“Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being...”(Albert Einstein) However, it increasingly difficult travel down both these paths, as, society’s expectations are quite different to personal desires. Many times it creates feelings of dissonance in the individual, as he or she is forced to make a decision between two facets of human existence. It is this personal conflict which is the theme of Mira Nair’s film, Monsoon Wedding. It explores the life of a middle-class Indian family, preparing for the wedding of their daughter Aditi. Into the wedding, Nair introduces to the family, some of the harsh realities of life. She incorporates the imagery, songs, and the framing of shots which are unique to the text type, as well as the defiant acts against socio-cultural obligations shown by the characters of Aditi and Alice, to emphasise the underlying conflict between social obligations and personal aspirations. The character of Aditi is portrayed in a setting of wealth and status, but the social expectations which adjoin this status, are at odds with her own hopes and desires. Aditi is born into an upper middle-class Indian family and is therefore, entitled to all the pleasures of life. A wide-angle shot of the canopy which is to hold her wedding, reveals the grand scale of the event. But in this setting of prosperity the audience witness her riotous intentions. A long distance shot of jeep is framed with a Banyan tree encompassing most of the background. The jeep is the sanctum for the illicit love between Aditi and Vikram, a married man. In the Indian milieu, this is against the moral traditions and statutes which have been upheld for centuries. The reader is shocked because this act is committed on the eve of ... ... middle of paper ... ...tions, is through the actions of discourse against the economic class divide imposed by Indian society. Nair reveals to the reader that personal aspirations are suppressed by the social obligations of society and that, the only option for one who wishes to live out their desires is to operate in secretive defiance. This is especially seen through the shot of the Jeep and the Banyan tree. The contrasting character of Aditi and Alice highlight the fact that this clash occurs in all classes in Indian society. It is through these same characters that the reader is able to understand that the acts of having an affair and as wearing something which belongs to another, are not acts which are committed with devilish intent, but rather, they are ways of dealing with the dissonance caused by the clash in the two worlds, of person and society. Works Cited Albert Einstein
When Sripathi and his family receive the news of Maya’s and her husband’s fatal road accident, they experience a dramatic up heaval. For Sripathi, this event functioned as the distressed that inaugurated his cultural and personal process of transformation and was played out on different levels. First, his daughter’s death required him to travel to Canada to arrange for his granddaughter’s reverse journey to India, a move that marked her as doubly diasporic sensibility. Sripathi called his “foreign trip” to Vancouver turned out to be an experience of deep psychic and cultural dislocation, for it completely “unmoors him from the earth after fifty-seven years of being tied to it” (140). Sripathi’s own emerging diasporic sensibility condition. Not only must he faced his own fear of a world that is no longer knowable to him, but, more importantly, he must face his granddaughter. Nandana has been literally silenced by the pain of her parent’s death, and her relocation from Canada to Tamil Nadu initially irritated her psychological condition. To Sripathi, however, Nandana’s presence actsed as a constant reminder of his regret of not having “known his daughter’s inner life” (147) as well as her life in Canada. He now recognizeed that in the past he denied his daughter his love in order to support his
...such that individuals disregard the desires of others, even those who are supposedly close to them, in order to advance their own goals. The combination of subthemes allows her to easily juxtapose Velutha with those who aim to ruin his life. Roy also emphasizes the importance of caste and maintaining social status through her depiction of Velutha’s father’s reaction to his son’s affair with a woman of a higher social class. Roy’s political beliefs can be seen interspersed throughout the story and she repeatedly comments on the post-colonial situation in India through the actions of her characters. The amalgamation of Roy’s views on the moral quality of human beings and the political character of 20th century India come together to support her assertion that those who are overly selfless and spend no time trying to get ahead in life ultimately lose in the long-term.
The main character is Mrs. Das whom is flirtatious, careless, and needy. She and her husband take their family to see the country India for the first time. The tour guide Mr.Kapsi whom is curious, understanding, and quite aware. He sees something unusual at the beginning of the trip, but does not say anything. As the children continue their site seeing, the husband takes picture with his camera as if he lost in his own world. Meanwhile the wife gets to know the driver instead of site seeing. Mr.Kapsi is aware that the family is not like most Indians which lead him to be attracted to Mrs.Das. It states, “The family looked Indian but dressed as foreigners did, the children in stiff, brightly colored clothing and caps with translucent visors (29). This quote shows the difference in cultural clash as well the difficulty of communication. Mr.Kapsi tells Mrs. Das that he is an interpreter for a doctor which makes her believe she can discuss her personal business without him telling anyone. It states, “He decided to begin with the most obvious question, to get to the heart of the matter, and so he asked, “Is it really pain you feel, Mrs. Das, or is it guilt?”(39) Made the wife realized what she was truly feeling about her mistakes. After the conversation Mr.Kapsi did not look at the Mrs.Das the same way. The unusual
Against the backdrop of a brand-new liberalized world, Kapur sketches out Shagun’s boredom, Raman’s hurt and the confusion of their children, Roohi and Arjun, who are batted back and forth between parents and across chapters. The two new partners in the equation, boss man Ashok and divorcee Ishita, struggle to woo their step kids while supporting
In attempting to define the history and modern identity of postcolonial nations, Partha Chatterjee calls to attention the many paradoxes inherent in the cultural fabric of India. It is a country, he notes, with a modern culture based on native tradition that has been influenced by its colonial period. This modern culture contains conflicts and contradictions that create the ambiguity in India’s national identity. U. R. Anantha Murthy’s understands Indian culture as a mosaic pattern of tradition and modernity. He writes of a heterodox reality where the intellectual self is in conflict with the emotional, the rational individual experiences the sad nostalgia of the exile from his traditional roots and in fluctuating between belief and non-belief he works out his dilemmas. This paper attempts a reading of the transgression of “Love Laws” in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things as not only the representation of this heterodox modernity in the personal domain as a reflection of the larger national conflict but also a postcolonial writer’s dilemmas in search for an identity and their troubles in expressing it.
Kothari employs a mixture of narrative and description in her work to garner the reader’s emotional investment. The essay is presented in seventeen vignettes of differing lengths, a unique presentation that makes the reader feel like they are reading directly from Kothari’s journal. The writer places emphasis on both her description of food and resulting reaction as she describes her experiences visiting India with her parents: “Someone hands me a plate of aloo tikki, fried potato patties filled with mashed channa dal and served with a sweet and a sour chutney. The channa, mixed with hot chilies and spices, burns my tongue and throat” (Kothari). She also uses precise descriptions of herself: “I have inherited brown eyes, black hair, a long nose with a crooked bridge, and soft teeth
J. Eng. Lit. Cult. becomes merely “Street” as (does) Lingayat Street, Mudliyar Street and half a dozen others in Toturpuram” (5) in a gesture of egalitarianism whose effects are literally, as well as symbolically, disorientating. The sense of displacement is compounded by changes that have occurred on the street itself over the last few decades- “instead of the tender smell of fresh jasmine.... in scented sticks and virtue, instead of the chanting of sacred hymns the street had become thud with the haggling of cloth merchants and vegetable vendors, (and) the strident strains of the latest film music from video parlours” (5-6). The incursion of these loud and nestling registers of cultural change into the sanctuary of Sripathi‟s study mirrors more significant assaults on his sense of traditions including most worryingly, the refusal of his children to lead the lives he has imagined for him: his daughter Maya has broken off her engagement to an Indian man to marry a Canadian with whom she now lives in Vancouver, and his son Arun has rejected a tradition job in favour of a career as an environmental activist. Sripathi responds to the affronts by ceasing to communicate, literally, in the case of Maya, with whom he has stopped corresponding, and figuratively, with Arun and the rest of his family, through a retreat into an increasingly self enclosed world. The narrative traces the gradual expansion of his consciousness, a process initiated by Maya‟s death in a car
A traditional extended family living in Northern India can become acquainted through the viewing of Dadi’s family. Dadi, meaning grandmother in Hindu, lets us explore her family up close and personal as we follow the trials and tribulations the family encounters through a daily basis. The family deals with the span of three generations and their conflicting interpretations of the ideal family life. Dadi lets us look at the family as a whole, but the film opens our eyes particularly on the women and the problems they face. The film inspects the women’s battle to secure their status in their family through dealing with a patriarchal mentality. The women also are seen attempting to exert their power, and through it all we are familiarized to
The author and her friends, Judewin and Thowin, alone with other children got excited about an adventure in to a new land. Their excitement was short because of their painful experiences from the white’s ignorance of the Indian culture. When a white women saw her arrived the school, she tossed her up in the air several times. It was insulting for her because of against the Indian culture. Her stay at the school was other painful experience.
In the movie, A Monsoon Wedding, the marriage that was about to take place was an arranged marriage. Aditi, a young woman who is still in love with an ex-boyfriend, has agreed to proceed with an arranged marriage, planned by her parents. In the beginning of the movie she states that she is ready to settle down. Her cousin, Ria, finds it “immature” that Aditi is deciding to get married to a man who her parents have chosen for and knows little of. Ria seems to believe that marriage should be based on love. When it comes down to Aditi’s marriage, culture influences why she has decided to get married.
"Social obligation is a moral structure which recommends that an element, be it an affiliation or separate, has an obligation to represent the benefit of society for substantial".
In a world where labels determine much of a person’s identity, gender and culture have a strong influence on a person’s life. Uma tries to please her parents’ Hindu expectations of her, and fitting into American society. In the short story “Devadasi”, by Rishi Reddi, gender and culture based societal standards impact the protagonist Uma and how she sees her surroundings. These standards shape both Uma’s relationships with those around her and how she sees her place in the world. Today, too many people let every piece of their lives be dictated by gender and culture based expectations.
I have a dream… you have a dream… our nation has a dream… our world has a dream. We all have a dream.
On this metaphorical quest of the protagonist Jasmine, start she is first born with the name Jyoti in India where begins to stand up against the traditional path that has been prepared for her by the male-controlled system. Like the other women of her homeland, she under the constant control of her brothers and father. In the Indian tradition, a female is to be married young that includes a dowry. After marriage, it would see...
This essay focuses on the theme of forbidden love, The God of Small Things written by Arundhati Roy. This novel explores love and how love can’t be ignored when confronted with social boundaries. The novel examines how conventional society seeks to destroy true love as this novel is constantly connected to loss, death and sadness. This essay will explore the theme of forbidden love, by discussing and analysing Ammu and Velutha's love that is forbidden because of the ‘Love Laws’ in relation to the caste system which results in Velutha’s death. It is evident that forbidden love negatively impacts and influences other characters, such as Estha and Rahel, which results in Estha and Rahel’s incestuous encounter.