Shifting Identity of a Diasporic Subject: Jhumpa Lahiri's Lilia

Abstract

The paper attempts an intensive reading of Jhumpa Lahiri's story, "when Mr. Pirzada came to Dine " with a view to placing its central character, Lilia, against the two forms of "mottled background', not in a 'harmonizing' relation, but in a process of 'becoming mottled'. It seeks to unearth the unstable nature of Lilia's diasporic identity that characterize, albeit differently, her parents as well. The essence of her identity is shattered by her shifting between the two forms or identities that coalesce in her without any balancing oppositions. The first refers to India which emerged as an independent nation along with Pakistan following the 1947 partition of the sub-continent by the raj. The second involves the United States where she is physically, culturally, linguistically and economically set. The unstable nature is sought not in the subject's different positionalities in terms race, gender and class but in the single sphere of race in order to show how the idea of the true or real identity of the diasporic subject keeps shifting in thay single sphere, unsettling the basis of her identity.