Arun JoshiThe Theme of Alienation in Arun Joshi’s The Foreignerby Dr. Arvind M. Nawale |
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Arun Joshi adds a new dimension to the genre of Indian fiction in English by introducing the theme of alienation in his novels. His fictional world is characterized by the alienation of the individual, shown through a crisis of the self in an emotionally disturbed environment.
Joshi’s first novel The Foreigner (1993) depicts the alienation of the protagonist Sindi Oberoi and explores the individual’s anguished consciousness of being alienated from the conventions and rituals of his society.
Sindi Oberoi was born in Kenya of an English mother and Indian father. Though his father was an Indian, he could hardly call himself a Hindu. He says,
Anyway I can’t really be called a Hindu. My mother was English and my father, I am told, a skeptic. That doesn’t seem like a good beginning for a Hindu, does it!” (30)
He simply remembers that his parents died in an air crash while he was a child. Their only reality for him is “a couple of wrinkled and cracked photographs.” (12)
Sindi remains a foreigner whether he is in London, Boston, or Delhi. He cannot think of himself as belonging to any country in particular and wonders, “did I belong to the world?” (55) But “the sense of foreignness that afflicts him and makes him alienated from others is not geographical, as it might appear on the surface, but that of his soul.” (Shrivastava 1982). Sindi says:
Somebody had begotten me without a purpose and so far I had lived without a purpose, unless you could call the search for peace a purpose. Perhaps I felt like that, because I was a foreigner in America. But then, what difference would it have made if I had lived in Kenya or India or any other place for that matter! It seemed to me that I would still be a foreigner. (55)
He is clearly experiencing rootlessness and alienation.
Living in Kenya, London and Boston he undergoes various changes and personal experiences. While in Kenya he contemplates suicide, and when he comes to London, the same despair remains with him. A girl, Anna, seeks to rediscover her lost youth, and lives for him, but in response he gives her nothing and shows his liking for Kathy. Eventually Kathy abandons him. The broken relationship disturbs him, and in America he is “afraid of getting involved” (53) with June Byth, an American girl.
Sindi's parentage and early life made him a 'nowhere man'. He cultivates a sense of detachment to overcome his painful past, which includes “Being a product of hybrid culture” (Kumar 2003:63). He is aware of his rootlessness. He wants to love June but is afraid of involvement and marriage.
I was afraid of possessing anybody and I was afraid of being possessed, and marriage meant both. (91)
The mystery of human existence terrifies him when he comes to know about the death of June due to an abortion. Babu’s death taught him only half the lesson, but he learns the remaining half when he comes to know the death of June. Then “he looks upon the world as a heap of crumbled illusions where nothing is real and permanent.” (Ghosh 1996:43)
The nausea Sindi feels in his early days keeps him restless throughout life. He “sees no purpose in life and he finds himself living without a purpose.” (Panday 2000:33). This sickness remains with him even after he joins London University. He does well in the examinations, but he gets tired and bored with the lectures which according to him lack relevance to life. Sindi resembles T. S. Eliot’s “Hollow Men” and “J. Alfred Prufrock”. According to Tapan Kumar Ghosh, “like T. S. Eliot’s straw men, he ekes out an existence which is no better than death in life.” (1996:44). Like Prufrock measuring out his life "with coffee spoons” (Eliot 1961:13) Sindi, too contemplates:
My fifth Christmas on these alien shores. And yet all shores are alien when you don’t belong anywhere. Twenty fifth Christmas on this planet, twenty five years largely wasted in search of wrong things in wrong places. Twenty five years gone in search of peace, and what did I have to show for achievements; a ten stone body that had to be fed four times of a day, twenty eight times a week. This was the sum of a lifetime of striving. (80)
Like Prufrock, he is unable to understand himself or his life. He too is lonely, all alone in the wild world. Although an Indian by birth, Sindi feels an outsider even in India. Shaila, Babu’s sister, tries to understand him but she too says: “You are still a foreigner, you don’t belong here” (122). There is intense sadness in Sindi which those who come into contact with him - June in America, Sheila, Mr. Khemkar in India - can feel in the very presence of the man. This he explains to Mr. Khemka:
You had a clear cut system of morality, a cast system that laid down all you had to do. You had a God; you had roots in the soil you lived upon. Look at me. I have no roots. I have no system of morality. What does it mean to me if you call me an immoral man? I have no reason to be one thing or another. You ask me why I am not ambitious; well, I have no reason to be. Come to think of it I don’t even have a reason to live! (118)
Thus, in The Foreigner, Joshi depicts the alienation of the protagonist Sindi Oberoi. His alienation from the world seems to be similar to that suffered by many existentialist heroes of Western literature.
Endnotes and references
Eliot, T. S. 1961. Selected Poems. London: Faber and Faber.
Ghosh, Tapan Kumar. 1996. Arun Joshi’s Fiction: The Labyrinth of Life. New Delhi: Prestige Books.
Joshi, Arun. 1993. The Foreigner. New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks. (Page references in parentheses refer to this edition).
Kumar, Shankar. 2003. The Novels of Arun Joshi: A Critical study. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors.
Pandey, Birendra. 2000. The Novels of Arun Joshi: A Critical Evaluation. Delhi: Creative Books.
Srivastava, Ramesh K. 1982. “The Themes of Alienation in Arun Joshi's Novels”. Journal of English Studies and Creative Writing 1 (December): 13-24.
© Dr. Arvind M. Nawale, March 2009
Head, Dept. of English, Shivaji College, Udgir, Dist: Latur (M.S.), India
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