Pulkita Anand
Assistant Professor, Department of English and Modern European Languages, Banasthali Vidyapith, Rajasthan. ORCID: 0000-0003-0586-3975. Email: pulkitaanand@ymail.com
Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.27
Abstract
Man has desires to explore the unexplored, to chart the uncharted, and to know the unknown. R K Narayan takes us to different terrain in his work My Dateless Diary: An American Journey (1960). Though the book was written quite late by Narayan, it has an unmistakable stamp of his style and ease. Written in the first-person, it takes us directly to the core of the writer’s persona and his idiosyncrasies. The book is about a journey to America and self in the act of writing, journeying inside and outside the world. It is a conglomeration of fact and fiction, memories and desires, experience and observation, self and other, and the East and the West. The word ‘dateless’ is metaphoric in a way that many things are still prevalent in the present time. In his witty and amusing tone, Narayan draws up the subtle difference in linguistic, cultural, social, economical, religious and professional aspects of American and Indian ways of life, which at once invites comparison and contrast. It seems to be a mingling of two cultures in literature. Narayan reveals how we Indians get easily adjusted and assimilated in any culture. He also depicts no desire on the parts of Indians to subvert this general representation. The paper aims to dwell on these aspects as reflected in the text. It also attempts to see how Narayan juxtaposed the Indian and American ways of life, and how they complement each other in their ways.
Keywords: India, America, culture, life, travel, self.
