The Sripathi Family Traditions

A famous 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri portrays the lives of the Indians who have immigrant to America, and the second-generation Indian American protagonists searching for the different to fit into a community. As their lives seems to be treed between the Indian-American traditions. Jhumpa Lahiri writes clearly about failed relationships, who weirdly spending their lives together are either doubtful about their love for each other or have an unvoiced love or is there any love that takes their relation too far?

“Mansi, your grandfather was very religious, but he also knew that India is not the same now that it was when his father was a priest,” Dad thought very carefully as he spoke. “He had to admit that no matter how hard I worked, it would be difficult to raise you and your brother here if we wanted secure futures for

2. In the novel, women in Annawadi don’t have lots of freedom and rights. They are mistreated and every family living in Annawadi dislikes each other because they are corrupted by greed and money. Even in the urban slums, women like Zehrunisa and Asha wouldn’t have more freedom because women can’t have a voice for themselves unless they have connections to other, more powerful people. Other women dislike and spit hate at Zehrunisa and Asha because they are more successful than them, rather than trying to work with them to be successful together. Since the people in Annawadi are so corrupted by money, they disregard for others wellbeing and resort to fighting or trash talk each other. For women, they are a burden for parents because of marriage and dowry. That is why mothers and fathers want their daughters to be perfect, with no scars or anything that would prevent them to get married. All the engagement is determined at a young age, so girls can not find love for themselves. “Meena’s future in-laws might not come to hear that they’d chosen an impetuous bride.” (Boo 188). When Meena, a young Annawadi girl, tried to commit suicide with rat poison because she hated the life she was living, her brother beat her up because now there would be less chance for Meena to get married. Rather than the townspeople helping Meena, the were ashamed of her and worried for her reputation than her health. In my view, the freedoms that the women in Annawadi lack is a voice. The women cannot

Culture can have a large effect on our daily lives, and can shape our thoughts and behaviors. The society an individual surrounds themselves in influences their decisions. It affects how they perceive themselves, their personal identity and reach their personal life goals. In the novel, The Secret Daughter, Shilpa Somaya Gowda explores the significant impact of social culture on the individual. It is evident through the experience of two women born into two different cultures, Kavita in India and Somer in America, and through the life of Asha, an Indian child adopted into an American home. The author uses these examples to show how different cultures contrast, and change an individual 's thinking and perspectives.

Culture can have a large effect on our daily lives, and can shape our thoughts and behaviors. The society an individual surrounds themselves in influences their decisions. It affects how they perceive themselves, their personal identity and reach their personal life goals. In the novel, The Secret Daughter, Shilpa Somaya Gowda explores the significant impact of social culture on the individual. It is evident through the experience of two women born into two different cultures, Kavita in India and Somer in America, and through the life of Asha, an Indian child adopted into an American home. The author uses these examples to show how different cultures contrast, and change an individual 's thinking and perspectives.

In this novel, what the reader learns about the culture of the society is that men are the most important in the family. From an early age, little girls are taught to be submissive to men. Arranged marriages are common, as in Lakshmi’s case, she was promised to marry a boy whom she has never met before, whom she refers to as “the boy with the sleepy cat eyes”. The uncertainty of Lakshmi’s future is common for many girls as poverty often drives the mother or father of the young Nepali girls to sell them to wealthy families as a last resort. The girls are sold to wealthy families in urban India work as “maids,” but the actuality is that the young girls are sold unwittingly into prostitution. The girls are told they will work until they pay

This makes it easier to mistreat women because it makes them seem less than human. It is also believed that the death of a husband is punishment for something done in a previous life. Society’s refusal to change theses Hindi beliefs and practices create the oppression of women by making their mistreatment seem justified and by making them seem less than human.

Growing up as a Hindu it was engraved in my mind that there was an unwritten rule that one must not marry outside their caste. However, in the oral, as we indulged on the idea of Gabriel Garcia Marquez criticizing the foundation of the caste system, I started to confront my culture’s basis for castes.

Family traditions and religion greatly impact the lives of many people in India. These elements of culture are reasons that form the way that Indians lead their lives. Both factors make up what type of person that individual will become. That is the reason why religion and family traditions are so valued in Indian society.

Madini 's mother on the other hand ensured that she stayed within the norm and enforced traditional gender roles. One way in which her mother enforced traditional gender roles is by teaching Madini cooking while she was a teenager although her mother was still lenient on gender roles compared to others. Madini was not resentful that her mother taught her traditional gender roles and she said she actually enjoyed it. Although she enjoyed learning how to cook it made her life more difficult than her brothers. While in school Madini would also have to come home and learn and practice traditional gender roes while

Girish Karnad in his Tala- Danda settles the plan for the marriage which is to be ceremonized between to son of a tanner (untouchable) and the daughter of a Brahmin under the guidance and protection of an archetypal figure-Basavanna who is also the votary of sharana movement. He remarks about the poison of casteism and untouchability. Some day this entire edifice of caste and creed, this poison –house of Varnasharma will come tumbling down. Every person will see himself only as a human being. That is invevitable. But we have a long way to go. You know the most terrible crimes have been Justified in the name of Sanatan religion.

Beyond imagination, a mother can be such impudent with her own child just because she is a female child. A mother wishing her daughter ‘dead’ can be the crudest form of patriarchy supported by women. These words get carved so deep inside her mind that Saru becomes a rebel against her mother. Not only this, she could not develop the rationale of judgement and decision-making being suppressed always. Moreover, the guidance of her mother could have helped her but neither her mother bothered nor she cared for the

Later in the narrative, he shows the true colours of his male ego, abusing Haimabati for nothing, beating her at times, and jeopardising her professional life. At one point he got involved in a brawl with Haimabati’s superior at her workplace, and it was she who saved him from a legal action, by apologising for his conduct. He knew that he would never be able to earn himself, yet it was no longer bearable to his male ego to live on his wife’s income. Haimabati does not use any harsh word to describe these feats of her husband, but her sense of irritation is not always hidden, though she tried to wear a stoical calm and accept everything as God’s will. Her willing compromise with her husband’s abuses shows how internalised patriarchy could be: being otherwise so self-sufficient she kept herself subservient to the man who, she believed, showed the ‘generosity’ of remarrying her and providing her with a respectable status in society. These contradictions and complexities in Haimabati’s life, which Indrani Sen has also noticed (60) point towards an intriguing paradox in feminist history. Her struggle for identity, extraordinary despite all these contradictions, shaped her personality in two ways: by resisting patriarchy and by compromising with it.

Perceiving through the gender and sexually lens in the novel The God of Small Things, it have illustrated the severity of gender oppression and discrimination through examination of the marital and intergender relations like patriarchy, gender roles and love. Specifically in the novel, Ammu, Mammachi and Baby Kochamma are all female characters and that they have experienced horrible discriminations and oppressions due to their gender, religion and statuses which have torn them between traditional norms and modern attitudes. Sadly speaking, their private love relationships are actually socially and politically regulated to emphases of caste and religion. Reversing the natural uncontrollability of who to love, in what way and to what extent, results in equally unnatural insurrections and obstructions of love relationship. The “love laws” are basically to put or set boundaries between the upper caste and lower caste which they are not allow to have any sexual relationship besides working as intensive labor. Women who are married are expected to be a good “house wives” and to serve their husband. This novel have demonstrated gender oppression, sexism and discrimination against women. When the female characters attempt to challenge or disobey the customs, laws, values of social and cultural boundaries, they commit moral transgressions which ultimately lead them toward their death and ruination. Therefore, majority women doesn’t have an option but to “accept” or “adapt” to the

Roy brings the rigid caste system into the limelight with different instances stated throughout the novel. She brings out a sense of sympathy among her readers for the sufferings of the Paravans and in the end of the book we are left with a deep feeling of affliction and abhorrence for the societal setup.