History is a dialogue between the present and the past. The present paper deals with Can You Hear the Nightbird Call by Anita Rau Badami, a writer of Indian origin based in Montreal, Canada and Five Queen's Road by Sorayya Khan, a writer of Pakistani origin settled in Ithaca, U.S. who root their works in their experiences and their memories of socio-political upheavals in India and Pakistan and the way their in-between position influence their views of their homeland and its history. Khan weaves together the post-partition history of the Indian subcontinent by amalgamating oral testimonies and research as well as official histories to portray the different ways in which the past is remembered by the people. Badami, on the other hand, believes that she couldn't have written a novel if she had not left India and she read a collection of testimonies given by victims and read interviews published in India by people involved in extremist activities in the Punjab. The history of all countries show that violence is a universal phenomenon and it is writ large on the pages of human history. In Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?, Badami begins the narrative with the Partition, ropes in the Indo-Pak wars, Mrs. Gandhi taking up the reins of the country, massacre of the Sikhs etc. whereas Five Queen's Road epitomizes Undivided India and later deals with the cataclysmic Partition in 1947 which brought in its wake humongous violence. The engagement with the homeland, the process of rehabilitation and the values that hold human beings rooted in the past are some dominant concerns in the fiction of Anita Rau Badami and Sorayya Khan.

This research explores class division, social discrimination, struggle for power, economic disparities and focuses on the interaction between the individuals and their society in Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies and Boori Maa through aspects of marxism. By applying theory of Louis Althusser, this research analyzes class struggle and economic segregation which influence social perceptions and social relations, in light with Marxist criticism of objectification, control of ideologies and dissociation with Capitalism. Analyzing stories such as Interpreter of Maladies and Boori Maa Lahiri uses social spaces and setting of home that significantly highlights emotions of socially isolated individuals. This research also investigates hierarchies of social classes highlighting how social and economic inequalities persist in our social structures. Furthermore, this research delves into intricacies of socio-economic and psychological impacts of these hierarchies, signifying Lahiri's criticism of capitalism which determine values of human beings through their economic conditions and classes. Ultimately this research focuses on themes of class struggle and socio-economic disparities to show continuous struggle of communities which have been marginalized in the society.

Dr, Urwashi Kumari

Post Doctoral

Research Scholar

Dept. Of English

Magadh University, Bodh-Gaya, India

Social oppressions and resistance movements are dynamic processes which constantly modify and engender themselves repeatedly from their immediate pasts, while attempting to forge agency through controlling the narrative of one's own story, one's history. That "one" here can be just one person, a community or one or more villages. In Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi's novellas such as Chotti Munda and his Arrow and Rudali, and short stories such as "Shishu", "Water" and "The Hunt", we see how lived experiences are transmuted into songs and tribal narratives which foreground the triumph against the defeat, creating the ground for future resistance movements; how the oppressed provide counter-narratives to dominant social history, to attempt to provide the linkages and reasons for ownership of land and river; and curiously, at times, situate the whole definition of a social strata such as that of the prostitutes as a creation of the oppressors. These are just some of the ways in which history is re- written to create a landscape, a cultural hold which not only provides an effective counter-argument but also works as the storehouse from where communities draw legitimacy and power. Here, we see dynamic connections forged between history, myth and resistance, as a continuous process of reality. All of these provide interesting points for re-evaluating 'history', 'literature' and 'culture', which is what the paper will explore in detail.

Flesh is the threshold in which consciousness meets the world, it is the vinculum between self and things (Merleau-Ponty 16). In describing the world Husserl has found a way to bridge the rationale of Descartes and Lockean sensory world through his transcendental phenomenology but it lacked the “situatedness in the world.” And here is where Merleau Ponty’s flesh as the incarnate consciousness gains significance. His flesh is the carnival of spectacle. The sensible object and sensing subject synergise through flesh. Norona’s Thottappan is a melting pot of different lived experiences. The flesh of the world is in constant revolt with the Cartesian Cogito. The characters in the stories are in revolt with the ideal world religion has created. They engage and indulge in the sensory experiences the world offers and thus creates their reality. The traditional dichotomies of pleasure and pain are forsaken for a multiplicity of bodily emotions. Fear, angst, passion and numerous sense experiences find their synthesis in the body of the characters. And as the Kunjaadu (Lamb) in the title story implies the readers are welcome to the feast of the Body.