Like I had mentioned before about writing about the movie, here I am after getting the opportunity to read the book prior to watching the movie as well. This story portraits the struggle of a female to coup up with the new country, new culture and new society as a whole. Movie is toned down to suit the viewing audience. Some details are either missed out or polished from the book to suit the widescreen. The story is not extraordinary but putting it in layman’s terms the struggle of an Indian couple in America. The story is a reality that happens to each of our family settled here in the U.S.
If your family is emigrated to the U.S. to seek opportunities, to gain wealth, to seek further education, to better their lives and give a good future to your kids, then there are scenes in the movie that you can relate to. The story was placed in 1960’s to start with and to show how life was like back then in the U.S. and how you would feel if you came to the U.S. from India. But to depict what the author, Jhumpa Lahiri was trying to, she didn’t have to change the timeline. It would still be the same, even if it was shown for this time. Even today, families who come to the U.S. to settle down have difficulty in adjusting to this society.
It is a whole new experience of leaving where you grew up as a group (in the same sect/group) and to come to this new world where there is a mixed heritage of different sects, religions and people. You always miss where you came from. But being here, you adjust to the customs here to avoid yourself being looked down upon. Things have changed today, one might say. There are many Indians here, many Indian shops, and restaurants and so it is easy for anyone who comes here today to enjoy when compared to those who came in the 60’s and 70’s. True. But even today, people who come here struggle as much to be in par with the others already here.
Making friends with the non-Indians is a major hurdle. You open up to them and are social and interact with them but it all boils down to how much they are open to you. There is only so much and so far you can go after them to pursue the interaction but if they retract there is not much you can do about it. Making that same interaction amongst Indian circle is much easier as they understand where you come from. Some may differ at this, but it is true. People who come here with the notion of staying here for the rest of their lives may open up even more and take that extra step to make friends with non-Indians. It all depends on who your neighbor is. I have had some good non-Indians as friends and neighbors as well. But it all comes down to who you have as neighbors.
Celebrating Christmas just to make the kids happy and not being left out when they discuss with friends later on is good at the beginning. But slowly inculcating the idea that we are not Christians and hence we don’t celebrate is not a bad one either. Yash understands that Christmas is not for him but he enjoys the fact that we get gifts for him, meet relatives and friends over the holidays. We celebrate our Indian holidays and festivals as we would in India and that brings a joy to him as well. He loves to wear his Indian clothes and suits to parties and enjoy the merriment there as well.
In a nutshell, whatever we do here to please our kids, we still teach them our values and cultures with a hope that when they go back to India, they will not have any problems fitting there either. I am sure, if people from other cultures (Asians in general) watch this movie, they will also have something to relate to and take with them after watching the movie. I was able to relate to a lot of scenes and the movie just reiterated the fact that “We can take the Indians out of India, but not India out of the Indians.”
1 comment:
You make some good points that the struggle for immigrants is the same no matter when they come to a new country. Similarly your point that interacting with non-Indians comes down to who are your neighbors and friends and while it's true some are open and receptive to new cultures others are not. I guess part of that depends on what type of area you live in but it also depends on the people themselves. Being an American-born Indian I have faced my share of exculsion by other Indians simply because I'm born here as opposed to India. I choose not to make a difference out of where a person was born but others can and do make that distinction. It's up to each and every individual in the end.
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