T 1290.pdf - Pondicherry University DSpace Portal

~merica and about the horrors of New York. Faced with anIncomprehensible culture and intense loneliness, Dimple losesthe small degree of confidence and sense of self she had inCalcutta. Losing sight of reality as she sinks into the worldof television, she contemplates suicide. Employing violence,~ukherjee makes Dimple kill her husband Amit. Hers may be thepredicament of an, Indian wife-out of tune in an alien milieustruggling for identity.Dimple wanted "a different kind of life- an apartment inChowringhee, her hair done by chinese girls, trips to Newmarket for nylon saries- so she placed her faith In neurosurgeons and architects" (w 3) Like all adolescents herpsyche is formed by fantasies of advertisment. She seeks adviceto rectify an undeveloped bust from Miss Problem- Walla c/oEve's Beauty Basket, Bombay. Her ideal husband is a combinationof several beauty ads: "She borrowed a forehead from an aspirinad, the stomach and legs from trousers ad and put the ideal manand herself in a restaurant on park street or by the side of apool at a five-star hotel". (Wife 23) Dimple's predicamenttranscends that of the individual caught in the vortex ofculture shock. She tries pitifully to pull through an affairwith Milt Glasser. Even Amit is wanting ; his "tragedy was helacked extravagance ; he perserved in the immigrant virtues ofcaution and cunning" (Wife 195) is the story of a woman