GITA MEHTA: Writing Home / Creating Homeland

This study places Gita Mehta’s works fiction and non-fiction in the framework of Diasporic Studies and tries to ascertain how the author responds to the Indian realities vis-á-vis her western experience. To Gita, India is ‘home’ Home stands for a safe place, where there is no need to justify oneself to others, but as a member of the diaspora she ought to redefine her position. That she should feel the need to explicate and explain herself and her culture to the west is in itself an acknowledgement of cultural differences felt by the diasporic consciousness. The book focuses on the fact that though she looks at her country with the bemused gaze of an outsider, her strong urge to recover the lost essence and to return to the folds of her culture become explicitly obvious. Her works are set in India but they move in and out of the two cultures, blending subjective experience with observations and imagination to recreate India that was and India that is.

In dealing with Mehta’s works one explores a varied territory of genre fiction, non-fiction and prose. The analysis yields the author’s vision of certainty and faith in her culture and traditions but also her disappointment with the changing scenario of fast deteriorating values and overt materialism. However, she camouflages her disillusionment underneath her flamboyant optimism and keen sarcasm.

Usha Bande, till recently Fellow, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, was on the faculty of English Literature in Government College for Women, Shimla. She retired as Principal, Government College, Arki.

Dr. Bande worked for her doctorate on the novels of Anita Desai, interpreting Desai’s characters from the angle of Horneyan psychology. This is an innovative approach and has been widely acclaimed by US scholars in the field. She completed a major UGC project on the Indian Short Stories in 1998, and has also worked in the field of Women’s Studies at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. She is a prolific writer and has numerous research papers and more than a dozen books to her credit.