Fluidity of Identity: Negotiating Boundaries in the Select Novels of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Fluidity is not aesthetic concept but it is a dynamic one. Fluidity of identity is a reality that needs to be understood. One of the techniques used by the Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni to understand it is negotiation of different boundaries. Life cannot be confined to water tight compartments. Post modern patterns of life break down the boundaries between past and present, dream and reality, body and mind, memory and experience, timeless and temporal, reality and illusion, perception and pragmatism and so on. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni fictional characters are constantly seeing in the process of negotiation of various boundaries. To accept fluidity of identity is to accept authenticity of life. Life journey is nothing but to put the different threads together so as to weave a tapestry of one’s own identity. The pressures of post-modern life have challenged traditional notion of identity be it national, religious, gender, caste or linguistics.