Away: The Indian Writer as an Expatriate

Away: The Indian Writer as an Expatriate brings together the writings of thirty-three distinguished figures of Indian origin—writers as well as nationalist icons—whose writings portray vividly, and with utmost honesty, a struggle to define the relationship between the homeland they have seemingly left behind the new world they have come to be a part of. Nirad C. Chaudhuri’s and Amitav Ghosh’s imaginary landscapes of England are juxtaposed with first-hand accounts of Tagore’s first journey on an airplane in Persia and Jawaharlal Nehru’s travels across the world campaigning for India’s freedom. Naipaul gives a moving account of his sister’s funeral ceremony in Trinidad that is replete with traditional rituals, while Ved Mehta reports on the experience of applying for citizenship in America. Rushdie narrates a delightful story about a young woman’s attempt to get a British visa and Hanif Kureishi gives us a brutal description of a lesbian double-act at a party in Southall. Amit Chaudhuri writes of the lives of Indian students at Oxford; Meera Syal recounts hilarious anecdotes about first-and second-generation migrants in England; Anita Desai describes a young man’s first encounter with suburban America; and Agha Shahid Ali sums it all up eloquently; ‘India always exists off the turnpikes of America.’ Also included are memoirs, correspondences and fictional writings of Gandhi, Sarojini Naidu, Qurratulain Hyder, Dom Moraes, A.K. Ramanujan, Bharati Mukherjee, Rohinton Mistry, Abraham Verghese, Pankaj Mishra and others. Beginning with an incisive introduction by Amitava Kumar, aptly titled ‘Longing and Belonging’, Away reflects the changing attitudes and responses to the west across generations of immigrants and the evolution of the particular brand of writing we call Indian writing in English.