metamorphosed. She
could finally tear herself from Anita Rutter, and comes out with a secret revelation
that
She needed me maybe more
than I needed her. There is a fine line between love and pity and I had just
stepped over it. (242).
The same Meena who once
cried for ‘ fish fingers’ now opts for,
‘ Can I have something
….vegetarian for lunch?’ (245)
This inner realization is something
which cannot be injected, it has to come from within. Earlier she defied her parents many a times.
She did everything from lying to stealing to impress Anita and her gang. Her
constant interaction with Anita and her gang made her realize what is not
relevant for her. She understood that for them she is just the ‘other’, they
will never ever consider her to be one of ‘them’.
I was a freak of some
kind, too mouthy, clumsy and scabby to be a real Indian girl, too Indian to be
a real Tollington wench, but living in the grey area between all categories
felt increasingly like home.( 150).
Later this grey area
becomes her home. She realizes that she was having to learn the difference between acting and being and it hurts
her no doubt. For solace she comes to her papa and while conversing with her
papa:
I suddenly realized that
what happened to me must have happened to papa countless times, but once had he
ever shared his upset with me. He must have known it would have made me feel as
I felt right now, hurt, angry, confused and horribly powerless because this
kind of hatred could not be explained. (98).
The same Meena who earlier disobeyed her
parents now feels that she has a free choice. Nanima teaches her that
disobeying parents is not in her culture. Her parents had given her enough
space and opportunity to learn. The street experiences she had while
accompanying Anita and her gang, transforms her, these added values to her
life. The cross-cultural understanding make her search for her real ‘identity’,
her true ‘self’. She bends herself for the better and shuns the company of
Anita Rutter,
…..Anita was a Bad
influence, that was official. (131)
Meena speaks in English and finds Hindi very
difficult,
Written in astrological symbols, all half moons and
flying dots like comets. (322).
Now she accepts her own
language. The very language stirs the Indian instincts in Meena. When she hears
the Hindi songs sung by her father,
..felt I could speak in
my sleep, in my dreams, evocative of a country I had never visited but which
sounded like the only home I had ever known. The songs made me realize that
there was a corner of me that would but forever not England.( 112).
In fact it transforms her to make her own
emotional make up. She accepts the very fact that she is an Asian girl in an
English culture, a culture which is not hers. She hates to become an ‘alien’ and assume an inferior
position to Anita, Tracey or Sam
Lowbridge. One has to remember that ethnicity and nationality are quite
different from one another though interchangeable. Anita and her gang mix up
these and misconstrue the real meaning of ‘identity’. Meena silently suffers from
the haunting question of ‘double identity’ and belonging. In fact the novel
opens the door to controversy between original ethnicity and confessed
nationality, that Indians like Mr and
Mrs Kumar among other ethnic members are compelled to deal with in their day to
day lives.
Meena undergoes a sharp psychological
disorientation which is caused by a misunderstanding and disagreement arising
from cultural differences. At the same time provide her adequate space and
opportunity for learning from experience. This knowledge of cultural
differences becomes the impetus for a possible transformation into an ordinary
life style. These incidents raise her self esteem and bolster her
self-confidence. Through the daily
interactions with the customs, habits of people from a foreign culture Meena’s attention was focused on English way
of life but when she learns that in her culture ‘ there are no boyfriends’ she
encounters her own culture. She now refuses to assimilate to new English ways
of life and wishes to remain and perpetuate in her original milieu. She understands that if she wants to have an
identity of her own she has to study. The novel stresses the role of
education in the process of identity. It is only by successfully mastering the
language that Meena can have an edge over Anita and others. Knowledge is the
only means through which the non-whites can assume a superior role in the
English hierarchical system of society as well as education. Meena’s
post-colonial family stresses the importance of her successful performance in
English schooling. English is a necessity for her successful future and not an
option.
I knew riding on this
paper—my parents hopes for my future, the justification for their departure
from India, our possible move out of Tollington.(306).
Identity
is thus not static in nature it is dynamic, it is something that undergoes a
continuous evolution. In fact identity works as a bridge to narrow the gap
between individuals and the world in which they live. It forms a combination of
how one sees oneself and how others see a person. From the very beginning Meena
tries to juggle between Indianness and Englishness. At first she does
everything that is expected from a typical British girl. At the end of the
novel she does exactly what her parents expect of her.
I found myself doing jobs
I had run away from just a few weeks earlier, mashing up boiled vegetables into
a runny goo for Sunil’s meals, boiling water for his bottles and nappies,
(209).
It is when Meena arrives
at the Big house and discovers that in there is an Indian man living with his
French wife, her search for identity comes to a stop. Slowly she breaks off
from Anita and her gang. Her stay at the
hospital gives her a chance for introspection. She does not hear from Anita
while she is in the hospital.
I decided there and then to heal myself, both
in body and mind (284)
It is in the hospital
that she meets Robert, her love,
His painfully thin frame
held up a pair of stripey pyjamas, but his face, framed by curly brown hair,
was illuminated by a pair of energetic, electric blue eyes. (283)
Robert makes her
understand the real meaning of life, he urges her to ‘ mind the road’.
Meena’s ending up in the
hospital affects her views on friendship as well as education. The accident
helps her to mature and form her new identity, she realizes that the eleven
plus test is going to decide the future for the Tollington children. So she is
serious to succeed and fulfill the dreams of her parents.
If I failed, my parents’
five thousand mile journey would have all been for nothing.( 213)
When Meena comes out of
the hospital things change.
The final blow to their friendship comes when
Meena witnesses Anita getting raped and abused by her boyfriend Sam Lowbridge
by the pond. Her sister Tracey in a desperate bid to protect her sister falls
in and nearly dies. The cops start investigating and enquiring Meena. She is
now mature enough to distance herself from Anita.
But I hated Sam and Anita
even more then, important, everlasting. I had been planning a spectacular
revenge for so long, and now, finally, I was ready. (324).
She moves on to form her
own independent identity. She is in search for her real self. She realized,
…I needed someone to talk
to, I needed to talk about Sam. Anita, being my best friend, should have been
with me. But I knew, as I thought this, that she would not have understood that
there were some things that we would never be able to share. (274).
When she cleared the 11
plus exam, she is relieved, she could fulfill the dreams of her parents,
I’m going to the grammar
school, so at least you won’t be around to tease me about my tam o’shanter! See
you around! (328)
Then the racial
disruptions started taking place in the village,
MAN ATTACKED IN
TOLLINGTON. ‘ The victim, a Mr Rajesh Bhatra from Tettenhall was found in a
ditch on the side of the Wulfrun road….( 275)
I had seen my parents
rather swallow down anger and grief a million times, for our sakes, for the
sake of others watching, for the sake of their own vanity. (288).
Meena’s world fell like a
pack of cards,
This was too close to
home, and for the first time, I wondered if Tollington would truly be home
again (275).
Meena for the first time tries to deal with
this narrow mindedness, and this has its own impact in her search for her real
self. She for the first time in her life faces the ultimate question ‘‘What does it mean to be Indian outside India?”(
Rushdie 17). Meena realizes that she belongs to a separate part of
society. This society can never be hers. Now Anita and she have become mere
strangers.
She declares,
My days as a yard member were over. (297).
In her
search for her real self, she keeps questioning ‘who am I?’, ‘ where do I belong? ‘Where is my home?’.…A coherent
image of the self is constructed which can easily be dismantled due to the
tension between home and “ the unhomely” in Homi Bhabha’s terms. (Bhabha, 445)..
Sayal shows that it is possible to subvert this man-made mechanism through a
totally inclusive mindset. Meena tries and at the same time tests boundaries,
prejudices as well as tradition. In her struggle with the dual backgound, she
searches for something new, something fresh, away from the ordinary, banal
norm. She strives towards a new found freedom and individuality which is her
own true self.
I had absorbed Nanima’s absence and Robert’s departure
like rain on parched earth, drew it in deep and drank from it. I now knew I was
not a bad girl, a mixed-up girl, a girl with no name or place. The place in
which I belonged was wherever I stood and there was nothing stopping me simply
moving forward and claiming each resting place as home. (303).
The novel represents and
problematizes the issue of belonging and displacement by taking the notion of
home as its focus. The process of Meena’s growth can be traced both with the
change in her perception of others and also with the changing dynamics of Tollington society. However the novelists subverts the notion of home
itself. In a multicultural society there is no fixed notion of a home. In the
new disguise of colonialism the individuals are obliged to move in when there
is demand and move out when the system fails. That is why Meena’s mother says,
It’s home, it really is,
but we can’t stay here forever Meena. (295).
Meena
looks forward in forming her true identity. Her intense desire to look
elsewhere helps her to achieve something for herself from where she starts her
journey in Tollington. It is through different encounters that she has with Anita
and her gang, her white neighbours, in which she can mirror herself,
helps her in achieving her true self. These revelations which are ‘open’ and
‘secret’ make her more secure about her real choice, her real self and
her real sense of belonging. Meena finds
her ‘ real self’. She reflects upon her past, in the light of which she tries
to illuminate the present. A very important modus
operandi adopted by Sayal, to solve the resistances of her cultural third
space is, therefore, to decipher her present predicament of anxiety with the
help of her mnemonic reservoir to find a real identity.
Works
Cited:
Anita
and Me study Guide. 22 nov 2002, Education and Icon Film
Distribution. 12 sept. 2005 < http:?//
www. Filmeducation. Org/ filmlib/ Anita Me pdf.>
Bhabha, Homi,. “ Of Mimicry and Men: The
Ambivalence of Colonial Discource” October, Discipleship: A Special Issue on
Psychoanalysis. Spring 28 (1984). 125-33. Print.
---------“ Dissemination:
Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation”,Nation and Narration,
London: Routledge,1990 .291. Print.
Paul A. Singh Guhman. Asian Adoloscents In the West. Leicester.
British Psychological Society. 1999,.32. Print.
Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands. (Essays and
Criticsm 1981-1988), London: Granata Books, 1992,p.17in association with the
Open University, 2004.130-131. Print.
Sayal , Meera. Anita and Me. Great Britain: Flamingo,1996. Print.
Woodward, Kath. Questoining Identity: Gender, Class, Nation. London: Routledge in association with the Open University,
2004 ,.130-131 .Print.
