Cultural Rootlessness and Acculturation in Kamala Markandaya’s Possession

Cultural Rootlessness and Acculturation in Kamala Markandaya’s

Possession

M.Indumathi, Ph.D Scholar, Department of English and Foreign Languages,

Alagappa University, Karaikudi-3.

Dr.P.Madhan, Associate Professor & Head i/c, Department of English and

ForeignLanguages, Alagappa University, Karaikudi-3.

This research paper is a modest attempt to prove how Kamala Markandaya through her novel Possession portrays the vacillating self of a South Indian boy who struggles to accept the foreign culture and returns to his homeland after much distress. It is the story of Valmiki, the great oriental artist whose art stifles in an alien country. Lady Caroline Bell, an aristocratic English woman discovers his talent and takes him to London in order to make him a talented artist. Though he becomes a great artist, the expense which he gives is his own soul. In order to recover his own self and to escape from the cultural entanglements in London he breaks his relationship with Lady Caroline Bell and comes back to India.

The purpose of this object is to introduce the theme of exile, immigration and alienation. Thewords of exile, immigration and alienation arecommon in the twentieth century literary scene. Cultural alienation has become a universal phenomenon. The term ‘alienation’ is directly related to the problem of identity and it is employed mostly in the field of sociology,psychology,philosophy and literary criticism that it challenges all attempts at a precise definition. It brings to light the inherent conflict between the two different value systems of the East andthe West. Kamala Markandaya seems to follow the dictum of Kipling’s famous line of “Eastis East and West is West and never the twain shall meet”. She feels that the cultural gap isso wide that there is almost no meeting point between the two.

Indian- English literature deals with the emotional problems of the modern man it reflects the injuries, alienation, de-culturation, frustration, identity crisis that an uprooted individual undergoes. Almost all major Indian English novelist like Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao, ManoharMalgonkar, Bhavani Bhattacharya, NayanTara Sahgel, Anita Desai, Kamala Markandaya and Arun Joshi have diluted this dualism of culture in theirdifferent distinctive ways .Like most writers of the Indian diaspora, Markandaya is preoccupied with the conflict between East and West, or that between tradition and modernity. She also ruminates on the contemporary Indian scene, both rural and urban, and in her fiction she explores its economic, sociocultural, and spiritual aspects.On the basis of this, Kamala Markandaya depicts the character of Valmiki who is a rustic Indian artist. Here, he has been referred as a symbol of the raw Independent India for the possession of whose soul, Caroline Bell, symbolizing the Western civilization, make an all-out effort. The adaption of the alien culture has been proved very difficult.Kamala Markandaya has succeeded showing the immigrant sensibility in ‘Possession’ through the character Valmiki who positions himself in search of identity when he is estranged in foreign land. Val’s crises is portrayed again this intellectual background. He cries out in dejection and disappointment.Caroline’s aggressiveness and Val’s submissiveness represent the characteristics of their representative races. Caroline fails to understand thereligious and the functional values ofVal’s art and she is unable to understandVal’s identification with India symbolizedby the wildness to which he returns. Valmiki’s Indian temperament makes him miss- fit in Caroline’s, as her sexual partner and both get estranged from each other later on.But Caroline is not ready to leave Valmiki in the hands of either Ellie or Annabel because she desires to him. Kamala Markandaya focuses on the craving ofa woman to dominate over a young man absolutely-culturally, physically, morally, and emotionally, that raises later on the danger of acculturation. The nature of Caroline, by and large, is possessive. All her intellectual power, feminine charm and vigor at last makes her a helpless creature; she becomes really powerless andpossessed by her emotional-self, by an agonistic self for possession and at the end there is nothing but danger of de culturation.

Through “Possession”, Kamala Markandaya highlights the problem of possession. It also throws a fresh light on East-West relationship.

References:

Markandaya, Kamala. Possession. Bombay: Jaico Publishing House. 1994.

Venugopal, C. V. "Possession: A Consideration". Perspectives on Kamala

Markandaya,Ed.Madhusudan Prasad. Indo-English Writers

Series 5.ChRziabad: VimalPrakashan, 1984. [150]-53.