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Arun JoshiFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arun Joshi (1939–1993) was an Indian writer. He is known for his novels The Strange Case of Billy Biswas and The Apprentice. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award for his novelThe Last Labyrinth in 1982.[1]

Contents  [hide] 

1 Workso 1.1 Novelso 1.2 Short storieso 1.3 Other

2 External links 3 Books on Arun Joshi 4 References

Works[edit]

Novels[edit]

The Foreigner P.D. 1971 The Strange Case of Billy Biswas P.D. 1971 The Apprentice P.D. 1974 The Last Labyrinth P.D. 1981 The City and the River P.D.1976

Short stories[edit]

The Only American from our village short stories.

Other[edit]

Shri Ram: A Biography, with Khushwant Singh Laia Shri Ram: A Study in Entrepreneurship and Industrial

Management

External links[edit]

Arun Joshi's Profile Arun Joshi on Literary Encyclopaedia

Books on Arun Joshi[edit]

Nawale, Arvind M. “Arun Joshi: Thematic Study of His Novels”. New Delhi: Authorspress, 2009.

References[edit]

1. Jump up^ ADITYA SUDARSHAN. "The strange case of Arun Joshi". The Hindo. Retrieved February 14, 2014.

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V

T

E

Sahitya Akademi Award for English

1960–1975

The Guide  by R. K. Narayan (1960)

The Serpent and the Rope  by Raja Rao (1964)

The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin  by Verrier Elwin (1965)

Shadow From Ladakh  byBhabani Bhattacharya (1967)

An Artist in Life  by Niharranjan Ray (1969)

Morning Face  by Mulk Raj Anand (1971)

Scholar Extraordinary  by Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1975)

1976–2000 Jawaharlal Nehru by Sarvepalli Gopal (1976)

Azadi by Chaman Nahal (1977)

Fire on the Mountain by Anita Desai (1978)

Inside the Haveli by Rama Mehta (1979)

On the Mother byK. R. Srinivasa Iyengar (1980)

Relationship by Jayanta Mahapatra (1981)

The Last Labyrinth by Arun Joshi (1982)

Latter-Day Psalms by Nissim Ezekiel (1983)

The Keeper of the Dead by Keki N. Daruwalla (1984)

Collected Poems by Kamala Das (1985)

Rich Like Us  by Nayantara Sahgal (1986)

Trapfalls In the Sky by Shiv K. Kumar (1987)

The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth (1988)

The Shadow Lines  by Amitav Ghosh (1989)

That Long Silence by Shashi Deshpande (1990)

The Trotter-Nama by Allan Sealy (1991)

Our Trees Still Grow In Dehra by Ruskin Bond (1992)

After Amnesia by G. N. Devy (1993)

Serendip by Dom Moraes (1994)

Memories of Rain by Sunetra Gupta (1996)

Final Solutions and Other Plays byMahesh Dattani (1998)

The Collected Poems by A. K. Ramanujan (1999)

Cuckold  by Kiran Nagarkar (2000)

2001–2015

Rajaji: A Life by Rajmohan Gandhi (2001)

A New World by Amit Chaudhuri (2002)

The Perishable Empire by Meenakshi Mukherjee (2003)

The Mammaries of the Welfare State  byUpamanyu Chatterjee (2004)

The Sari Shop by Rupa Bajwa (2006)

Disorderly Women by Malathi Rao (2007)

Mahabharata: An Inquiry into the Human Condition byChaturvedi Badrinath (2009)

The Book of Rachel by Esther David (2010)

India after Gandhi  by Ramachandra Guha (2011)

These Errors are Correct by Jeet Thayil (2012)

Laburnum For My Head  by Temsula Ao (2013)

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VIAF : 72194694

ISNI : 0000 0000 8152 7269

BNF : cb12408615r (data)

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1. Mythological Aspects in the Novels   of Arun   Joshi www.iiste.org/Journals/index.php/RHSS/article/download/...

Mythological Aspects in the Novels of Arun Joshi ... Joshi’s works ... West dealing mostly with the labyrinthine ways of life and death. Arun Joshi’s last ...

2. FINAL WORDS - Information and Library Network... shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/4119/10/10...

Arun Joshi himself. The life sketch of Arun Joshi is itself complex and complicated on various grounds. All or most of these are embedded in the work of Arun Joshi.

http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/4119/10/10_chapter%207.pdf

159 FINAL WORDS Arun Joshi, a writer in the pre-Rushdie era, deals with mystery and darkness of human mind. In today‘s world of book-promos, Arun Joshi would be a misfit as he kept himself out of the limelight. His novels probing into existentialism, along with the ethical choices a man has to make, won him huge critical appreciation in India. Psychiatry was the basic interest of Arun Joshi. Most of the writings by Arun Joshi are filled with his personal experiences right from his youth. Arun Joshi is a novelist who, more strongly than most, has brought to his work that detachment from the everyday, while still acknowledging its existence, which is perhaps India‘s particular gift to the literature of the world. The Apprentice, Joshi‘s third novel, takes his search for understanding man‘s predicament one step further toward the transcendental. Its central figure is a man essentially docile and uncourageous whose life more or less parallels the coming into being of postcolonial India. From the above short description of Arun Joshi‘s work, one thing is clear that the all the works of the writer centre on the twin aspects of ―conflict‖ and ―self-identity,‖ which are interwoven and inseparable. In search of self-identity and to resolve the ―conflict‖, 160 Arun Joshi through his characters resolves the problem by redemption in various ways. In the 1994 text De-scribing Empire, Chris Tiffin and Alan Lawson make the claim that: The contestation of post-colonialism is a contest of representation (9). Imperialism, colonisation, and resistance to the colonial-imperial process, be it ideological, discursive, military, economic, or hegemonic, remains a contemporary political fact. But the essential problem with the notion of de-scribing empire is that every act of description involves an acknowledgement of inscription, an acknowledgement and perpetuation of the re-writing of the binary of empire and (post) colonial, of coloniser and colonised that fuels the post-colonial concern with marginality and recognition of the other. When viewed this way, ―de-scribing‖ Empire is a view of post-colonial study in which the coloniser or settler-invader is forever on the back foot. One irony is that the particular concerns of post-

colonialism, that is, the relationship between coloniser and colonised within political, economic, discursive, and geographical territories can be appropriated, manipulated and refined for expedient ends, even within the territory made claim to by post-colonial discourse itself. There is never a 161 necessary politics to the study of political actions and reactions; but at the level of the local, and at the level of material applications, postcolonialism must address the material exigencies of colonialism and neo-colonialism, including the neo-colonialism of Western academic institutions themselves. In the context of New Zealand, in culture, as with Australian, the issues of post-colonialism and textuality are complicated, and perhaps livened, by the strong oral traditions of the colonised, coupled with increasingly multi-cultural populations. Institutions of power are institutions of inscription. Of course, colonialism and post-colonialism are directly concerned with this very process of interchange, assimilation, appropriation and re-appropriation, and the political and theoretical re-positions and re-positioning within this process. However, there is a danger of hypocrisy in post-colonial studies, given that those who theorise and are involved in claiming voice for the postcolonial subjects are themselves often settler subjects. Like the settler subjects, a majority of post-colonial critics find themselves uncomfortably inside the residue of power structures they profess to oppose, and ambivalent beneficiaries of those structures. As Timothy Brennan has pointed out, if Britain is seen now as postcolonial too, the notions of centre and periphery on which post-colonial studies are (mistakenly) founded are now redundant. If all nations, 162 which at some point have come under the sway of British imperialism, are seen as post-colonial, then this term no longer does much useful distinguishing work. Such cultures are more likely to be understood in terms of a combination of both post-colonialism and post-imperialism, although what distinguishes these two terms is complex and indeterminant. Post-colonial studies attempted to consider and define relations between the settler or colonial-invader races and groups and the firstnation races and groups, which articulated the newly emergent voices of nationhood after colonialism. Positioning discourse from colonised peoples into discrete and knowable categories such as non-European or Third-World acts so as to traduce the narratives of colonised peoples, which are in turn interpolated, by Western narratives of identity. If authenticity is relational, then identities can no longer be stable, and self-other relationships are a matter of power, rhetoric, and discourse, rather than cultural essence. For Clifford, traditional cultures are without regret (or the nostalgia-mode of post-modernism). Generally speaking, Indian writings in English are a product of the historical encounter between the two cultures—Indian and western— for about one hundred and ninety years. It is not that Indian people did not experience the impact of a foreign culture. British rule in India, 163 first of all, resulted in breaking the barrier of that closed society. The English language provided the natives with a way to the western literature and to the western culture, of course. Indian novels in English had begun to be written from various parts of India, crowded with the varied and variegated pictures of life from various lands. India got Independence through bloodshed and migration. Post-colonialism began as recognition of the dominant post-War economic and political conditions prevalent all over the world. This multi-faceted character of Indian writing in English has embraced sometime ―conflict of identity‖, ―conflict of cultural crisis‖ and mostly the ―nostalgia of Indian belongingness‖. Indo-Nostalgic writing is a somewhat loosely defined term encompassing writings, in the English language, wherein nostalgia regarding the Indian subcontinent, typically regarding India, represent a dominant theme or strong undercurrent. Certainly, Indo-Nostalgic writings have much overlapping with post-colonial literature but are generally not about heavy topics, such as cultural

identity, conflicted identities, multilingualism or rootlessnes. Writers like Krishna Srinivas, M. K. Gopinathan have contributed enormous poetry collections to the growth of Indian English Literature. Post-colonial theory deals with the reading and writing of literature written in previously or currently colonised countries, or 164 literature written in colonising countries, which deals with colonisation or colonized peoples. It focuses particularly on the way in which literature by the colonising culture distorts the experience and realities, and inscribes the inferiority, on the colonised people and on literature by colonised peoples which attempts to articulate their identity and reclaim their past in the face of that past‘s inevitable ―otherness‖. It can also deal with the way in which literature in colonising countries appropriates the language, images, scenes, and traditions and so forth of colonised countries. Post-colonial theory is built in large part around the concept of ―otherness‖. The concept of producing a national or cultural literature is in most cases a concept foreign to the traditions of the colonised peoples, who had no literature as it is conceived in the western traditions or in fact no literature or writing at all. They did not see art as having the same function as constructing and defining cultural identity or were, like the peoples of the West Indies, transported into a wholly different geographical/political/economic/cultural world. It is always a changed, a reclaimed but hybrid identity, which is created or called forth by the colonised attempts to constitute and represent identity. The very concepts of nationality and identity may be difficult to conceive or convey in the cultural traditions of colonised peoples. There are times when the violation of the aesthetic norms of 165 western literature is inevitable, as colonised writers search to encounter their culture‘s ancient yet transformed heritage, and as they attempt to deal with problems of social order and meaning so pressing that the normal aesthetic transformations of western high literature are not relevant, make no sense. The development (development itself may be an entirely western concept) of hybrid and reclaimed cultures in colonised countries is uneven, disparate, and might defy those notions of order and common sense which may be central not only to western thinking but also to literary forms and traditions produced through western thought. ―Hybridity‖ is also a useful concept for helping to break down the false sense that colonised cultures--or colonising cultures for that matter--are monolithic, or have essential, unchanging features. Culture is translational because such spatial histories of displacement--now accompanied by the territorial ambitions of global media technologies- -make the question of how culture signifies, or what is signified by culture, a rather complex issue. The transnational dimension of cultural transformation-- migration, diasporas, displacement, and relocation--makes the process of cultural translation a complex form of signification. The natural unifying discourse of nation, peoples, or authentic folk tradition, those embedded myths of cultures particularity, cannot be readily referenced. 166 In addition to the post-colonial literature of the colonised, there exists as well the post-colonial literature of the colonisers. Every colony had an emerging literature which was an imitation of but differed from the central British tradition, which articulated in local terms the myths and experience of a new culture, and which expressed that new culture was, to an extent, divergent from and even opposed to the culture of the ―home‖, or colonising, nation. It is curiously the case that colonial/post-colonial writers writing in Britain out of colonial experiences and a colonial past have colonised British literature itself. In this regard, a salient difference between colonialist literature (literature written by colonisers, in the colonised country, on the model of the ―home‖ country and often for the home country as an audience) and post-colonial literature is that colonialist literature is an attempt to replicate, continue, equal, the original tradition, to write in accord with British standards; post-colonial literature is often

(but not inevitably) self-consciously a literature of ―otherness‖ and resistance, and is written out of the specific local experience. The conflict in Arun Joshi‘s novels plays a decisive role. Conflict is the struggle between the opposing forces on which the action in a work of literature depends. There are five basic forms of 167 conflict: person versus person, person versus self, person versus nature, person versus society, and person versus God. Person verses self is the conflict in literature that places a character against his/ her own will, confusion, or fears. In it, though the struggle is internal, the character can be influenced by external forces as well. Person is when, in a novel, there is a conflict of two forms of like beings. The conflict is external. Person versus Society is a conflict in fiction in which a main character‘s, or group of main characters‘, main source of conflict is social traditions or concepts. Person versus Supernatural is a theme in literature that places a character against supernatural forces. Conflict was first described in ancient Greek literature as the agon, or central contest in tragedy. While writing in conflictual mode and about conflict, one should understand the various facets of conflict. The analysis of conflict requires identification of the conflict as it appears in literature, and distinguishing between internal and external conflict, followed by placing the conflict in one of the three subcategories. It is often referred to as the conflict with the self because the base of the conflict is in one‘s own head and mind. Since conflict defines the postcolonial, resolutions and reformulated conflicts dictate its future definition. Therefore, conflicts and their resolutions enable 168 the author to create, and the reader to discover, the nature of the evolving post-colonial theory and literature. Similarly, characters in A Forest of Flowers and Anthills of the Savannah must deal with conflicting realities. Upon deep introspection, they discover spiritual visions that resolve this conflict. In both works, the indigenous people reformulate their conceptions of post-colonial community. Authors writing post-colonial literature define the term postcolonial by their writing. To understand the message of these authors, the reader must identify the particular definition of the term. The analysis of the entire corpus of Arun Joshi‘s novels demonstrates that there is a pattern in his works. The innate urge to determine life‘s meaning in positive terms leads Joshi‘s protagonists to wage an incessant war against challenging situations. The author‘s capacity of critical judgment is reflected in his novels. It also presents the socio-economic and cultural background leading to the literary milieu of the period to which Joshi belongs. The socio-historical realities from two divergent cultures, (West and East), got embedded in the psychology of Arun Joshi, which has resulted in the issues of identity and conflict creeping into the novels of Arun Joshi. 169 The issue of conflict is very important to understand and analyse any of the works of Arun Joshi. As pointed out in the beginning, the characters of Arun Joshi‘s novels reflect the in-person character of Arun Joshi himself. The life sketch of Arun Joshi is itself complex and complicated on various grounds. All or most of these are embedded in the work of Arun Joshi. Arun Joshi‘s The Strange Case of Billy Biswas shows the process of conflict and alienation and rehabilitation via a 3-tier operation, namely, construction, deconstruction and reconstruction. Arun Joshi represents a consciousness that has emerged from the confrontation between tradition and modernity. In analysing Arun Joshi‘s ideas, one finds that his experience is based on vision of life. He minutely observes the conflict between the traditional values and the modern materialistic approach to life. With his deep knowledge of Indian philosophy, he suggests in his novels an entirely Indian solution to the spiritual crises of the youth. Arun Joshi‘s fictional world is most strange. One of the most significant contemporary Indian novelists writing in English, Arun Joshi has focussed not on social or political problems but on the deeper layers of man‘s being. The very core of the thesis Conflict in Arun Joshi‘s Novel is not one-sided; rather it is multi-

dimensional and multifaceted, encompassing philosophy, psychology and sociology. 170 It seems to distil the essence of the dilemmas and quests of Arun Joshi‘s protagonists‘ conflict. The conflict that erupts in the protagonists of Arun Joshi‘s novel has the form of craziness, pain, agony, the selfishness of love, the mystic realities of life in a gentle tale, centring on the various aspects of life, bringing out the vitality of life, normal and the abnormal, the ordinary and the extraordinary, illusion and reality, resignation and desire, etc. The conflicts between alienated self and the socio- cultural forces are the postulates of Arun Joshi‘s fictional creations. In all the novels, the protagonists of his novels are subjected to extreme social, cultural and psychological pressures. This search of the identity is the central pillar of Arun Joshi‘s novels. The alienations that emerge in the novels of Arun Joshi are because of the clash between the socio- cultural and psychological pressures. The alienation arises because of the social maladjustment and emotional insecurity; this alienated self leads to a psychological revolt within the self that every moment of life is in search of identity. Arun Joshi has, in The Foreigner, very dexterously handled some-thought provoking, grave issues like, rootlessnes, detachment, frustration, quest for better alternative, identity-crisis and selfrealisation, highlighting India‘s glorious cultural heritage and imperishable moral values. The novels of Arun Joshi emphasis the 171 urgent need of the ―Humane Technology‖ to cure this sordid civilisation. Arun Joshi‘s first novel The Foreigner was first published in the year 1968. Arun Joshi has candidly accepted, with reference to The Foreigner that his recurrent theme is alienation which is closely related to the identity issues in many forms, sometime in the form of identity conflict, sometime in the form of self-quest, many times leading to estrangement from the self. At the same time, his heroes are intensely self-centred persons, prone to self-pity and escapism. In all his novels, Arun Joshi attempts to deal with different facets of alienation, in relation to the self, the society around and humanity at large. Sindi Oberoi in The Foreigner (1968) is a born Foreigner--a man alienated from all humanity like Mahatma Buddha, he spent his life in search of the self and the identity of himself, leading to ―Enlightenment‖ at Nirvana (Death of the life). The process of developing self-identity has three stages. The issue of identity-crisis and self in the novels of Arun Joshi is the result of philosophical (Buddhist school of thought), psychological output of personality traits and sociological Cultural shock. The Foreigner relates how Sindi Oberoi, an immigrant Indian, suffers in the course of his search for meaning and purpose of his life. Sindi‘s alienation from the world is similar to the one that many 172 existentialist heroes in the west suffer from. The novel is an enactment of the crisis of the present in the story of Sindi Oberoi. The question is of the identity as self-identity of a person who does not know his birth, parents, relatives and friends. This very understanding of Sindi brings Joshi closer to Camus and Sindi to Camus‘ outsider. Sindi was himself an emotionally sterile person devoid of the self and the identity. It seems that Sindi was selfish and his philosophy of detachment was merely a false construction to run away from the worldly responsibility towards June. It is not that Sindi could not start a fresh life with a meaning and self identity but the precedent experiences were obstacles to do so. The climax of the novel comes at a juncture where June, deprived of love and marriage by Sindi, falls in love with Babu Rao Khemka and it is aptly reciprocated by Khemka. Sindi was in past deep love with June and he could have saved the life of both Khemka and June but now he is guilty of killing the duo. Sindi has committed a crime because of his false detachment. A man without identity, roots, values, ethics, emotions and love cannot be expected to be redeemed. Arun Joshi by his own inventions and discoveries makes Sindi to realises. After coming to India, Sindi got a God-sent opportunity to redeem himself. Muthu and his problems bring about a major change in Sindi‘s

attitude towards life. The Indian soil gives him a meaning to 173 life, attachment from self to the world. In The Foreigner, Arun Joshi depicts a keen awareness and deeper understanding of our times. Sindi represents the solutions to the meaninglessness of life. The establishment of the identity of Sindi at the closing of the novel presents the only way of saving man from the purposelessness and degradation of the contemporary meaningless world. At times, the identity of Sindi could be compared to that of Karna of Mahabharata because both the characters suffer from the identity conflict and crisis, but at many times the resemblance is quite contradictory as well. The identity-conflict in the protagonist of The Foreigner is many-folded. Though Sindi involves himself in an earnest quest for life- sustaining values, he is not able to overcome the miseries of past completely. The character of Sindi portrays the sense of metaphysical anguish at the meaninglessness of life. Lastly, what comes out from the conflicting nature of the protagonist of The Foreigner Sindi Oberoi, is that life rotates in a flashback style. If life is full of suffering the human nature is to overcome that. Struggle, confusion, frustration and confession are the realities of human life. The self on the earth is meant to acquire an identity, without identity there is no human being. The identity conflict in The Foreigner in the light of the character of Sindi reveals that man‘s false beliefs and self-created agenda of life evaporate with the passage of time. 174 The identity of Sindi is not only the identity of a character of Arun Joshi‘s The Foreigner, it is also an identity of the millions of the young generation of the world, who have a lot of questions but no answer. The identity of Sindi is a warning to evolve a system to meet the needs and challenges of the time. What Sindi did was the outcome of the social conditions. That Sindi loves but cannot marry reflects the identity-conflict and he is torn apart between West and East. Arun Joshi‘s The Strange Case of Billy Biswas shows the process of alienation and rehabilitation via a 3-tier operation, namely, construction, deconstruction and reconstruction. Arun Joshi‘s fictional world is most strange. The Strange Case of Billy Biswas is seemingly a sequel developed from the first novel The Foreigner. Sindi and Billy Biswas, the protagonists of The Foreigner and The Strange Case of Billy Biswas respectively, seem to explore the hidden treasures of life; they search for their own bearings of life and death, sorrow and joy. Their major concern is their real and the inner world --the world of soul. This very communication is also the beginning of the establishment of self-identity, if not the assertion of the identity. Here was the entering into a new world –the world of the supernatural. In the novel The Strange Case of Billy Biswas, Arun Joshi portrays how the process of individualisation destroys a man of 175 extraordinary sensibilities. The novel seems to advocate that life‘s meaning does not lie in the world outside but within. The quest for identity of Billy Biswas is deeper than that of Sindi Oberoi of The Foreigner. Arun Joshi in this novel has tried to combine the Lawrentian quest for the essence of life with Upanishadic search for soul‘s spiritual reality. In reality, Billy learns from the seers, mystics and visionaries of all ages and it brings him closer to Mathew Arnold‘s Scholar Gipsy, as a result of which Billy takes the hard decision to live in the jungles of Central India deliberately renouncing the luxurious life that he could have afforded very well. Billy is completely faded up with the grossly materialistic Indian society, in defiance of its traditional values, ethics, culture and mores. It also endorses that Billy supports the anti-materialistic way of Hindu life. Romi, his room partner at the Harlem in America, opines that Billy was the man of extraordinary intellect, ‗a man of extra obsession‘. But what even he fails to understand was his real identity and thus the question still persists with Billy--Who am I? Billy once says: ‗I want to do in the life is to visit places, meet the people who live there, find out the...aboriginalness of the world.‘ Billy‘s case is a strange case because of the fact that his personality was split between modernity and primitivism. This opinion 176

of Billy makes him understand that he was not meant and made for this world and that is why this society was misfit for him. In reality, the first section of the novel is a background to understand the psychologically tortured Billy Biswas that how he was in constant conflict and in his quest of identity. The life he was supposed to live was miles away from the life of tribal in reality. The elite culture-laden society did fit to the quest of identity for Billy and he returns to India. But, to his utter surprise, he finds Delhi not different from the American society and feels Delhi‘s high hybrid society to be spiritually deserted and emotionally alienated. Billy hates the worldly pleasures but Meena is fond of the money, market and the materialism, supposedly the identity of the elite society. Arun Joshi successfully represents here that his protagonist was not an abnormal person. Rather he was very much a part of the human society and had the wish and desire to give a new identity and meaning to life by establishing a family. But, at the same time he portrays that Billy is destined by his very nature for some other person and places. It brings the character of Billy closer to the character of destiny. The marriage fiasco has a negative impact upon the physic and personality of Billy. ―The Billy Biswas I had known was finished, snuffed out like a candle left in the rain‖ (Joshi, The Strange Case 70) rightly remarks Romi. Now Billy is so much mentally tortured that he 177 dislikes even the terminology of the ―civilized‖. He wants to get away from the greedy, avaricious and hypocritical world of the ―civilized‖. One such instance could be noted from picnic scenario where Billy has gone with Meena and the friends. These points towards his lineage towards the primitive world. In this context: R. K. Dhawan aptly observes: ―In a bid to seek communion with the primitive world, Billy opts out of the modern world‖ (20). It seemed for the first time in the life of Billy that the objective of his life was about to be achieved are that the search for identity was going to be completed. The cosmetic city of India, Delhi, could have made him settle with beautiful women and elite society. Billy goes through his ―final Metamorphosis‖ (Joshi, The Strange Case 14). Billy could see only and only Bilasia and nothing else. On having the eye contact with Bilasia, Billy was automatically called by Bilasia and the simple, sobre and god-made lover of Bilasia, Billy, went straight to her. He forgets that he was the son of the Supreme Court justice. Bilasia is Prakriti and Billy was the Purush. Prakriti is the Shakti of Purush. This is what Bilasia was to Billy. Bilasia plays the pivotal role in defining the identity of Billy. Here, in the hills of Maikal, the free and fresh air has brought a meaning to the life of Billy. The identity, that was so far even from her dreams, has gradually started taking shape in the union with the 178 missing other half of the protagonist Billy Biswas. In terms of psychoanalysis: ―Billy and Bilasia are two selves of the same personality‖ (Prasad 47). If that does not justify the stand of Billy, one has to accept that Lord Buddha was himself an escapist; Billy could not be called one. The civilised world is unaware of the life of Billy and his whereabouts. Billy has settled in the hills of Maikal with Bilasia as his future and Dhunia, the village headman-- as his master. Billy has found the identity of the king and priest in the tribal village, far from the urbanised but dehumanised world. Billy has completely changed. He was found by Romi in the lion cloth typical of the way primitives live in the jungle. On having a meeting with Romi, Billy narrates his vision of the primitive world and the urge of life for the tribal people and how he has added a new meaning to his life. Billy takes a promise from Romi that he will not disclose the whereabouts of Billy to anyone else. But Romi was not a man to keep his commitments and discloses the whereabouts of Billy to Situ, when forced by Situ to disclose the same. The disclosure of the whereabouts of Billy to Situ by Romi brings tragedy to the life of Billy. Protagonist Billy has nothing to come back to the city. When Meena and Billy‘s father come to know about the reappearances of Billy they start a hunt for him. They do not 179 realise the case of Billy and

insist on meeting him without his consent. In the village, none tells the whereabouts of Billy. It shows the respect and love the village people have for to Billy. Meanwhile a rumour spreads that Billy has killed a constable and then the atrocious torture of the state machinery operates in the jungle and ultimately Billy is killed. On his tragic death, Billy, Billy remarks: ―You Bastard‖. The ―bastard‖ symbolises the hatred of Billy for the civilised people of the urbanised society. The quest for identity was the prime motive of Mr. Billy Biswas. The whole novel is devoted to the search of identity. Billy from his childhood was filled with inquisitiveness. In The Apprentice, Arun Joshi closely examines the changes in the Indian socio-political system in the post-independence India. The issue raised by Ratan Rathor is not only political. In reality, the story is more related to values and ethics that the young generation is adopting today. It is to be kept in mind that Ratan Rathor is not an individual person, rather he represents the whole young generation of the postIndependence India. Ratan Rathor--the protagonist of The Apprentice, is an inheritor of the two philosophies. Ratan‘s father left behind the legacy of simplicity and sacrifice. The mother of Ratan Rathor was a down-toearth lady and had a practical approach to life. That is why she asked 180 Ratan to earn money. She argues that in front of wealth, everything is pigmy. This fact could also be inferred from her statement: ‗Man without the money was man without the worth. Many things were great in life but the greatest of them was the money‘. Besides mother and father, a brigadier was also in the mind of Ratan Rathor. The Brigadier‘s episode is there in the mind of the protagonist because of the own importance Ratan gives to him. The episode was of his childhood when some miscreants had tried to manhandle Ratan. It was the Brigadier‘s selfless love that had rescued Rathor and hence the selfishness of the love of the brigadiers also haunts Ratan Rathor. The protagonist Ratan Rathor like other young man of contemporary society period is torn apart by the conflicting ideologies of idealism and utilitarianism and hence the-identity in them. The nation for which his father has laid down his life was a nation of frustrated men sailing about in a confused society, a society without norms, direction, without even, perhaps a purpose. With his confession of the degeneration, a new dimension has been added to the life of Ratan. The Apprentice, Joshi‘s third novel, takes his search for understanding man‘s predicament one step further toward the transcendental.

Research on Humanities and Social Sciences www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1719 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2863 (Online) Vol.3, No.13, 2013 27 Mythological Aspects in the Novels of Arun Joshi Ms. Anita Sharma Asst. Professor,Department of Humanities Truba Institute of Engineering and Information Technology, Bhopal Email: anita.truba@gmail.com Abstract: Arun Joshi is an outstanding Indian English novelist who has outlined human predicament caused by inner crises of man living in present world. In his novels Joshi has focused not on socio-economic or existing political issues at all but he has carefully touched deep and very sensitive layers of human being. Joshi’s works reflect strong influence of Indian spiritual ideology. He is one of those Indian fiction writers who have effectively tried to reflect eternal metaphysics and ethos by their protagonists. Key words: Karma Yoga, Detachment, Attachment. Joshi in his novels focused not only on socio-political issues but he has carefully touched deep and very sensitive layers of human being. His novels reflect his strong faith on Indian Mythology. “Hinduism, Joshi believes is highly existentialist-oriented philosophy since it attaches so much value to the right way to live (to exist).”1The Vedanta philosophy, the teachings of the Gita and the way of life taught by Mahatma Gandhi had a great influence on Arun Joshi. “This impact is not casual or coincidental: it seems to form the philosophical and ethical fabric of some of his major work.”2 Joshi’s first three novels The Foreigner, The Strange Case of Billy Biswas and The Apprentice deal with three ways of redemption as preached in The Bhagvadgita, the Karmayoga, the Jnanayoga and the Bhaktiyoga respectively. The Foreigner is a story of state of mind of the people facing human predicaments. The novel reflects the principles of Karmyoga described by Lord Krishna to Arjuna in the battle of Kurukshetra in order to resolve his confusion. The protagonist of the novel Sindi Oberoi cuts his life between attachment and detachment (to do or not to do).3 He seems to follow principle of Karma throughout the story. He is against the actions performed merely to attain Bhautik Shukh in life. In his opinion, the life of those who run behind material happiness throughout their life like Mr. Khemka is meaningless. He falls in love with June, the

central female character of the novel but his strange behaviour confuses her. He denies strong desires of June to get married with him. In The Foreigner Sindi Oberoi, a rootless hero who seeks detachment from the world at last, comes to realize the actual meaning of the theory of detachment as depicted in the Gita, “sometimes detachment lies in actually getting involved.” (Arun Joshi, The Foreigner, p. 188) In The Strange Case of Billy Biswas the protagonist, Billy Biswas, goes to the hills, in the lap of Nature, like the seers in Indian legends and scriptures, in search of his spiritual height and to get inner peace. In The Apprentice Ratan Rathor tries his redemption through humility and penance. In The Last Labyrinth Joshi presents the mysteries of love, God and death. In The City and the River Joshi reveals his cultural and spiritual ethos. He presents the quest for spiritual commitment and inner soul that surpass all religions. The novels of Arun Joshi do not reveal to us much about his knowledge of the Sanskrit learning. In The City and the River the ancient Indian language, Sanskrit has been referred to as “the forgotten tongue” (The City and the River, 9) and “the ancient tongue that no one understood.”(The City and the River, 10) In The Last Labyrinth Som Bhaskar on the Ganga ghat refers nostalgically to the recitation by Pundits from the ancient texts: “A young Sanskrit scholar recited hymns on the top of his voice. I thought of my father and the little books of the Upanishads. Another boy equally young corrected him. Did Panini ever live in Benaras?” (The Last Labyrinth, 48) This is perhaps all that he has written about Sanskrit in his novels. But it is a certainly that being born and educated in early years at Benaras, he might have schooling in it up to the secondary level. Whatever may be the reality he uses ideas from the Bhagwad Gita, the Upnishads and some other system of Indian philosophy. The idea in The Foreigner relates to the problem of attachment versus detachment expounded in the Bhagwad Gita. Sindi Oberoi suffers from a wrong conception of detachment and as such does not want to get involved in action. But the presentation of detachment as panacea for life’s problem as exemplified by Sindi Oberoi is erroneous. The dilemma of the factory worker, Muthu, and his exhortion makes Sindi realise his mistakes. It enables to attain self-knowledge as he realizes: Detachment at that time had meant inaction. Now I had begun to see the fallacy in it. Detachment consisted of right action and not escape from it. The Gods had set a heavy price to teach me just that. (The Foreigner,239) Research on Humanities and Social Sciences www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1719 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2863 (Online) Vol.3, No.13, 2013 28 In The Strange Case of Billy Biswas Arun Joshi has perhaps deliberately created a work of fiction on the concept of Prakriti and Purusha on the Sankhya system of Indian Phiosophy. R. S. Pathak has explained the narrative of Bilasia and Billy on the Sankhya concept of the fusion of Prakriti and Purusha: As Billy’s example testifies, if one is able to establish a rapport with the primitive forces in the world of nature, one can get rid of all problems of life. Bilasia, it is held, symbolises “the primitive culture,” the untapped subterranean resources of psychic energy. It would be better to regard her as the matter (Prakriti), which according to the Sankhya system of Indian Philosophy, is “one” and eternal, not an illusionary appearance but something real. Billy might be taken to represent the soul (Purusha), which by its mere presence excites Matter and illumines the process of evolution of the universe. Bilasia, we are reminded, is “the embodiment of the primal and invulnerable force that had ruled these Maikala hills; perhaps this earth, since time began.” Her “enormous eyes,” we are told, “poured out a sexuality that was nearly as primeval as the forest that surrounded them.” In the Sankhya philosophy the material universe is traced to a First Cause.4 In The Apprentice the way which Ratan chooses for the purification of his soul meets the vision of Bhakti in The Bhagvadgita: Ratan undergoes expiation and believes that purification is to be obtained not by any ritual, or dogma but by making amends. The polishing of shoes of the devotees by

him cleanses the filth enveloping his soul. His earlier atheistic attitude towards is gone and Ratan comes to believe that only God can help him. His sitting in front of a temple signifies his devotion (Bhakti) in which the devotee can appease his God just by praying to him meekly. Arun Joshi has imbibed knowledge of psychology and philosophy of both East and West. His narrative technique has been influenced by the psychology of the stream of consciousness which we find in several of his novels. He mentions Freud in connection with Leila Sabnis in The Last Labyrinth. She has behind her seat philosophers of America and Europe and “Freud as well bearded and saintly, indefatigable, groping in the night of man’s mind, strewn with piss, excreta, struggling to put man together, the pervert and the insane but also those who, whole otherwise, walk the beaches at night and cry for the spirit.” (The Last Labyrinth, 77) This is a kind of summary of the Freudian psychology. Joshi also refers to certain other European philosophers such as Pascal, on whom Som Bhaskar did a paper at Harvard. A quotation from him has been given: Let us weigh the gain and loss in wagering that God is, let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all, if you lose, you lose nothing. (The Last Labyrinth, 11) Joshi believes in the Freudian motive behind literary creation, which grows out of fantasy and reality. On many occasions in The Last Labyrinth, there are specific references to Krishna, Buddha, Tukaram and even Yajnavalkya whom he refers to in an Upnishadic quotation: When the sun is set and the Moon is also set, and the fire has sunk down and the voice is silent, what, then Yajnavalkya, is the light of man? (The Last Labyrinth, 108) Som Bhaskar guesses what Yajnavalkya could have answered. Joshi’s Hindu psyche makes him refer to Bhaskar’s performing the last rites of his father at Hardwar. There are also references to several deities of the Hindu pantheon. Bhaskar recalls the statue of the Trimurti at Elephanta caves: Heavy lipped Brahma, Rudra with snakes and a third eye; Vishnu almost effeminate. (The Last Labyrinth, 23) Som Bhaskar also thinks of the dormant Kundalini power: I feel rage whipping at the end of my spine, and shooting up with the skull, to some dark hollows where the serpent slept, just waiting to be stirred. (The Last Labyrinth, 20) We can find so many references to the Tantrik cult in The Last Labyrinth. Of all Joshi’s novels The Last Labyrinth has perhaps the greatest number of reverberation from the different philosophical systems of East and West dealing mostly with the labyrinthine ways of life and death. Arun Joshi’s last novel the City and the River also centres around the basic principles of Hindu philosophy which teaches an affirmative attitude to life. The novel presents before us a city which is in the jaws of destruction due to its people who never seek the righteous way of living. Throughout the novel there is a conflict in the city folk to choose between the “allegiance to God” and “the allegiance to Man” or in simple words between religion and politics. The doctrine of Karma asserts that man’s final growth depends on him. His future is no pre-determined. He is a responsible agent who by the “integration of Karma, jnana and Bhakti” (Rao: 150) reaches his salvation. Research on Humanities and Social Sciences www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1719 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2863 (Online) Vol.3, No.13, 2013 29 Joshi has used various myths, legends and archetypes to suggest the value of an authentic life, faith and right action-the barest necessity of modern man. The political scenario of the city is used as backdrop of the novel which helps the novelist in presenting a contemporary problem with the metaphysical overview of creation and disintegration, sristi and pralaya dealt in Indian myths. Whenever human beings degenerate, anarchy and meaninglessness take them in their grip leading them nowhere. If they do not mend their ways the process of sristi and pralaya after a period of time is to go on unless the whole world is purified. The canvas of The City and The River is very vast and encompasses within its range time, God, Man and Nature. Thus we find that Arun Joshi makes a use of Vedanta, the philosophy f

Karma, and Lord Krishna’s concept of “detachment” and “involvement” to bring out the inner recesses of his protagonists. References: Primary Sources The Foreigner. New Delhi: Hind Pocket Books. The Strange Case of Billy Biswas. New Delhi: Asia Publishing House. The Apprentice, New Delhi: Orient Paperback. The Last Labyrinth. New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks. The City And The River. New Delhi: Vision Books, 1990 Secondary Source 1. R. K. Dhawan, The Fictional World of Arun Joshi, p. 19. 2. O.P.Mathur, Arun Joshi and the Gita, New Critical Approach to Indian English Fiction, p.26 3. K. Ratna Shiela Mani, Detachment and its Meaning in Arun Joshi’s The Foreigner, Critical Essays on Indian Writing in English (New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2006), p.41. 4. R. S. Pathak, “Human Predicament and Meaninglessness in Arun Joshi’s Novels,” in R. K. Dhawan (edited), The Fictional World of Arun Joshi (New Delhi, 1986), 132. This academic article was published by The International Institute for Science, Technology and Education (IISTE). The IISTE is a pioneer in the Open Access Publishing service based in the U.S. and Europe. The aim of the institute is Accelerating Global Knowledge Sharing. More information about the publisher can be found in the IISTE’s homepage: http://www.iiste.org CALL FOR JOURNAL PAPERS The IISTE is currently hosting more than 30 peer-reviewed academic journals and collaborating with academic institutions around the world. There’s no deadline for submission. Prospective authors of IISTE journals can find the submission instruction on the following page: http://www.iiste.org/journals/ The IISTE editorial team promises to the review and publish all the qualified submissions in a fast manner. All the journals articles are available online to the readers all over the world without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. Printed version of the journals is also available upon request of readers and authors. MORE RESOURCES Book publication information: http://www.iiste.org/book/ Recent conferences: http://www.iiste.org/conference/ IISTE Knowledge Sharing Partners EBSCO, Index Copernicus, Ulrich's Periodicals Directory, JournalTOCS, PKP Open Archives Harvester, Bielefeld Academic Search Engine, Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek EZB, Open J-Gate, OCLC WorldCat, Universe Digtial Library , NewJour, Google Scholar

1. Arun   Joshi   - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arun_JoshiCached

Arun Joshi (1939–1993) was an Indian writer. He is known for his novels The Strange Case of Billy Biswas and The Apprentice. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award for ...

2. Conflict in the Novels   of Arun   Joshi shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/4119/5/05...

... his way of life ... Arun Joshi‟s The Foreigner; ... Conflict in the Novels of Arun JoshiAuthor: arun sachan Created Date: 5/7/2012 8:53:02 AM ...

3. Women Characters in   Arun   Joshi’s Novels -An... www.academia.edu/889125/Women_Characters_in_Arun_Joshi_s...Cached

... Ph.D. Women Characters in Arun Joshi’s Novels An Embodiment of ... She follows a simple philosophy 34 HUMAN DILEMMA The vacuum after the death of Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan and Raja Rao witnessed the entry of young and energetic IndianAnglican writers and novelists. This young generation of novelists, who came in the mid twentieth century, includes Manohar Malgonkar, Arun Joshi, Anita Desai, Salman Rushdie and Khuswant Singh. Late sixties have brought a new wave of change, globally and domestically, in many ways. After the end of the Second World War, the wound of the war was to be filled up. It took the forms of decolonisation, worldwide struggle for equality for the Blacks and women, Indian Independence and so on. But at the same time, it also brought with it various socio- cultural issues. They are depicted in the Subaltern and Post-colonial literatures. However, alienation and the quest for the identity in the midst of success and failure form the crime of literacy endeavour of the time. The success and failure have many dimensions like the Industrialisation and the West-East socio-cultural relational dichotomy. As a result, the writers who emerged on the scene in the mid twentieth century had to face this struggle and were naturally bound to project the aforesaid issues in their works. 35 The literary journey from Charles Dickens period in British Literature to the arrival of the novelists of the late sixties and the seventies in Indian literature witnesses the issue pertaining to the selfidentity search, thought about man and his sufferings, his way of life and at the best the means and method to overcome these problems. In this regard, one can compare the works of the mid sixties writers to the works of Camus, Sartre and Kafka. The conflicts between alienated self and the socio-cultural forces are the postulates of Arun Joshi‟s fictional creations. In all his novels, the protagonists are subjected to the extreme social, cultural and psychological pressures. Sociologically speaking, the “Cultural lag”, the inter-generational tensions and the changing ethos make increasing demand on the life of the individual. It results in emptiness, reflecting the chaotic conditions of “No Man‟s land,” and rootlessnes in life, pertinently haunts the psyche of men. The awareness of rootlessnes and consequent anxiety form the basis of identity-crisis, which has been described as the keynote of: “Joshi‟s existential vision of the plight and exploitation of the modern day man” (Bhatnagar 131). The protagonists discover the meaning and value of life by probing through the dark mossy labyrinths of the soul. This search of the identity is the central pillar of Arun Joshi‟s novels. 36 The protagonists of Arun Joshi‟s novels are perplexed and find themselves in the fast- moving world with no clear ambitions in mind. The economic suffering, the social pressure , the dissolutions of the old beliefs and dogmas and uncertain loyalties mercilessly degrade their lives and injure their psyches, resulting in cynical attitudes towards life and established social norms and ethics. The alienations in the novels of Arun Joshi‟s novel are because of the clash and conflict between the socio-cultural and psychological pressures. The alienation primarily arises because of social maladjustment and emotional insecurity. The alienated self, in search of identity, as the typical protagonist of

Joshi‟s earlier novels. The identity motif functions more on the socio-psychic twodimensional materialistic plane rather than on the three dimensional metaphysical worlds. This quest attains the spiritual dimension only at certain levels. “My novels are essentially attempts towards a better understanding of the world and myself…..” (32), asserts Joshi. No doubt, it points to the influence of Camus and Sartre on him. Arun Joshi himself reveals that he did read Camus and Sartre and liked their works. Arun Joshi has, in The Foreigner, very dexterously handled some thought- provoking, grave issues like rootlessnes, detachment, frustration, quest for a better alternative, identity-crisis and self- 37 realization, highlighting our glorious cultural heritage and imperishable moral values. His reputation has been steadily rising since the publication of this very first novel. “Humane technology” is a ray of hope in the darkness of modern world. While technological innovations have an important place in society, they also lead to a precarious life. There is a growing antagonism between man and technology. Arun Joshi illustrates that “total industrialization” and “total automation” (Ivasheva 32) result in the frustration that leads to various pathological states. This notion brings him closer to the Marxist perspective of alienation. However, he departs from the Marxist perspective because he argues that the triumph of things over people leads to spiritual alienation which results in the wholesale destruction of the personality. The literary technology adopted by Arun Joshi, “humane technology” is a kind of acupressure to smooth the pain and suffering, and is kind and friendly to the sufferer. The novels of Arun Joshi emphasis the urgent need of the “Humane Technology” to cure this sordid civilisation. Arun Joshi‟s first novel The Foreigner was first published in 1968. Arun Joshi has mentioned that he started writing the book when he was a student but finished it, after his completion of academics, in 1966. The author also regards it as full of autobiographical sketches. Therefore, an analysis of the novel needs to be made in the context of 38 the author‟s life. The Foreigner epitomises the main traits of his obsessive preoccupations as a creative artist. The protagonist shares the individualistic temperament of his creator. Joshi has addressed himself to the human dilemmas in all their complexities. Essentially, the protagonist has become the mouthpiece of the creator‟s perception of the realities and the vision. Arun Joshi has candidly accepted with reference to The Foreigner: “It is largely autographical. I am...a somewhat alienated man myself...Some parts of The Foreigner, my first book, were written when I was a student in America” (Purabi 4). This makes the point more emphatic that in Joshi‟s creative universe the creator and his creations are intricately linked with each other and that provides authenticity to his novels. In all his novels, Arun Joshi attempts to deal with different facets of alienation: in relation to self, the society around and humanity at large. Sindi Oberoi in The Foreigner (1968) is a born Foreigner--a man alienated from the whole of humanity. The only son of an Indian father and an English mother, and born in Kenya, he is orphaned at an early age and grows into a youth without family ties and without a country. „My Foreignness lay within me,‟ he confesses. Educated in England and the U.S.A., he sums up his life as: „twenty-five years largely wasted in search of wrong things in wrong places.‟ 39 He develops a philosophy of detachment, which is really a mask for his fear of committing himself, of getting involved too deeply with others. His love for an American girl, June Blyth, ends tragically both for the girl and for his best friend, Babu, primarily because Sindi (a short form of Surrinder which he, with unconscious irony, transliterates as “surrender”) is afraid of marriage and its demands, “of possessing anybody and...of being possessed.” He returns to India and joins an industrial concern but his rootlessnes persists. Finally, when the numerous employees of his factory face ruin as a result of the exposure of the fraudulent boss, he discovers his latent humanitarianism, which compels him to save them by taking over the management. This sudden transformation is

unfortunately neither adequately motivated nor prepared for earlier. The ending thus appears to be botched up--a weakness not confined to this first novel alone, though Joshi's presentation of his hero's alienation in search of the identity is evocative enough. However, for a detailed and close analysis, the theoretical background of the concepts of “Self” and “Identity” is likely to be useful. The issue of “Self” or “Identity” has long been a matter of intellectual discourse philosophical, psychological, sociological and literary levels. Philosophically, “Self” is Atma, intricately joined with Parmatma in Hinduism as well as in Buddhist philosophy. In fact, the 40 whole discourse of the Hindu and Buddhist philosophies is the discourse on the “self” passing through the various transitory phases of the human life cycle. It has to pass through suffering and redemption to attain “Moksha”. The detailed account of the self and suffering enumerates several scientific causal factors in the Buddhist philosophy. In it, it is suggested that to be elevated and to have the “Madhayam Marga” should be adopted. Mahatma Buddha spent his life in search of the self and the identity of himself, leading to “Enlightenment” at „Nirvana‟ (Death of the life). Psychologically, Sigmund Freud has extensively analysed and written about the “Self”. He relates the self from infancy till late age in personality development. The self consists of the Id, Ego and Superego, manifested in the form of Consciousness, Sub consciousness and the Unconsciousness. However, the most important part of his analysis lies in the understanding of the fact that Consciousness, Sub consciousness and the Unconsciousness are placed in the environment context internal and external. The self does not grow in the vacuum; rather it grows in the materialistic realities. The psychological state of mind is always in conflict with the environment in which one grows. It implies that the estrangement or alienation takes place because of the identity and self-crisis and for which environmental set up is primafacie responsible. The self has been manifested in the form of the 41 Personality, which is defined as the Constitute of all the behavioural traits of a man being. The process of developing self-identity has three stages. First, we imagine how we appear to others to relatives, to friends or even the strangers on the street. Then we imagine how others perceive us; and finally, we develop some sort of feeling about ourselves. While doing so, one passes through the prepatory stage, play stage, role taking, and game stage where the self occupies a privileged, central position in a person‟s world. Thus it becomes amply clear that identity is very crucial to one‟s survival, and in literature it has been termed as the Existential theory. Camus, Kafka, Sartre and various other like-minded authors have dealt with the issue in detail. The issues of identity-crisis and self in the novels of Arun Joshi are looked at from philosophical, psychological and sociological points of view. Arun Joshi is indisputably one of the few front- ranking fictionists of today. He made his debut in Indian- English literature with his novel The Foreigner (1968). It has been hailed as one of the most compelling existential works of Indian English Fiction. With it began Arun Joshi‟s journey into the dark, mysterious and uncharted hinterland of the soul to plumb some perennial problems of human existence. 42 The novel is thoroughly existentialist. It is about an individual‟s loneliness and feelings of anguish emanating from his estrangement from the environment, tradition and his true self in search of the identity. As Madhusudan Prasad aptly remarks: “They are singularized by certain existentialist problems and the resultant anger, agony, psychic quest and the like” (52). In his novels, Joshi has very dexterously handled some serious, thought-provoking themes in an unpretentious manner, such as, rootlessnes, detachment, quest for better alternatives in this ostentatious world and self-realization, highlighting our glorious cultural heritage and imperishable moral values. O. P. Bhatnagar also remarks: “A strange feeling of aloneness and aloofness…permeates the entire narrative and provides the necessary texture and structure to the novel” (14). It deals with the problems of involvement in and

detachment from the world, and the lack of courage to face the bitter realities of life and eventual resolution of the problem as an illustration of the Karmik principle propounded by Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. The formative part of the novel develops against the backdrop of the west, and the later part set in India brings in “acculturation” at the end. In response to Purabi Banerji‟s enquires, Joshi acknowledges that the novel is a study in alienation, and is based on observation and 43 personal experience. He admits: “...it is largely autobiographical. I am a somewhat alienated man myself” (Purabi 207). The Foreigner relates how Sindi Oberoi, an immigrant Indian, suffers in the course of his search for meaning and purpose of his life. Sindi‟s alienation from the world is similar to the one that many existentialist heroes in the west suffer from. The novel is an enactment of the crisis of the present in the story of Sindi Oberoi. He is a perennial outsider, an uprooted young man living in the latter half of the twentieth century who belongs to no country, no people and finds himself an outsider in Kenya, Uganda, England, America and India. His rootlessnes is rooted within his soul like an ancient curse and drives him from crisis to crisis. He has no roots, as he himself admits, I have no roots. Sindi is trapped in his loneliness, which is “accelerated by his withdrawal from the society around him.” He mulls over his foreignness which is almost Kierkegaardian: “I wondered in what way, if any, I belonged to the world that roared beneath my apartment window. Somebody had begotten me, without a purpose. Perhaps I felt like that because I was a foreigner in America. But then, what difference would it have made if had lived in Kenya or India or any other place for that matter. It seemed to me that I would still be a foreigner. My foreignness lay within me and I wouldn‟t leave myself behind wherever I went…” (Joshi, The Foreigner 35). 44 As R.S. Pathak observes; “His alienation is of his soul and not of geography” (47). He leaves the impression of being an alien on all those whom he meets. June in one of her meetings with Sindi tells him: “I have a feeling you‟d be a foreigner anywhere” (Joshi, The Foreigner 35). Even Shiela once tells him that “You are still a foreigner, you don‟t belong here” (149). Sindi Oberoi „born of a Kenyan-Indian father and English mother‟ is orphaned at the age of four when his parents met their end in an air crash near Cairo. He is brought up by his uncle who works as an emotional anchor, and “the thought that he (Sindi‟s uncle) moved about in that small house on the outskirts of Nairobi gave me a feeling of having an anchor. After his death the security was destroyed” (Joshi, The Foreigner 65). Deprived of parental love and affection in his very childhood, he becomes broken and anchorless. On being asked by Mr. Khemka as to how his parents died, he betrays Camus‟ Meursault-like indifference, “For a hundredth time I related the story of these strangers whose only reality was a couple of wrinkled and cracked photographs” (Joshi, The Foreigner 12). Actually, he is incapable of any emotional involvement with his social milieu. He is a born foreigner and is an alien everywhere physically as well as metaphorically. He is a foreigner everywhere, in Nairobi, in India and even in America, as he himself puts it: “And yet all shores 45 are alien when you do not belong anywhere” (Joshi, The Foreigner 92). Whosoever comes in contact with him notices this foreignness in him. Babu Rao Khemka‟s sister, Shiela, says; “You are still a foreigner. You don‟t belong here”. Mr. Khemka asks him; “Why are you so strange?” (104) June, in their very first encounter, says, “There is something strange about you they don‟t feel like they are with a human being. May be it‟s an Indian characteristic, but I have a feeling you‟d be a foreigner anywhere” (145). Sindi a person who does not know his birth, parents, relatives and friends. Such person has to suffer and to suffer with sociologically anomalous notions, psychologically abnormal personality and culturally pagan values, devoid of any lesson of morality and ethics. Though these are only the objective realities, yet the subjective conflict in search of identity could be verified on socio- psychological grounds. Devoid of socialising

elements from his childhood, he confronts loneliness and frustration in life, that make him a purposeless human creature. His state of mind is unpredictable because he is a cynical. It has been pointed out by different characters of the novel. Babu Rao Khemka, his friend and a student at Boston, wrote to his sister Sheila that Sindi is so terribly cynical, his flat mate Karl asks him if Sindi could laugh to the reply, to which Sindi responds : “yes, but only if he 46 is heavily drunk” (147). On the other hand, Shiela went to the extent of saying that he was the saddest man on the earth she had encountered in life. This reality is not contested by Sindi. Rather he confessed that he was. It shows that he was aware of his plight and knew the problem. His awareness of his identity or the identity- crisis brings Joshi closer to Camus and Sindi to Camus‟ outsider. Wherever he went, his rootlessnes accompanied him: from Kenya to London and there to Boston and finally to New Delhi. It seemed that he was a man from no man‟s land. His continuous drifting from place to place reminds only of the fact that he was doing consistent experimentation on himself to find the peace of mind but he was doomed to failure. His luck gives him the opportunity to learn and to learn to survive and find the meaning of life to establish self -identity. As the story moves ahead, he gets a job in a bar where he meets Anna who leaves him. Then he meets Cathy and gets physically involved with her. But he refuses to marry her. Here again the survival was in the question and so was the identity. But he finds that these episodes only enrich his mind and states: “...the essence of my life lay in what I had learnt from Anna and Cathy” (Joshi, The Foreigner 178). The humane technology, adopted by Arun Joshi, gives him further opportunity to enlighten himself. The discourse of be 47 friendliness by catholic priest in Scotland brings him closer to the mystic world of religion. It seems that he has started finding the meaning of life. On the very morning up in the mountains and he witnesses the arrival of first ray of the light, seemingly the light being the symbol of knowledge. In it he finds everything illusionary, leading to pain. Love also leads to possessiveness, greed and attachment and that is why he should be detached from those. The philosophy of detachment, constructed by him in modern perspective, is escapism. But he was unaware of it. As the story moves one finds that the said philosophy of detachment was put to a severe test when Sindi falls in love with beautiful, young, sensual, affectionate June. They live and live for the time being as if to survive, because when June wants to marry Sindi, Sindi refuses arguing that both of them were alone and this loneliness was to be evaporated from within and this to convince June about the veracity of his notions. Sindi‟s such views are associated with the issues of emotion and identity. Sindi was himself an emotionally sterile person, devoid of the self and the identity. It seems that Sindi was selfish and that his philosophy of detachment was merely a false construction to run away from the worldly responsibility towards June. One wonder: Is it the Cowardliness? Escapism? Or the fear of getting lost again in the wonderland or at best a man without vision and 48 identity? The question of identity is pertinent to the novels of Arun Joshi and so to Sindi. He could not overcome this problem. The subjective understanding of escapism lies in psychological meaning a character associates to it. A man with rootlessnes can love for the time being to give meaning to life but the responsibility that lies ahead reminds him of the “house on the sand” and he is afraid of constructing the cohabitation to settle and to establish the identity. It is not that Sindi could not start a fresh life with a meaning and self-identity but the precedent experiences are obstacles to it. The past reminds him that he a looser and a looser have to collect strength from within to go for the battle to be victorious, but he could not because he was frustrated, and lacked self-confidence. The climax of the novel comes at a juncture where June, deprived of love and marriage by Sindi, falls in love with Babu Rao Khemka. They get married. About free sex, Khemka and Sindi have discussion „Sindi finds it against the value and

ethics but Khemka argues: “What the hell to do in America if not involved in free sex and partying with mystic, seductive young two leg ladies.” But this opinion of free sex is a false façade of Khemka. As the relation between June and Khemka grow, June accepts sleeping with Sindi in past and it is not digested by Khemka. He slaps June and recklessly drives onto the road to meet untimely death, which is suicide in reality. 49 After the death of Khemka, June finds herself to be pregnant and to save herself from social ostracism requests Sindi to become the father of the baby in the womb but Sindi refuses. The refusal of Sindi makes June go for abortion and during it, she dies. Sindi was in past deep love with June and he could have saved the life of both Khemka and June but now he is guilty of killing the duo. Pleasure without involvement and love without possessiveness is inaction and escapism. Sindi has committed a crime because of his false detachment. A man without identity, roots, values, ethics, emotions, love, cannot be expected to be redeemed. But the Bhagwad Gita and the Buddhist philosophy held that one has to redeem oneness on this earth only for one‟s own action. He has to redeem himself. Arun Joshi by his own inventions and discoveries makes Sindi realize his mistakes. Psychologically, the fear of guilt haunts till one strives for its redemption in action. The deaths of Babu Khemka and June remind him of his folly and false philosophy of detachment time and again. When the pain and sorrow penetrate deep and become unbearable, one has to swallow the medicine and the medicine for the Sindi is spiritual. He starts thinking that he was a man of extremes and lived in illusion. He feels the reality that June could have been his last partner and anchor to give a meaning to life, to find the self and to establish an identity. But the false concept of detachment, which was 50 like a blind blanket which covered him so far, kept him out of the light of the realities. If he had come to know the reality initially, he could not have lost June. This realization of the truth led to the evaporation of the false philosophy of detachment and he wants to be a man action. Buddha gained enlightenment in the India and Arjuna under the guidance of Krishna performed the righteous action in Bharat (India). The purposeless Sindi too has to become active and he comes back to India. After coming to India, Sindi gets a God-sent opportunity to redeem himself. Mr. Khemka has been declared fraudulent by the Income Tax Department for evading the tax and sentenced to imprisonment. The business stars collapsing and the workers go on strike and starve. The workers persuade Sindi to lead the business, but Sindi refuses on the grounds of detachment and says to Sheila that he has nothing to do with the business. This particular moment is crucial in many ways to understand the novel, novelist, protagonist and the theme of the novel, as well as the identity establishment. Muthu, a worker in the industry, who is illiterate, acts as Bhagwan Krishna to a Ph.D., Mechanical Engineer Sindi. Muthu advocates that the true detachment is not to remain isolated and aloof from the society and the fellows but to be involved in: Attached while being detached. Now Sindi understands the true 51 meaning of detachment and accepts the action as demanded by the workers of the industry and takes the charge of Mr. Khemka‟s establishment. Muthu and his problems bring about a major change in Sindi‟s attitude towards life. Social conditions under which Muthu‟s family and his other co-workers work typically reflect the modern day automation alienation and sufferings. It is “the accumulated despair of their weary lives” (Joshi, The Foreigner 189) that makes Sindi take over the management of the imprisoned Mr. Khemka‟s business, an utterly challenging situation. Given his early track record, it is a caprice in the personality of Sindi to meet life on its terms. Mingling with the workers gives a new meaning to the life of Sindi and he starts gaining the cooperation, love, respect and gradually everything that he missed so far in his life. He is now deeply conscious of his self and the orientation in life. He even gave a new name to himself; instead of Surendra, he calls himself “Surrender Oberoi”. He becomes a typical existential hero

on the path to affirmation. The Indian soil gives him a meaning to life, attachment from self to the world. The journey from west to east reflects his spiritual quest. The long voyage is no more meaningless to him. Rather it helps him to recognise the purpose and meaning of life. Flashback of the novel reveals that the non-attachment can be acquired only in 52 stages – the concept very close to Sartrean realisation of humanity and responsibility making him the Karma yogi of the Bhagwad Gita. At a deeper level, applying the psychological narration, The Foreigner can be viewed as an attempt to plumb man‟s perennial dilemmas. In the novel, Sindi‟s essential responses are projected in two situations: his relations to June in Boston and his contact with the Khemkas in Delhi. In The Foreigner, Arun Joshi through Sindi depicts the keen awareness and deeper understanding of our times. He shows the presence of dissonance and despair in the refined sensibility because of the pursuit of material possessions, individual identity and noninvolvement. The search for meaningful coexistence ends when one achieves the state of happy co-existence and harmony with the fellow beings. The protagonists suffer from a sense of anguish at the meaninglessness of human conditions. They have to confront the darkness of the soul which is the result of the industrialisation and mechanisation in our life. Sindi represents the solutions to the meaninglessness pf life. He suggests that one can realise the essence of life by liberating the self from the clutches of cruel civilisation and by paying due attention to the calls of inner being. The establishing of identity of Sindi at the closing of the novel represents the only way of saving man from the purposelessness and degradation of the 53 contemporary meaningless world. As the urbanisation and industrialisation become more rapid, the issues of identity, self, values, ethics and belief, along with social responsibility, become more significant. The identity conflict in The Foreigner unravels the facets of crisis in modern man‟s life, chaos and confusion in the minds of the contemporary men and then correlates it to the human conditions using the humane technology, as pointed out by Rashmi Gaur. Thus Sindi represents the chronicle of the chaos as well as a mode of quest for the identity. The identity which Sindi got at the end of the novel shows the only solution available to control the dehumanising impact of science and technology. It is to maintain an optimum balance between science and technology and ethics and values. Thus, impelled by his intrinsic nature, Sindi‟s higher and enlightened self accepts involvement as the only sane option. At times the identity of the Sindi can be compared to that of the Karna of the Mahabharata because both the characters suffer from the identity conflict and crisis but at many times the resemblance is quite contradictory as well. Sindi Oberoi‟s life can be viewed as a yatra, a pilgrimage, long unpredictable journey of Buddha in search of truth and knowledge, to be enlightened in due course of time. Sindi after 54 going through a long conflict between the saint and the lusty beast in him finds a solution to his problem. The identity conflict in the protagonist of The Foreigner is many folded. Though Sindi involves himself in an earnest quest for lifesustaining values, he is not able to overcome the miseries of past completely. He also knows that one ought to be held responsible for one‟s actions...an intuitive realisation of the operation of the Law of Karma. Once Sindi realises that there is a chance to redeem the past, he detaches himself from his ego, transcends his self-absorption and recklessly involves himself in lives, other than his own. The close of the novel testifies to such an assumption, as reflected in his last meeting with Sheila. When she gets up and is at the point of leaving his office, Sindi requests her to stay on for some time: “If you can wait ten minutes, I will come with you…May be we could have tea at Wengers” (Joshi, The Foreigner 191). This invitation, coming as it does from a man who has very bitter memories of female relationships, is a significant pointer to the change in Sindi‟s behaviour. His invitation to her for a cup of tea at Wengers should not be treated merely as an act of formality. Such courtesy speaks

of the human involvement of Sindi which reflects his overcoming of the identity conflict. The ending note of the novel with the pronoun “We” reflects that whatever be the magnitude of the detachment, it is recoverable. 55 The credit of the novelist lies in the fact that the philosophical march in the novel in not devoid of the taste of aestheticism and through the mouth of Sindi the whole philosophy of the Vedanta, Karma, detachment and involvement concepts of Lord Krishna, flows like the perennial flowing river. Sindi‟s character enlightens the reader through his identity that the human life is full of suffering and misery caused by certain misconception of the world‟s aspects but there is always a way to overcome the misery and suffering, be it by redemption or by repentance but one has to accept that one cannot escape from his sins or the past mistakes, and one has to surrender oneself to the supreme power. This makes the protagonist‟s identity not a weak or loose character but worthy to be adored and feel inspired. The title of the novel The Foreigner symbolises a symbolic interest in the larger interest and context of the human existence. The character of Sindi portrays the sense of metaphysical anguish at the meaninglessness of life. The unreality and transitoriness, associated with the word “Foreign” permeate the whole texture of the novel. Arun Joshi‟s novel can be compared with T.S. Eliot‟s The Wasteland. But there are remarkable differences between the two as well. The characters of T. S. Eliot fails to resurrect themselves but Sindi‟s identity depicts a remarkable and exemplary courage in his 56 capacity for regeneration when he is thrown into managing Khemka‟s chaotic business. At dawn it starts raining: It was first of the monsoons, carrying a freshness and coolness that was welcome change from the humid heat of the previous day. The shower represents fertility, reawakening, rebirth and his regeneration. That afternoon the sky is clear and he goes to the Muthu‟s wretched dwelling place. The symbol of the clear sky suggests the emergence of new identity, light of knowledge that was to dawn upon Sindi. So, the new identity is going to be shaped. Sindi is out from the cave of the darkness and the whole world in the form of dawn‟s rays is ready to embrace him, to welcome him and to say: “It is better to be late than never” (Joshi, The Foreigner 195). Lastly what comes out from the conflicting nature of the protagonist of The Foreigner, Sindi Oberoi, is that the life rotates in the flashback style. If life is full of suffering the human nature is to overcome that. The Niskama Karma yogi in the form of Arjuna came in Mahabharata after the struggle, confusion, frustration and confession. Struggle, confusion, frustration and confession are the realities of human life. No one can escape them and all have to face them. The self on earth is meant to acquire an identity. At the same time, the identity conflict in The Foreigner through Sindi implies that 57 men are trapped in false beliefs and self-created agenda of life which evaporates with the passage of time. To blame society for every misfortunate of life is escapism and the solution to such problems lies in the fact that if one cannot change the social order, it does not imply that the society is bad. Rather one needs to actively participate in the system to change it. One can‟t change the system while remaining aloof to the system and society but by going within that only can help to take out the anomalies of the system and the society. The identity of Sindi is not only the identity of a character of Arun Joshi‟s The Foreigner; rather it is an identity of the millions of the young generation of the world, who have a lot of questions but no answer. It is the call of the world that when industrialisation and the urbanisation are at the highest peak , alienation is the natural result and if this alienation is allowed to continue, the whole system , be it the system of the West or of the East, will collapse and the anarchy and dehumanisation will prevail. The identity of Sindi is a warning to evolve a system to meet the need and challenges of the time. Sindi taking the charge of Mr. Khemka‟s business symbolises the labour welfare and the induction of the Corporate Social Responsibility. This makes it more important today than it was ever before. 58 On social

grounds, it reminds of the weakening social values and ethics, so much so that it put a threat to marriage as an institution. Love, emotions and familial values are basics of the society. In absence of these values, the society itself will collapse. What Sindi did was the outcome of social conditionality. That Sindi loves but cannot marry reflects the identity conflict and he is torn apart between West and East. But there can be justification for such abnormal psyche. The conflict could be between the values of the West and there of the East. But it is to be borne in mind that there could be differences in the values of the West and East but there are always some universal values which apply to all societies and nations. The identity of the “The Foreigner,” Sindi, is crushed between the two cultures, but what he felt and needed was the amalgamation, not the acculturation. The culture-shock is the result of heavy industrialisation and to escape that a balance between the use of science and technology is required. Spirituality is the ultimate healer of the wound of the past and that is why Sindi could satisfy his quest for identity in the Land of Spirituality--India. The events of life are uncontrollable and one gets easily trapped in them. The death of some close relatives and friends shatters the confidence but the resurrection and rebirth can fill the vacuum. The involvement without undue attachment is a key to affirmation. The 59 life‟s bitter and sweet experience helps to achieve the affirmation. The affirmation by action is near to Karma yoga in spirituality. From Boston to Delhi has been a journey from alienation to arrival, from selfishness to sacrifice, and from being to becoming. It is a coming out from the “foreignness” and realising that there are other tasks to be done in future even if those are as meaningless as of the past.of life based on “hindu beliefs” that establishes ...

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Women Characters in Arun Joshi’s Novels -An Embodiment of Human Values

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 Language in India www.languageinindia.com11 : 9 September 2011Shivani Vashist, Ph.D.

Women Characters in Arun Joshi‟s

Novels - An Embodiment of Human Values 279

LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 11 : 9 September 2011

ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.G. Baskaran, Ph.D.L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.

Women Characters in Arun Joshi’s Novels

-An Embodiment of Human Values

Shivani Vashist, Ph.D.

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Arun Joshi and His Novels

 – 

Emphasis on the Senselessness of Contemporary Life

Arun Joshi

‟s

literary career began in 19

60‟s

. He produced 5 novels and a short storycollection

The Survivor 

. His novels emphasise the absurdity and senselessness of contemporary life in which technological domination has reduced man to a marionette caught

up in life‟s chaotic su

rge with no avenue to escape. Almost all his protagonists represent

common man‟s disenchantment with materialistic aggrandisement

. The novelist shows the

 

 

Language in India www.languageinindia.com11 : 9 September 2011Shivani Vashist, Ph.D.

Women Characters in Arun Joshi‟s

Novels - An Embodiment of Human Values 280hollowness of relationships and the absence of any ameliorating vision in a world orderdominated by technology through several incidents.

Arun Joshi’s Female Characters

 

Muc

h emphasis has been given to Joshi‟s

male characters, but his female characters too needdue recognition. His novels are replete with association and interaction of protagonists withwomen characters who are the torch bearers to the ones caught in the labyrinth.

Kathy and Anna

Joshi‟s

first novel,

The Foreigner 

is the story of a youth born of an English mother and anIndian father who died when he was only four, his uncle in Kenya brought him up. InEngland, where Sindi had his early education, he had amorous relationships with Anna andKathy. Anna, a woman of about thirty-five, a minor artist and separated from her husband,gets physically involved with S

indi just to regain “her lost youth”

(143). Once she regains herself-respect, she deserts him without any consideration for his feelings. Kathy also leaves himafter having intimate relations with him for a few weeks to go back to her husband because

“she thought marriage was sacred and had to be maintained at all costs”

(144).

Sindi‟s

futile association with both these women characters, Anna and Kathy, gives a distinctshape to his character and personality. Another female character in the novel is June whoembodies human values. She feels entrapped by the materialistic entropy of the Americansociety. She also attempts to provide inner peace and contentment to Sindi.

Billy and Tuula

Chronologically the second novel by Arun Joshi is

The Strange Case of Billy Biswas

. Tuula isperhaps the first person to correctly read B

illy‟s mind. She correctly perceives

B

illy‟s acute

awareness of the incongruity of the modern civilisation influenced by materialisticaggrandisement. Billy, due to his hypersensitivity, is constantly haunted by the call from theprimitive world which is still uncontaminated by the sophistications, restraints andinterference of the civilised world wherein lie the roots of man. Tuula informs Romi thatB

illy is “

an

exceptional person” (22) and “feels something inside him...

A great force,

urkraft 

, a...

a primitive force”

(23).

Billy and Meena

Billy comes back to India and is appointed Professor of Anthropology at the DelhiUniversity. His mother introduces him to Meena, a pretty young daughter of a retired civilservant. He hurriedly gets married to Meena. Meena represents the hollowness andsuperficiality of the modern phoney society and lacks that

“rare degree of empathy” thatcould have enabled her to understand her husband‟s vexed mind

(185). Her lack of empathy

and “sufficient idea of human suffering” lead

s to a marital fiasco.

 

 

Language in India www.languageinindia.com11 : 9 September 2011Shivani Vashist, Ph.D.

Women Characters in Arun Joshi‟s

Novels - An Embodiment of Human Values 281

Meena‟s

upbringing, her ambitions, twenty years of contact with a phoney society - all hadensured that she should not have it. So,

“

the more I tried to tell her what was corroding me,bringing me to the edge of despair so to speak, the more resentful she became

”

(185).Billy is soon estranged from her. She herself acknowledges to Romi

“perhaps I just don‟tunderstand him as a wife should”

(76). Meena in reality is a hollow character, truly symbolicof her generation. Her incapacities are generic, rather than individual:He feels terribly sick of the post- independence upper class Indian society lostin

the superfluity of life. The „kitch‟ culture of the affluent India which his

wife Meena, the daughter of a civil servant and educated in the bestmissionary convent, +

represents, drives him out of the society (Mathur and Rai1980:35)

Billy and Bilasia

Contrary to Meena is Bilasia. Through her Billy

receives “the truest perceptions of life”

which were elusive and communicable only in the language of visions (142). She representsthe purest essence of a life aff 

irming source. Billy‟s union with

Bilasia is not only the unionof two bodies, but also an attempt of a split-self to realise the whole. Bilasia represents reallove as opposed to Meena who is a representative of the greedy mercenary civilisation.Bilasia is the essence of the primitive force who helped Billy to replace his restlessness with

“Divine serenity”

(Urmil 2001: 58). Unlike Meena who had repelled and deadened it, she isable to enliven B

illy‟s soul.

Tuula

 – 

Total Disregard for Money

Like Bilasia, Tuula, an educated and sensitive woman, also has a great influence on Billy.Devoid of exhibitionism or self-consciousness, which was common in other people living in aphoney materialistic world, Tuul

a attracts him because of her “

total disregard of 

money”

(176). She follows a simpl

e philosophy of life based on “hindu beliefs” that establishes need

of a minimum of goods for survival by man (176). She embodies extraordinary intuition andempathy, which Meena lacks and, thus, is unable to understand her husband.

Leela in

The Last Labyrinth

In

The Last Labyrinth ,

Leela symbolises the scientific attitude and also showcases itsinability to impart inner satisfaction to man. Bhaskar is attracted towards her fetish foranalysis and explanation. Though he maintains sexual relationship with her for six months,yet is still baffled with her:She analysed like others breathe. If we are talking of compulsions, there was a woman whohad compulsions- to talk, to analyse. There was nothing that she could not work out throughcool analysis: the universe, the living and the dead, worlds seen and unseen (78).Leela reads and analyses, but s

he has little knowledge about “the roots of the world‟sconfusion”

(80). Bhaskar tells her about his emptiness and the voices that he hears all the

 

 

Language in India www.languageinindia.com11 : 9 September 2011Shivani Vashist, Ph.D.

Women Characters in Arun Joshi‟s

Novels - An Embodiment of Human Values 282time. She feels concerned, analyses his problem but is unable to solve it. Bhaskar franklyremarks:Leela Sabnis was a muddled creature. As muddled as me. Muddled by herancestry, by marriage, by divorce, by too many books. When she made love-yes-when she made love, the confusion momentarily lifted. But immediatelyafter, as she stood smoking looking down at me... The confusion descendedin one roaring storm (77-78).Som B

haskar‟s affair with

Leela Sabnis fizzles out as it does not give him any sense of true

 belonging. Bhaskar‟s mother‟s reliance on faith and his father‟s fetish f 

or knowledge goadhim to leave Leela.

Geeta

Bhaskar‟s wife

Geeta is an embodimen

t of trust and faith, “

it enveloped her, this trust, likethe amniotic flu

id envelopes the embryo protecting her slim shanks and tender white arms”

(63). Bhaskar, on the other hand, is totally devoid of it. From the very beginning he is verymuch aware of his handicap.I needed the trust-

who doesn‟t? I needed it all the more b

ecause i did not trustmyself, or my men, or my fate, or the ceaseless travel on the social wheel.Between the empty home and the cluttered offices-so many men, unknown,unknowable, each with a quiver of axes to grind

 – 

between these two poles of existence, friendless in a city i did not love and which, for that matter, did notlove me, even though it eyed my money, in this whore of a city what i needemost was to be reassured that all was well (63).Geeta is the perfect wife anyone can ever dream for - she

is intelligent, sophisticated, “

aware

of the pitfalls of the world”, sensible, loving and trusting

(63). When Bhaskar meets Geeta, itis basically her trust in life that draws him towards

her. “

If discontent is my trademark, trustis G

eeta‟s... Geeta trus

ts like

 birds fly, like fish swim”

(63). Geeta, like B

haskar‟s mother and

Anuradha, is a firm believer of religion and has great enthusiasm for temples, shrines, saintsand astrologers. Bhaskar, though married her and possessed her physically, is unable to

understand her. “

W

hy then this trust in the world‟s mechanism, this faith that the engine shall

not seize, or worse

, explode”

(63). Her endurance, equanimity and certitude - qualities socompletely lacking in B

haskar, make her look like a “

child of another world, traversing, like

a plane at a higher altitude”

(69).The novel projects the contrast between B

haskar‟s obsession with doubt and reason , and

G

eeta‟s unwavering reliance on trust and faith. Despite

B

haskar‟s “

l

ittle fascinations” that

puzzle her, she has only an enduring trust in him (73).

Anuradha and Bhaskar

Bhaskar‟s relentless and hysterical pursuit of 

Anuradha is a traumatic affair that makes himaware of the meaningless existence in the modern civilisation and brings him face to face

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3. The Homecoming by Arun Joshi

The Homecoming by Arun JoshiTVP Admin December 2, 2010 Arts 0 comments

SUMOME

Quite recently, in my rather long sojourn on the long and winding road of literary exploration, I chanced upon a short story titled The Homecoming by Arun Joshi. The story is about a young soldier who returns home from the war front, only to find the whole place strange and un-natural. The story is a dark and stark portrayal of the hypocrisy and ignorance that plagues our society, especially in the self proclaimed high-brow, intellectual circles.

After hectic and bloody battles on the Eastern front, the protagonist returns home and is welcomed warmly by his family and fiancee. He tries to go back to his civilian life- the life led by his fiancee and his family. However, he cannot find it within himself to mingle with the crowd his family hangs out with. His sister takes him to a party and he discovers that the whole lot are just shallow phonies, the kind of people who are big on the words and minuscule on the action. He realises that these people keep talking about things they have no experience of, but they do it anyway because it makes them look and feel intellectual. The story documents in alarming detail the thought processes of a war scarred man who finds the people around him to be hollow. The story is a brilliant depiction of how popular culture and society often paint pictures that they want, despite the fact that they often know nothing about it.

The author, Arun Joshi was a remarkable writer, noted for his works such as The Strange Case of Billy Biswas and The Apprentice. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel The Last Labyrinth in 1982. Arun Joshi was an Indian writer in English before Salman Rushdie set the stage on fire, a time when it was rather hazardous for someone to attempt to do what Joshi did. At that time, Indian writing did not enjoy the reputation or glamour as today and the field was generally shunned and ignored by the literary world.

Moreover, Arun Joshi never indulged in promotional campaigns to publicise his work. An indrawn individual, he did not enter literary circles and kept himself out of the limelight and the glare of the media. Born in Varanasi, he completed his studies in the U.S and returned to India to

become an industrial manager. He took up writing on the side, as another phase of his corporate life.

The Homecoming is an unsentimental story that states matter of fact-ly the emotional turmoil the young lieutenant of the army goes through in his attempts to melt in to civilian social life. Moreover, the story is noted for tearing away the fake facades under which modern society tends to lie low, modern fads which are but hypocritical. In the story, the protagonist’s fiancee tells him that she has put on weight and therefore is going to diet. The young man is taken back to the time just after the end of the war when he had been in charge of a relief centre where he had to dole out food to the refugees. He says,

“Everyone was hungry, once in a way, but to be always hungry, he had seen, was different.  It made a bit of animal of you, he thought, turned you stupid…. When they got their ration they swallowed it in about two minutes.  After that they could see that they were as hungry as before, that in fact they were waiting for the next meal.  The old people had not bothered to look for food.  If it came their way they ate it.  If not they lay down and died.  That was the way it had been where he had come from.”The story is replete with stunning images from the battle field, images that are meant to chill the reader to the very bones. The story further goes on to relate the doings of a self proclaimed poet, the most intellectual and well read person in the party our protagonist goes to. We see him indulging in banal discussions that reminds one very much of the pointless discussions that occur in our mainstream media with alarming frequency. His rush to define ‘genocide’ and to paint a picture of a terrible war from the comfort of his metaphorical arm chair is despicable and Arun Joshi is bent on tearing away that facade.

The story is about all those pseudo-intellectual campaigners who pretend to have nothing but the interests of our jawans in their hearts, about those poets who write poems about a soldier’s widow when they are yet to see even a soldier, about those critics and analysts who dish out trivia on wars and conflicts but could not operate a slingshot to save their lives. The story stands against the hypocrisy and deceit that has penetrated deep in to our society, falseness perpetrated by the elite and the intellectual who have no idea what is actually going on.

The story is an appeal in a little more than a couple of thousand words to stop talking if you do not know what you are talking about.

Aju Basil James

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1. 1. Research on Humanities and Social Sciences www.iiste.orgISSN 2222-1719 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2863 (Online)Vol.3, No.8, 2013 - Selected from International Conference on Recent Trends in Applied Sciences with Engineering Applications1Existentialism in Arun Joshi’s NovelsMs. Anita Sharma, Asst. ProfessorDepartment of Humanities, Truba Institute of Engineering and Information Technology, BhopalDr. (Mrs.) Seema Raizada,Department of English, Sarojini Naidu Govt. Girls College, BhopalEmail: anita.truba@gmail.comAbstractExistentialism is a twentieth century’s most influential literary and philosophical movement that focuses onindividual existence. It originated in the philosophical and literary works of Sartre and Camus. It focuses onacting on ones conviction in order to arrive at personal truth. Existentialism deals with the problems of themeaning and purpose of life on earth, finding the world as hostile in nature. It is an attitude, an outlook thatemphasizes on the purpose and meaning of human existence in this world. Indian form of existentialism asmanifested in The Gita and The Upanishads deals with the problems of our existence on earth. The basic theoryof existentialism is an insistence on the actual existence of the individual as the basic and important fact, insteadof a reliance on the theories of abstractions. The central doctrine is that man is what he makes of himself; he isnot predestines by a God or by society, or by biology.Keywords: Existentialism, Alienation, Existence, Technology, loneliness, Rootlessness, Labyrinth, Foreignness.The present paper examines theme of existentialism in the novels of Arun Joshi. Arun Joshi adds a newdimension to the genre of Indian Fiction in English by introducing the theme of existentialism in his novels. Hisfictional world is characterized by the alienation of the individual. Arun Joshi’s novels, from The Foreigner toThe City and the River are full of darkness, the darkness of the identity, conflict and personal sufferings.Ultimately there is rejuvenation and elevation from the shadow of the darkness by the arrival of the light in theform of knowledge. Arun Joshi (1939-1993) an author of rarer sensibility ad style, attempts a serious probe intothe existential problem and spiritual disturbances of mankind by fixing his focus on certain individualisticcharacters. His novels demonstrate the edifying lessons of our spiritual heritage that have not been totallyirrelevant with the growth of materialism and the rapid westernization of life in our country. Arun Joshi, atwentieth novelist strongly believes that “Hinduism is a highly existential philosophy that lays too muchemphasis on the right sway of living.” 1The Upanishad teaching is central theme of all of his novels.Arun Joshi’s works are not a product of the imaginative work for the creative writing world. Rather it issomething which is close to him in reality and that is true because he has accepted that much of his writing is hisautobiographical sketches from his stay in America as a student to the world of unseen mystery in India. Thetheme and the motive that Arun Joshi gives to the novel are not based on scientific observation merely but ondiscovering the reality which lies hidden in the actuality of his own life. To understand the novels of Arun Joshi,one need to keep in mind that what he is writing is not the casual effect that he is trying to establish. Rather it ishis experimentation with the moments of the acute suffering situations of human life to study the humanpredicament.Arun Joshi noticed the collapse of old values resulting in absurd universe. He saw contemporary man in searchof a way to lead a meaningful life. He has recorded modern man’s traumas and agonies in his novels. Thisconcept echoes in all his novels. His fictional world is revelation of a world where man is confronted by the selfand the questions of his existence. He

skilfully pen down the man’s inner problems like rootlessness, restlessness,existential dilemma, crisis of identity in the present world. Arun Joshi‘s novels are the revelation of humanpredicament in an indifferent and inscrutable universe. Along with the problem of meaninglessness the presentsociety is full of exploitations. There is only chaos, confusion anarchy in social life. Men do not realize theirduty and responsibility towards others. Arun Joshi was pained to see the chaotic conditions of the society. Hetherefore took into his hand the task of providing a solution to the society to escape from the vicious circle ofrapid industrialization. Thus through the struggles of his protagonists is aims to achieve a good society andhappy and joyful individuals. Distrust, treachery, exploitation, etc., dominate the present world.To understand and analyse the novels of Arun Joshi, it is worthwhile to have a subjective understanding of thenovels rather than that of the objective reality that shaped the protagonist. In the succeeding pages the novels ofArun Joshi in their chronological sequence have been analysed with special reference to the existential andalienation.The most significant and straightforward treatment of the theme of alienation can be found in the novels of ArunJoshi. His maiden novel, The Foreigner (1968) is a very compelling existential work in which the theme of

2. 2.   Research on Humanities and Social Sciences www.iiste.orgISSN 2222-1719 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2863 (Online)Vol.3, No.8, 2013 - Selected from International Conference on Recent Trends in Applied Sciences with Engineering Applications2alienation is treated with great concentration. The Foreigner illustrates the influence of technology on modernman. The modernization and industrialization is heading our civilization to a disaster. Human virtues like affinity,love, sympathy, kindness etc. have disappeared altogether. Modern man in contemporary society finds himselflonely , frustrated, dejected, isolated and almost alienated due to is detachment and non – involvement with hisfellow- beings. The most penetrating problem man faces today is the problem of meaninglessness. Man todaysuffers not from war, famine, persecution, famine and ruin but from one’s own inner problem. Each of us has gotsome or other inner problem. Arun Joshi being himself connected with the industries and technology takes upthis treatment beautifully and emphaticallyThe novel is the main story of Sindi Oberoi a student of Mechanical Engineering– a rootless young man, whotells his own story. The narrative includes Babu, an Indian student in America, June, a simple and passionateAmerican girl, Mr. Khemka, a Delhi industrialist. Sindi describes with honesty and sincerity his search for themeaning. Although an Indian by birth, Sindi feels himself to be an outsider, a foreigner, an alien not onlybecause he is obsessed with the impermanence and transience of things. It is apparent that Sindi’s alienation lieswithin him.Joshi exhibits the agony of loneliness in uncovering the psychological conflict in the character of Sindi Oberoiin his quest for meaning through a series of relationships. Sindi feels himself a foreigner, an outsider, a stranger,not just because he is a Kenya-born Indian living in the United States and later in India without home or familybut because he is obsessed by the impermanence of things. He is a lover, a spectator who wants to stand cut ofthe maze of action dreading involvement. He is an existentialist character- “rootless, restless and luckless in amad, bad and absurd world.”2His rootlessness is rooted in his soul which precipitates one crisis after another. Hetoo acknowledges “I have no roots” (p.143) His loneliness is exaggerated by his withdrawal from society.Living in Kenya, London and Boston, he undergoes various changes through personal experiences. While inKenya, 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 likingfor Kathy. Eventually Kathy abandons him. Sindi’s life in various places at various levels taught him somethingor the other. While studying in London he got a job of dishwashing at a night club in Soho. There are two lastingimpressions of his life. His escapade with Anna, a minor artist separated from her husband who was not yearningfor him or anybody and Kathy, who left him after carrying on with him, for a few weeks and went back to herhusband because she thought “marriage was sacred and had to be maintained at all cost”, (168) these relationstaught him to practice detachment and non-involvement in human emotions. The broken relationship disturbshim, and in America he is “afraid of getting involved” (53) with June, an American girl, in spite of hisdetermination not to get involved. Sindi believes that possession generates pain as it implies involvement. Sindias a student of Engineering at Boston meets June at a foreign student’s gathering. She likes him but he fightshard with himself to escape another affair. Sindi’s sense of detachment and rootlessness is evident June asks himwhere he was from. Sindi’s reaction to the question provides a clue to his alienation: “Everybody always askedme the same silly question. ‘Where are you from?’ as it really mattered a great deal where I was from.” (p. 23)Sindi has misconstructed the term detachment for himself. It’s just a way of avoiding commitment which drivesBabu and June towards death. Sindi confesses “All along I had acted out of lust and greed and selfishness andthey had applauded my wisdom. When I had only sought a detachment I had only driven a man to his death.” (p.6) He realizes his mistake of rejecting Junes love, could have proves last emotional anchor for him. Hisunconcern born of sense of detachment proves fatal and he fails to meet June before her death. The tragedy upsetSindi. He feels miserable because he holds himself indirectly responsible for the death of his beloved June andhis friend Babu. He is upset at the death of Babu. His sense of alienation becomes finely tuned. He wants tomove away from America in search of mental peace. Being isolated he had seen the consequences of practisingdetachment in America. Sindi decides to leave the country and go to India. This he decides with a flip of coinwhich goes in favour of his ancestor’s land. “Like many of my breeds I believed erroneously that I could escapefrom a part of myself by hopping from one land mass to another” (176) for in another development, on reachingNew Delhi while making a casual courtesy call he accepts a job in the firm of Babu Rao Khemka’s father. Hegets a last chance of redemption when he comes to India and takes over Mr. Khemkas business. However first heis unwilling to join the business but all his hesitation dissolve when he visits Muthu who tells to him “But it isinvolvement, sir. Sometimes detachment is in actually getting involved.” (239) He ultimately believes that rightmeaning of detachment. Finally Sindi accepts Muthu’s suggestion to take charge of the factory. This sheds lighton the “message” of disinterested involvement. ‘a line of reasoning that led to the inevitable conclusion that forme, detachment consisted in getting involved with the world.’ (226)The above account shows that Sindi is an existential everyman of our time. It is about things that Sindi wants -the courage to be and the capacity to love. His alienation is of the soul and not of geography. At one place heconfesses that his ‘foreignness’ lies ‘within’ himself and it drives him from crisis to crisis making it difficult for

3. 3.   Research on Humanities and Social Sciences www.iiste.orgISSN 2222-1719 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2863 (Online)Vol.3, No.8, 2013 - Selected from International Conference on Recent Trends in Applied Sciences with Engineering Applications3him to leave ‘himself’ behind wherever he goes. (61) Right from the

starting he is eager to find “the meaning oflife”. He himself wants “to do something meaningful.” (41)Sindi feels an alien everywhere and does not belong to any place, and his words and behaviour create the sameimpression in all those with whom he meets. In the very beginning of their encounter June tells Sindi that hewould be a foreigner anywhere: “There is something strange about you, you know. Something distant. I’d guessthat people are with you they feel like they’re with a human-being. May be it’s an Indian characteristic, but Ihave a feeling you’d be a foreigner anywhere”. (35) Sheila Babu’s sister tells him when he comes to Indiaafterwards: “you are still a foreigner, you don’t belong here”. (149) (122) He muses over his foreignness:Somebody had begotten me without a purpose and so far I had lived without a purpose, unless you could call thesearch for peace a purpose. Perhaps I felt like that because I was a foreigner in America. But then, whatdifference would it have made if I had lived in Kenya or India or any other place for that matter! It seemed to methat I would still be a foreigner. My foreignness lay within me and I couldn’t leave myself behind wherever Iwent. (55)His alienation makes him a total cynical and frustrated. June mother tells him “you are just cynical my boy.”Sindi’s parentage and early life made him a nowhere man. He cultivates a sense of detachment to overcome hispainful past, which includes “Being a product of hybrid culture”. He is aware of his rootlessness. He wants tolove June but is afraid of involvement and marriage. Hence he remarked: “I was afraid of possessing anybodyand I was afraid of being possessed, and marriage meant both”. (91) He develops a theory of attachment whichmakes him deny the love of June which echoes in his these lines when June asks him her he says “Marriagewouldn’t help June. We are alone both you and I. That is the problem. And our loneliness must be resolved fromwithin.” (p.133)Arun Joshi’s second novel The Strange Case of Billy Biswas was published in 1971, is considered as anexistentialist in certain aspect, three years after The Foreigner. But the theme of the novel is again the same. Itdevelops the theme of anxiety and alienation more effectively than The Foreigner.In the novel we are introduced with the protagonist Bimal Biswas; popularly known as Billy Biswas, a BanjaraIndian by caste, who suffers from a sense of alienation about the world around him and at last to get relaxationmove into a primitive world. Billy had his education in Britain and America. At the time when he is in America,The protagonist is alienated from the modern civilization; he seeks and finds his fulfilment in his communionwith the tribal. Here we can see a painful journey of Billy from alienation to affirmation and community.In this novel Arun Joshi display the behaviour of Billy Biswas with the cool, collected ways of Romi Sahai, thecollector friend of Billy, who is also the narrator of the story. The novel commences with a very strong accountof the human and natural association of these two Indian students in America. At the beginning Romi tells usthat Billy belongs to the upper crust of Indian Society. But he also admits that he has not been able tocomprehend Billy properly and fully. As in the case of The Foreigner, this is an equally powerful story of thenarrator’s awakening awareness: “As I grow old, I realize that the most futile cry of man is his impossible wishto understand. The attempt to understand is probably even more futile”. (7) Arun Joshi has created Billy Biswasas a hero who longs intensively to locate his real self not in the environment of westernized culture but in themost innocent, most native even anthropological past of Indian culture.It is often described as existentialist in certain aspects. It is concerned with the crisis of self, the problems ofidentity and the quest for fulfilment. It develops the theme of anxiety and alienation more effectively than thetreatment meted out in his first novel, The Foreigner. Billy’s quest is deeper than Sindi’s. He is born andbrought up in a

fairly comfortable background. He comes “from the upper-upper crust of Indian society.” (9) Hisfamily has “all claims of aristocracy”. (12) Yet Billy, it appears has little interest in the phoney, hot-shot andsordid modern civilization although he lives with his family, he is all alone, isolated and alienated, a stranger inthe real sense of the term. His awareness of the deeper layers of his personality makes him an existentialist,estranged and alienated from the superficial reality of life. He is the predicament of an alienated personality whonever feels at home in the modern bourgeois society.The Strange Case of Billy Biswas makes a complex and interesting piece of narrative structuring which is basedon principles of parallelism and contrast. In short, the narrative methods control very effectively the action, themeaning and the character of the novel. Joshi’s elemental concern in the novel is alienation and community. Theauthor gives evidence of a rare versatile in his second novel adding a new dimension to the theme of alienationin Indian – English fiction.The theme of alienation and rootlessness once again makes its mark in Joshi’s third novel. Shyam Asnani saysthat Arun Joshi’s skill lies “in his ability to describe experience in a human voice so that the texture of theexperience comes through, and his ability to convey the philosophical, moral complexities of human life withoutlosing the life itself.”3Shyam Asnani, “A Study of Arun Joshi’s Fiction”, The Literary Half-Yearly, (July-1978),p.112.

4. 4.   Research on Humanities and Social Sciences www.iiste.orgISSN 2222-1719 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2863 (Online)Vol.3, No.8, 2013 - Selected from International Conference on Recent Trends in Applied Sciences with Engineering Applications4Ratan Rathor of The Apprentice, realizes that there is no escape from society of the self. It is the story of a youngman, who out of sheer exhaustion of joblessness and privation is aim to shed the honesty and the old-worldmorality of his father to become an “apprentice” to the corrupt civilization. One is alienated and rootless in this“phony” world unless one accepts and adjusts to “the guilt” of the modern society in order to belong. Ratan, afterhis initial hesitation yields completely to the corruption of modern society and thrives on it.Ratan’s sense of individuality comes into conflict with his life of hypocrisy. Ratan finally realizes that onecannot live for oneself because no human act is performed in isolation and without consequence. Therefore, eachact should be performed with a sense of responsibility. Hence, out of acute sense of alienation and a quest tounderstand the meaning of life. Ratan undergoes the sternest apprenticeship in the world. Symbolically he statesat the lowest dusting the shoes of the congregation outside the temple every morning on his way to the office.Thus he would like to expiate his sins of cowardice, dishonesty and even indirect murder. He learns the lesson ofhumility. Ratan also feels that he has lost all significant in life and takes himself to be “a nobody”: “I was anobody. A NOBODY - - Deep down I was convinced That I had lost my significance: As an official: as a citizen:as man”. (73) In depicting the painful existentialist predicament of Ratan, Joshi makes him a peculiarly modernman “at once every man and nobody.” 4Arun joshi’s fourth novel, The Last Labyrinth (1981) is a continuation of the existential quest dealt with in hisearlier novels. It explores dilemma of existence with greater intensity and against a wider backdrop of experience.Arun Joshi here also continues his engagement with the theme of alienation and dispossession. But we find adifferent dimension and direction in the treatment of the theme of alienation and dispossession in The LastLabyrinth. It portrays the spiritual alienation and dispossession of Som Bhaskar against the backdrop of ahaunting world of life, love, God and death.The novel is a story of its protagonist Som Bhaskar, a millionaire industrialist, who

represents the contemporaryphase of the dilemma of modern man groping through the labyrinth of life, existence and reality. It exhibits theconfluence of the existentialist anxiety as exemplified in The Foreigner, the ‘Karmik’ principles of ‘detachment’and ‘action’ on the pattern of ‘The Bhagvad Gita’ as shown in The Apprentice, and the ceaseless longing for theessence of life being “obsessed with a latent quest for’ a great force, unkraft” as observed in The Strange Case ofBilly Biswas. Thus, the concourse of the ‘triveni’ in the form of the mystical urge of Som Bhaskar is presented inhis incessant longing for the vitals of life and existence.The Last Labyrinth is like other novels of Arun Joshi. It requires an understanding of the revelation of a worldwhere human race is confronted by the self and the question of his existence is directly correlated with theidentity issues. An illustrious novel, The Last Labyrinth ideally depicts the craziness, pain, agony and selfishnessof love. The title of the story is self-explanatory in the sense that at the end of the story one of the characters,Anuradha, disappeared in the last labyrinth to hide herself from the central character, Som. The Last Labyrinth isclassical in its sense and meaning but modern in perception, whereas medieval in its background and plots. Theunderstanding of the novel requires the reader to understand it through multi-dimensional approach, since withthe meaning and quest for identity of life, at any particular juncture of life, can be better perceived through it.Arun Joshi’s fifth and last novel, The City and The River, was first published in 1990 by Vision Books Limited,New Delhi. It strikes an entirely different theme from Arun Joshi’s earlier novels. It is a review on the politicalscenario of the times. The events portrayed in the novel are reminiscent of the days of the Emergency of 1974-75in India.The novel exists as a powerful commentary on the political scenario of the post, the present and the future; itrightly claims a privileged place among the political novels of out literature. It is an existentialist commentary onthe absurdity of human situation. Like his earlier novels, herein, too, he continues to explore the existential andhostile world. The story is imbued with an eternal significance. The scene of action is a Nowhere City. The twoimportant characters in it, the teacher, the ageless Yogeshwara, and the disciple, the Nameless-one, symbolizethe processes of regeneration and decay. Here we find the Grand Master’s urge to dominate and the boatmenstand the desire to assert one’s identity. The atmosphere of the city is absolutely unnatural and chaotic.The City and the River forms a link in Arun Joshi’s existential concerns. Among the existential tenets such asabsurdity, anarchy, meaninglessness, emptiness, alienation and despair, “the most important element whichstresses the sanctity of the subjective individuality is the authencity of the self.” 5In The City and The River Joshi turns his focus from the private to the public. Instead of focusing with theexistential predicament of an individual, here he deals with the socio-political and existentialist crisis of theentire “City” and thus of the whole humanity itself. In this novel, too, he takes up his favourite existentialistissues of faith, commitment, choice, responsibility and identity but the way he handles them is somewhatdifferent from that of his earlier novels. Here he looks into these issues with the spectacles of politics, equipmenthe has not been used to, raising the novel to the level of politico-allegorical satire.

5. 5.   Research on Humanities and Social Sciences www.iiste.orgISSN 2222-1719 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2863 (Online)Vol.3, No.8, 2013 - Selected from International Conference on Recent Trends in Applied Sciences with Engineering Applications5The story is imbued with an eternal significance. The scene of action is a Nowhere City. The two importantcharacters in it, the teacher, the ageless Yogeshwara, and the disciple, the Nameless-One, symbolize

theprocesses of regeneration and decay.Thus the prominent characters in the novel, suffer from existential predicament for different reasons. “Theysuffer from alienation, weariness, boredom, rootlessness, meaninglessness in their lives”6In this relentless search“they withdraw from human ambience to natural environs of peace and tranquillity but here too they find noresponse and equanimity. They are nowhere men in quest of a somewhere place”7They are tormented by theirhollow existence. Joshi is obsessively occupied with the individual’s quest for meaning and value, freedom andtruth that provide spiritual nourishment to the estranged self in a seemingly chaotic and meaningless world.Existential conflict in Joshi springs from the self’s craving for the fulfilment of certain psycho-emotional needs,from the desire to overcome the horror of separateness, of powerlessness and of listlessness.Arun Joshi’s novels express the anguish of sensitive individuals continually tortured by their spiritualuprootedness, clash & confusion of values generated by the sheerly materialistic, self-centtred & corrupt society.Almost all his novels deal with the issues of existential anguish, alienation and dispossession. He is mainlyconcerned with the dimensions of individual & social existence.ReferencesPrimary SourcesThe Foreigner. New Delhi: Hind Pocket Books.The Strange Case of Billy Biswas. New Delhi: Asia Publishing House.The Apprentice, New Delhi: Orient Paperback.The Last Labyrinth. New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks.The City And The River. New Delhi: Vision Books, 1990Secondary Sources1. Purabi Bannerji, “A Winners Secrets” Interview, The Sunday Statesman, 27 Feb., 1983.2. Thakur Guruprasad, “The Lost Lonely Questers of Arun Joshi’s Fiction,” The Fictional World of Arun Joshi,edited by R. K. Dhawan. New Delhi: Classical Publishing Company, 1986, p.152.3. Shyam Asnani, “A Study of Arun Joshi’s Fiction”, The Literary Half-Yearly, (July-1978), p.112.4. William Barret, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (Garden City: 1958), p.5.5. Subhas Chandra, “Towards Authenticity: A Study of The City and the River,” in R. K. Dhawan (ed.) TheNovels of Arun Joshi (New Delhi, 1992), p.266.6. Sidharth Sharma, Arun Joshi’s The City and the River: A Parable of the Times” In Kumar and Ojha: 81-90.2003.7. Dr. S. P. Swain and Samartray, The Problem of Alienation and the Quest for identity in Joshi Novels. InBhatnagar: 114-120.

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Joshi's Works Joshi's Contemporaries Related Groups

Indian Prose Fiction in English Dates:

Life: 07-07-1939 to 1993 Activity: 1968 to 1990Places:

India (Birth; Primary Activity)Activities:

Novelist  (Primary)

Arun Joshi (1045 words)

Pier Paolo Piciucco Ed. by John Thieme, University of East Anglia The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 9.3.1.03: Post-colonial Indian Writing and Culture,

1947-present. Vol. editors: David Huddart (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Joel Kuortti (University of

Turku)

Becoming a novelist in the pre-Rushdie era – that is to say, at a time when Indian fiction in English had not consolidated a reputation in the West and its chances of success at home were poor – was a hazardous matter for an Indian writer. Moreover, an indrawn individual, who did little to promote his books and who refrained from entering literary circles, found even more obstacles on his way. Starting from this situation, and considering the fact that Arun Joshi was essentially an industrialist who cultivated his love for literature only in his spare time, it is easy to understand why Joshi cynically rejoiced that not even his neighbours knew he wrote books. In spite of his neighbours' ignorance, however, Joshi little by little …

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Citation:Piciucco, Pier Paolo. "Arun Joshi". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 February 2004[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2414, accessed 16 August 2015.]

Articles on Joshi's works1. The Apprentice 2. The City and the River 3. The Foreigner 4. The Last Labyrinth 5. The Strange Case of Billy Biswas

Related Groups1. Indian Prose Fiction in English

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2 A SYNOPSIS OF THE DISSERTATION “THE PROBLEMS OF THE SELF IN THE NOVELS OF ARUN JOSHI: A CRITICAL STUDY” My attempt regarding the thesis is to explore the various Problems of the Self in the light of the analysis of the four novels of Arun Joshi (b.1939 & d.1993), an Indian English writer. Joshi’s literary career began with the publication of The Foreigner in 1968. The other novels of Arun Joshi are The Strange Case of Billy Biswas (1971), The Apprentice (1974), The Last Labyrinth (1981) and The City and The River (1990). He has to his credit a collection of short stories too, The Survivor (1975). He won the prestigious Sahitya Akademy award for his fourth novel, ‘The Last Labyrinth’ in 1982. Notwithstanding the rich semantic multi-facetedness of the word ‘self’, it has acquired wide currency among scholars of philosophy and psychology. Some identify the self with intelligence, intellect as

understood here is comprehensive enough to include thought, idea, memory, perception, reason and will. Intellect is an instrument for the self to use, however organically the two are connected. 3 Joshi’s novels probe deep into the dark and innermost issues of the human mind, illuminate the hidden corners of the physical and mental make-up of the characters. In his fictional world, Joshi tries his level best to delineate the predicament of the modern man who is confronted by the self and the question of his existence. As a novelist exposing human predicament, Joshi visualizes the inner crisis of the modern man and finds and gets convinced that the most besetting problems that man faces today are the problems of the self, like alienation, identity crisis, sense of void and existential dilemma. These problems are so pervasive that they threaten to eat into every sphere of human activity. As a result, man fails to discern the very purpose behind life and the relevance of existence in a hostile world. When he handles these problems of the self, Joshi is careful enough not to bid good bye to our cultural heritage and imperishable moral values. His fiction explores self and brings to a central focus the way in which the self tries to assess its involvement in the alienation from the family and society. Joshi’s characters are mentally disturbed and filled with despair, selfhatred and self-pity, for they regard themselves as strangers in the physical world. Isolated from the self as well as the society and family, Joshi’s characters are forlorn and tear themselves away from the velvety embrace of their society 4 and live like strangers. The struggle of the protagonist against social conventions and inner conflicts between what he really is and what society expects him to be, finds a pivotal place in Joshi’s novels. For Joshi’s protagonists, the society of the latter half of the 20th century has lost its meaning. They have no sense of belonging to the society in which they live. The live in their own world, thinking their thoughts, speaking to their own selves disappointed and depressed. Arun Joshi is concerned with the predicament of modern man and is sensitively alive to the various dimensions of pressures exerted by the complex character and demands of the society in which contemporary man is destined to live. The protagonists of his novels are abject outsiders and stark strangers. The awareness of man’s rootlessness and strangeness and the consequential quest for a meaningful self is the keynote of Joshi’s novels. It is the inner crisis of the modern man that has occupied Arun Joshi’s primary interest in his novels that are built around the dark and dismal experiences of the soul. Though Arun Joshi’s work has attracted serious critical attention, no single critical approach can really be adequate in analyzing the multi-faceted talent of a rare genius. Critics and scholars have discussed his fiction on the basis of evidence provided by his works, letters, and interviews etc., in order to 5 approach his work from different angles. Though attempts have been made to place his work on the existentialist, realist, modernist traditions etc., no specific attempt has been made to focus on the various problems of the self through the analysis of his novels. There has hardly been any attempt to study Joshi’s fiction on the basis of the personality problems of his characters from a sociopsychological perspective. Though the attempt is a modest one, the issue is a crucial one, because in his novels he probes the depths of human experience to portray the repercussions of human conflict on the inner lives of his protagonists on the one hand, their psychological, social and religious effects on the other in a subtle manner. Whenever critics have touched upon the issue of Joshi’s concern with the problems of the self, they have dealt with it very vaguely or left the discussion incomplete. Hence this study stands justified in its attempt to have a comprehensive search for the problems of the self. The study uses various disciplines like sociology and psychology in a flexible manner and in different combinations. The study attempts to broaden critical perspectives that allow a fuller understanding of Arun Joshi’s fiction. The study also endeavours to expose the painfulness of human isolation and

alienation by studying them at the familial and social levels and goes deep into the reasons for alienation from one’s own self, community and family. The introductory chapter 6 of this dissertation attempts to make a general survey and criticism of Joshi’s four major novels and a brief picture of the major influences on the author. The second chapter examines specifically the sense of alienation and void experienced by the principal characters in the novels of Arun Joshi. Modern man finds himself estranged not only from his fellow men, but also from himself, having nothing to fall back upon in moments of crisis. He suffers from a gnawing sense of void and meaninglessness. In discussing the theme of alienation in Arun Joshi’s novels, we are mainly concerned first with man’s alienation from society which is the most prevalent kind of alienation and secondly his alienation from his own self. Arun Joshi’s recurrent theme is alienation in different aspects and his heroes are self-centered persons prone to self-pity and escapism. In spite of their weaknesses, they are, however, genuine seekers who strive to grope towards the purpose in life and self-fulfilment. In his novels, Joshi attempts to deal with the various facets of the theme of alienation in relation to self, the society around and humanity at large. Arun Joshi’s fiction is filled with the people who are alienated from themselves, from God and society. His fiction is a sincere effort to analyze his unique way of handling the theme of alienation. An attempt is made here to examine how best Arun Joshi tackles the problem of alienation in the modern Indian context. 7 Chapter three elucidates Joshi’s depiction of the element of identity crisis manifested in the form of spiritual decline, moral degeneration, slothfulness and psychic perversions with special reference to the four novels. The need to feel a sense of identity stems from the very condition of human existence. Quest for identity is the reflection of any modern man who is without roots of any kind: social, spiritual, personal or any other. Identity crisis in general refers to psychological stress or anxiety about the sense of identity. A person undergoes the psychologically distressing experience when he feels that his personal identity is being spoiled or threatened. In short, identity crisis means the feeling of the loss of a sense of personal identity or depersonalization. When a person loses his sense of identity, he feels alienated and lonely and makes frantic effort to seek, organize and affirm his sense of identity. Chapter four discusses the existentialist aspects in Arun Joshi’s novels. Existentialist thinkers chose to define and describe the burning human experiences of anxiety, anguish, guilt, dread, despair, alienation, absurdity etc., of the post war world in their own ways. Their findings did exert tremendous influence on the thought pattern of the literary artists all over the world. There is a very pronounced impact of existentialism on Arun Joshi’s writings. All his novels from The Foreigner to The City and The River have in them an 8 undercurrent of existentialist philosophy. Arun Joshi who is obsessively concerned with the human predicament explores the human psyche so as to unravel the mystery of the human existence. Like Sartre, Joshi is also primarily concerned with the action that is concrete and directed towards the individual who is free to choose for himself a personal way of life out of nothingness and vacuity around. The fifth chapter dwells upon the fictional techniques that Arun Joshi employs in elucidating and establishing his themes. Joshi adopts the first person narrative technique in The Foreigner, The Apprentice and The Last Labyrinth. The Strange Case of Billy Biswas, like Conrad’s Lord Jim, is narrated from the witness-narrator’s point of view. Another novel fictional technique that Arun Joshi resorts to is dramatic monologue. Joshi’s novels are rather rich in imagery. Arun Joshi’s is very good at similes and metaphors as well. One of the most powerful fictional techniques employed by Joshi is the technique of flashback or reminiscence. Joshi was also fond of the use of archetypes in his novels. Apart from using the image of labyrinth and void, Joshi explores the existential anguish with the help of

the language of the dreams. The dreams function as a mirror which reflects the intricate workings of the inner mind of the characters. 9 These narrative devices and fictional techniques smoothly blend with Joshi’s unique handling of the subject of the problems of the self. Chapter six is the conclusion, which weaves together and sums up the themes of the previous chapters. It can be found that Joshi’s vision does not limit itself to the meaninglessness and indeterminacy of the world. Amidst the pervading gloom and monotony of their universe, most of the protagonists of Joshi feel impelled to live in some acts of kindness and benevolence that ennoble human life. Just as Eliot proposes a conditional escape from the degenerate state of affairs, Joshi also presents at least a few examples of liberating human actions. Joshi’s characters are true representatives of modern men who are engaged in the quest for the self and search for meaning in life.