Sense of Rootlessness and Alienation in Chitra Banerjee’s Arranged Marriage

Abstract

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, is an Indian-American English writer who traveled to USA in 1976 at the age of 19.  So, she has firsthand experience of diasporic life.  She belongs to the group of Indian English writers who appeared on the literary vista with a postcolonial sense of rootlessness and alienation. Her status as a South Asian writer in English writing is not only diverse but also recognized. The main theme of her writing is to express the life of the Indian immigrants in the America who feel alienation. Most of her main characters are young females who immigrated to America from their motherland India for the betterment of their life; but they face problems and are not able to adjust in the Western culture.    She tries to show the reflection of Indian women who have tried to incorporate the foreign culture in their exile life but their culture and tradition haunts them always. In her works, there is ambulation of Americanization and Indianization. The transformation in characterization becomes lucid in her works.  This Research paper focuses on the troubles and the problems of rootlessness and alienation faced by the immigrants in a foreign land through her important novel “Arranged Marriage”.