T 1290.pdf - Pondicherry University DSpace Portal

not so much Tars as the world around her that is crumbling.Mukherjee's second novel is a psychological study ofDimple, a young woman from Calcutta who settles in New Yorkwith her new husband. Brought up to live as a passive anddependant Young lady according to traditional Indian standardsof feminlty, Dimple lacks the inner resources to cope with thefear and alienation that she experiences in New York. Dimple isalready a victim of her own personality, caught in traditionalpassivity, female treachery and covert violence. In Americacompassion helps her turn it outward. Her powerlessness andllttle acts of cruelty typlfy women in many societies at somepoint in hlstory. If she had remained in Indla she would havecommited suicide. In America she commlts murder. The Indianmlddle class, normally seen in horrible muddle becomes moresympathetic than ever it does about tragedies of Indian villagellfe concerning mothers-in-law. In she signifies andsharpens her focus. She confronts soclal and personal violencehead-on, and splits her complex compasslonate self into sharpfacets, creating characters who shatter like glass.One must leave the reader to ludge how much of Qarknesscomes from the writer's temperament and how much fromexperience. Mukherjee tells how in Canada she thought ofherself as an 'expatrlatel because she saw 'lmmrgrants' toCanada as "Lost souls, put up on and pathetic". On departing to