A Journey Down The Lane In Past Memories Rohinton Mistry’s Aspects of Immigration

Abstract

 

Rohinton Mistry was born and brought up in Mumbai in the mid fifty’s, migrated to Canada at the age of 23. Mistry belongs to that class of the Indian authors who shifted their base from India to somewhere else but throughout their lives continue missing their mother land. We can easily recall a beautiful song of the movie “Namste London” which says “Main Jahan rahoon main kahin bhi rahoon Teri yaad saath he” means “where ever I am but your memories are always there with me.” The acute pain and feeling of not being with the people who are like you, who speaks your language can be better , felt and expressed by exiled or immigrant writers . Such people might be physically away from their own motherland but deep in their hearts always keep on missing their motherland. According to Hudson “A nation’s life has its moods of exultation and depression, its epochs a strong faith and strenuous idealism now of doubt struggle and disillusion, now of unbelief and flippant disregard for the sanctities of existence and while the manner of expression will vary greatly with the individuality of each writer the dominant spirit of the hour whatever they may be will directly or indirectly reveal itself in his work”. (1) According to Goethe’s statement “Everyman is the citizen of his age as well as of his country.”(2) The impact and influence of the age, psyche, cultural heritage and political up down on the Author’s mind is due to the fact that later is constantly influenced by the spirit of all above fastness and reacts to it vividly and vigorously. Although he left India in 1975 and does not often go back, Mistry told a British Magazine that he feels no hindrance in writing about this home country “So far I have had no difficulty writing about it, even though I have been away for so long”, he said “All fiction relies on the real world in the sense that we all face in the world through our five senses and we accumulate details, consciously or subconsciously. This accumulation of debt can be drawn on when you write fiction. (3) The beauty and delicacy with which Mistry has portrayed the experience of immigration, the immense pain of not being with your own people, no author has done it so far.