Distant Ties and Troubled Bonds in Trans-cultural Family Relations:

A Reading of Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Unaccustomed Earth” and “Hell-Heaven”

Abstract

Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian-American writer, highly recognized for her exquisite investigation into human relation, vividly pictures the heartbreaking transformation of family ties and loss of traditional bonds in the trans-cultural backdrop of the 21st century global village. Instead of celebrating transnational and multicultural identity, Lahiri poignantly portrays how, losing the traditional family bonds and merely becoming mechanical continuation of companionship, in the migrated land, the diasporic familiesexist and strive to move forward. This paper is an attempt to show the persisting unhappiness in the dismantled relation between husband-wife and parents-children in the light of “Unaccustomed Earth” and “Hell-Heaven.” Delving into the untrodden areas of conjugal lives in a trans-cultural milieu, where echoes of the broken heart die in silence, the paper will also explore the dominant causes responsible for the breakage and transformation of family relations.