Generational Differences in Jhumpa Lahiri's 'Unaccustomed Earth'

<p>The British colonizers introduced the privileges given<br>by modernization and education in India but ironically had<br>ruined the country and ultimately formed a small middleclass Bengalis in the earliest part of the Indian post-colonial<br>era. So, when they are in search of better jobs and a standard<br>lifestyle of high social rank, they have forcefully migrated to<br>England or America for further education, which India could<br>not promise. After they left India the immigrant experiences<br>of this generation turned out to be the metaphor for all the<br>ideal qualities of a beloved homeland that they missed. We<br>can also capture here the complicated process of identity<br>negotiation among most of the Indian Diasporas in the<br>contemporary globalized world but especially those who find<br>themselves separated from their cultures and countries of<br>origin. This is to be clearly distinguished from the first and<br>second-generation Diasporas that the first generation<br>retained the redeeming quality of nostalgia but their children<br>(second-generation expatriate) did not. Loss, alienation,<br>rootlessness, and dislocation are constantly experienced by<br>every expatriate at some stage or the other. But the secondgeneration expatriate can witness fewer dilemmas to fit into<br>the adopted culture when the first generation expatriate<br>always becomes in a state of not-belonging, in both the<br>countries. When there is the interaction between two<br>cultures—the traditional Indian culture and the modernWestern –American culture, the second-generation expatriate<br>is far better to understand and replicate the 'sandwich<br>culture' whereas the first generation has confronted the social<br>mores alien to him. Hence, this paper is targeted to focus<br>significantly on the difference of experiences between the first<br>and second generation while facing the hybridity of culture<br>constantly filtered and replicated in the short story collection<br>Unaccustomed Earth.</p>