“Postcolonialism can be seen as a theoretical resistance to the mystifying amnesia of colonial consequences. It is a disciplinary project dedicated to the academic task of revisiting, remembering and, above all, interrogating the colonial past” (Gandhi, 4). One of the most difficult aspects of a confusing or traumatic experience on the part of the victim is the memory it leaves behind. In most cases, the mere mention of a word, phrase, or place can suddenly transport the victim back to the day or time something happened, forcing them to relive it again. In this case, sometimes the victim has the ability to block out a painful or difficult memory to protect themselves from being further affected by it. It's as if it never happened and they enter a dangerous phase called denial. The question of whether it is healthy to address the issues at hand or sweep them under the rug is addressed in two works: a novel called Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie and Jhumpa Lahiri's short story, "Interpreter of Diseases." The effect that recurring memories have on the characters in each postcolonial work suggests that neither produces a positive outcome in terms of remembering or forgetting. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In Salman Rushdie's novel, Midnight's Children, the narrator is Saleem Sinai, who travels back and forth to the years gone by before he was born. present, many years later, when his experiences are far behind him. In this case, Rushdie's entire novel is a form of postcolonial memory. Saleem tells his fiancée and the reader about his family's background, the struggles he has faced in his life, and the problems he still faces in the present: the ghosts he can't leave behind, but can't seem to put to rest. Bhabha wrote: “Remembering is never a silent act of introspection or retrospection. It is a painful memory, a putting together of the dismembered past to make sense of the trauma of the present” (Gandhi, 9). Saleem's memory of his family history, especially when his mother, he learns, was unfaithful to his father, proves particularly painful for Saleem. In the chapter titled "Revelations", Saleem discovers that his parents are not his own and that he was switched at birth with Shiva, his rival and childhood friend. The truth is revealed by Mary Pereira, who exchanged her children at birth, and who finally breaks her silence after believing she had seen the ghost of Joe D'Costa, her ex-boyfriend. His secret comes to light as a result of his memory of Joe who was a radical politician and had once planted bombs in a tower. The revelations about Saleem's life continue to haunt him even more. He describes the great tragedies he went through as a chain reaction to something he did: “If I didn't want to be a hero, Mr. Zagallo would never have pulled my hair. If my hair had remained intact…Masha Miovic would not have pushed me to lose my finger. And from my finger flowed the blood that was neither Alpha nor Omega, and it sent me into exile, and in exile I was filled with the lust for vengeance that led to the murder of Homi Catrack; and if Homi had not died, perhaps my uncle would not have fallen from a roof… and therefore my grandfather would not have… been destroyed…” (Rushdie, 319). Saleem has a lot of difficulty describing his life and keeping his guilt and pain hidden from his girlfriend and readers. Obviously, reading this passage, he is tormented by guilt for the things he has done. While he may not be directly responsible for these things, it is clear that the act of remembering does so to himthink. Midnight's Children explores the ways in which history is given meaning through the telling of individual experience. For Saleem, born on the occasion of India's independence from Great Britain, his life becomes inextricably linked to the political, national and religious events of his time. Saleem not only experiences many of the crucial historical events, but also claims a certain degree of involvement in them. Saleem notes that his private life has been extraordinarily public, right from the moment of his conception. Therefore, his memory carries much more weight than anyone else's. Not only was he present during India's remarkable transformation, but his emotions and experiences shape that period. In articulating what Saleem sees as the relationship between his personal life and the events of the formation of the Indian nation, he recounts: “It is my firm belief that the hidden purpose of the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War was nothing more nor less than the elimination of my darkened family from the face of the earth” (Rushdie, 386). Saleem places more importance on his own family history than on the formative events of the entire nation. Furthermore, on the duality inherent in Pakistani citizenship as a result of partition, Rushdie writes: “I suggest that at the deep root of their distress lay the fear of schizophrenia, or split, which was buried like an umbilical cord in the heart of every Pakistani. ” (399). This “splitting of the self” reflects a fragmentation of identity that Saleem knows all too well. Raised by those he thought were his parents, only to discover at age eleven that he was not their son, Saleem goes through a period of adjustment. His parents are distant, his sister becomes the same age. Saleem's fragmented identity is shared on a larger scale with the fragmented identity of the vast British colonial territory in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, whose cultural, religious, political and linguistic traditions differ, presented a complex and intimidating task. Therefore, India's early days as an independent nation were fraught with divisions and conflicts. Rushdie draws a comparison between India's struggles with neighboring peoples and Saleem's struggles with various family members and with the other members of the Midnight Children's Club. Rushdie also uses metaphorical allusions to fragmentation or disintegration which indicate the loss of a sense of identity. For example, Rushdie describes both Aadam Aziz and Saleem Sinai as having a void or hole in their centers due to their uncertainty about the existence of God. In their respective last days, Rushdie describes the "cracking" and eventual disintegration of their external aspects. At the end of Midnight's Children, Saleem adopts a particularly pessimistic view of the future. Saleem says, “My dream of saving the country was a thing of mirrors and smoke; inconsistent, the ravings of a fool” (Rushdie, 529). Related to this sense of desperation are both the loss of his silver spittoon and his realization that all midnight children have been sterilized. Rushdie does not always accurately recount the events of recent Indian history in the course of Midnight's Children. He sometimes makes mistakes about details or dates, but he does so intentionally, to comment on the unreliability of historical and biographical accounts. For example, Saleem informs the reader that an old lover of his shot him in the heart; however, in the next chapter he confesses that he invented the circumstances of his death. At the end of the novel, Saleem talks about his upcoming thirty-first birthday. At the novel's conclusion, Aadam Aziz, after remaining silent for the first three years of his life, utters his first word: Abracadabra. The referenceMagic refers both to the genre of the novel, to magical realism, and to the role of magic in the child's life. Rushdie writes, “My son, who will have to be a wizard to face the world I am leaving him, completes his fantastic first word” (528). Saleem, despite the dominant tones of pessimism in these last chapters, also expresses a certain degree of confidence in his young son and in his ability to learn from the mistakes of his father's generation. Saleem says of his son that “he is already stronger, tougher, more resolute than me: when he sleeps, his eyes are still under the lids. Aadam Sinai, son of the knees and the nose, does not (as far as I know) give up on dreams” (529). Throughout the novel up to this point, Saleem has told us the story of his family and his experiences, bringing to light painful memories and experiences that seem too fresh or too difficult to face. Now he gives his son, who is not actually biologically his, hope for the future. She wishes him a life unaffected by what his father left him and the painful memory Saleem brought up. In Jhumpa Lahiri's short story, "Interpreter of Diseases," we follow, for a very brief moment in time, the experiences of an Indian family visiting their homeland. Although spoken in the third person, we get an astute filtering of the family through the eyes of their tour guide, a man named Mr. Kapasi. When we are given the first description of the family, it is not what one would expect. Indians who have emigrated, or even some born in America, often do not adopt American dress or manners. They tend to be very sentimental or traditional in these two things. Although Mr. and Mrs. Das were not born in India, but rather are from New Brunswick, New Jersey, they dress “as foreigners [do],” as do their children, in “stiff, brightly colored clothes and caps with translucent visors”. (Lahiri, 44), and when Mr. Kapasi meets Mr. Das, he “shakes hands like an American.” Mr. and Mrs. Das are visiting their parents, who have returned to India, where they were born. Mr. Kapasi pays special attention to Mrs. Das, with whom he has the most contact throughout the story. She notes that she often gets angry and pays little attention to her three children: Tina, Ronny and Bobby. Their choice of names suggests Mr. and Mrs. Das's low regard for traditional Indian names and a desire for more American names, perhaps so their children can be considered as American as they can be. Mr. Das says little in the course of the story. He wears an expensive camera around his neck and is portrayed as a tourist, a foreigner, in many ways. At one point he asks Mr. Kapasi to pull over so he can take a photo of an emaciated and homeless Indian man, which in a way can be seen as an exploitation of his people and his very little compassion for the state of the people. in India.Mr. and Mrs. Das's contempt for their culture is shocking and a little disturbing. Everything they embody, from their manners to their dress, is extremely American. They do not give importance to the family, they ignore their children and leave them to their free will. Even when they visit their home country, which they are doing at the time this story is set, they have no interest in participating or at least trying to adapt to the different ways of life. They dress in American clothes, get an English-speaking tour guide and express little interest in the country in Ms. Das's case, or act as reporters in Mr. Das's case, treating his country like a vacation spot, tuning out. from everything together. Lacan's ironic inversion of the Cartesian cogito “I think thereforeI am” in “I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think” (Gandhi, 9) expresses this notion quite well. Their inability, or perhaps their lack of desire, to adapt to their culture turns them into what some American stereotypes call: the label of the ugly American, who goes to another country because it disrespects its culture by refusing to adapt to his own lifestyle, wanting everyone to adapt to him instead. The fact that Mr. and Mrs. Das belong to this culture makes this stubbornness even more imminent. What really happens in this story, when placed against the backdrop of postcolonial memory, is the behavior of Mr. and Mrs. Das.reluctance to remember their own culture. Postcolonial critic Homi Bhabha announces that “memory is the necessary and sometimes dangerous bridge between colonialism and the question of cultural identity” (Gandhi, 9). This explains that Mr. and Mrs. Das's education of their cultural identity is interrupted or never given the chance to form due to their disinterest, or perhaps even fear, in remembering where they come from. Both were born in America and raised in an American culture. Although their parents were born in India, they have since moved back, severing their ties to their roots even further, and Ms. Das explained that she has never been closer to her parents. It is never fully explained why Mr. and Mrs. Das close their eyes to something that is still part of them and do not recognize their people as one of their own. One particular scene where this manifests itself is when Mrs. Das stops to buy something to eat and the shirtless man behind the counter starts singing a popular Hindi love song to her. Mrs. Das walks away, appearing not to understand what he is saying, “because she expressed irritation, or embarrassment, or reacted in any other way to the man's statements” (Lahiri, 46). Mrs. Das's reaction to the man, on a much larger scale, conveys her attitude towards the land, culture and people in general. Not understanding but not caring to understand, walking away as if he didn't exist. As Mr. Kapasi and Mrs. Das talk, we learn of Mr. Kapasi's second occupation: an interpreter for a doctor. This additional means of work becomes very important. Mr. Kapasi, an illness interpreter, acts as an illness interpreter for families as much as he can understand their private lives. Later, Mrs. Das confuses his occupation after revealing to him a secret of her infidelity towards her husband which she had never told anyone till now. When Mr. Kapasi asks her why she did this, she explains that it is because she hopes he can help her. Although he is an interpreter for a doctor, he is only able to identify physical ailments, not psychological ones, but wishing to please Mrs. Das due to his growing affection for her, he nevertheless tests a theory about her. Mrs. Das explains that she met her husband very young, a sort of informal arranged marriage between their two parents. Although they were madly in love at first, they fell out of love very quickly. Mrs. Das was very quickly overwhelmed by her early marriage and slept with one of her husband's friends from whom Bobby was born. When Mr. Kapasi asks her, “Is it really pain you feel, Mrs. Das, or is it guilt?” (66), Mrs. Das gets angry and gets out of the car. The entire sequence, the tale of the secret and the failed marriage followed by Mr. Kapasi's curious but out-of-place question, gives us an insight into Mrs. Das's disenchantment with her past, present and future. His past is invaded bymemories of her failed marriage to her Indian husband, her infidelity with a white man, and her desperation to finally confide in someone. Bhabha explains how memories can be harmful: "While some memories are accessible to consciousness, others, which are blocked and banished, sometimes with good reason, wander the unconscious in dangerous ways, causing seemingly inexplicable symptoms in everyone's lives. days" (Gandhi, 9). . The “banished memory” of Mrs. Das's infidelity that easily emerges in this scene may have caused her to do a number of these things that Bahbha calls “symptoms.” Either the symptom of her infidelity was then that she ignored her culture because she was disgusted by it, or, in a sort of paradox, her blocked memory of her culture led her to commit adultery. Whatever the truth, this proves that Mrs. Das's rejection of her culture somehow has a reason. It surrounds her; represents a life that she no longer wants, which is very evident, so she has no concern about cementing a bond or “remembering” it. In the final scene of the story, after Mrs. Das leaves the car in a huff to reach her family who is exploring the land (it might be useful for the thesis of this article to also point out that Mrs. Das initially refused to leave the car and explore with her family, eager to rest, regardless of her relationship with the land) her son Bobby, who is not her husband's son, is attacked by monkeys. The fact that this is the climax of the story and the final action suggests a harmful relationship between the Das and the land. Although the attack was partly the fault of Mrs. Das, who accidentally drops the food on the ground, arousing the excitement of the monkeys, the very fact that this negative action occurs speaks volumes about how much the Das do not and do not appear to belong. to learn to belong to this country. Everything happens in a descending chain reaction. First with Mrs. Das' revelation followed by Mr. Kapasi's offensive question, then with Mrs. Das getting angry, getting out of the car and dropping the food on the ground. This all ties back to Mrs. Das's initial action of cheating on her husband, who then inadvertently harmed the child that was the result of that action. Ms. Das's memory of the past then spilled over into her present, causing even more damage in the long run. This suggests that the act of remembering is harmful in the case of Das'. He caused, albeit in a strange way, but still intelligently, direct harm to a member of their family. As a final note, after Mr. Kapasi saves the child from further harm, he steps aside while the family takes care of Bobby. When Mrs. Das takes the brush out of her bag, the paper on which Mr. Kapasi wrote her name and address blows away with the wind. No one notices except Mr. Kapasi. That last link that would have tied Mr. Kapasi to the Das' and the Das' to the land is lost forever, and Mr. Kapasi realizes that in a short time he too will be forgotten. He looks at the family once again, “knowing that this was the image of the Das family that he would hold forever in his mind” (Lahiri, 69). This final act of oblivion forms the last lines of the story, and this meeting between the Das and Mr. Kapasi will fade away just as everything else has faded away. Salman Rushdie's novel and Lhumpa Lahiri's short story, which are chronicles of the Indians after colonization, are in a way very similar and yet very different. While “Maladies” is the observation of a family that refuses to acknowledge its roots or “remember” any part of itself as a member of that, 1980.