Symbolism In Arum Joshi's The Foreigner

Abstract

The novels of Arum Joshi, which are taken up for study in paper deal with a different set of problems The Foreigner presents to us a hero who has every reason to feel rootless born as he was to an English mother and an Indian father, brought up by an uncle in Nairobi and then moving to live in the UK and in the USA arriving in India to Bud his roots.

In the West, especially in Europe, inquiries into the nature of the self have for the last few centuries been characterized by ,the postulation of dichotomies, between a private self and a public self for example, or between the individual self on the one hand and society on the other. In this, by means of an examination of certain key authors/works and passages in European literature,

Its central figure is a man essentially docile and uncourageous whose life more or less parallels the coming into being of postcolonial India. Eventually gaining a post in the civil service, he ends, as many real-life civil servants did, by taking a huge bribe. But in the final pages he comes to see that at least corrupt man can strive to do just a little good—he cleans shoes at a temple—and that while there are in the world young people still untainted, there is a spark of hope.

In The Last Labyrinth, the hero, if that always is not too strong a term for the men joshi puts at the center, is a man crying always "i want! I want!" and not knowing what it is he desires, in some ways a parallel figure to saul bellow's Henderson, the rain king. His search takes him, however, to infinitely old benares, a city seen as altogether intangible, at once holy and repellent, and to an end lost in a miasma of nonunderstanding. But the way there is gripping. Joshi writes with a persuasive ease and illuminates the outward scene with telling phrase after telling

The novel, which has received praise for its employment of a sophisticated novelistic technique, also very skillfully unfolds the theme of a search, the quest for the Self. The novel begins mid-way in the course of events and Joshi uses the voice of Sindi Oberoi to unfold the plot and theme of his novel. Called to the mortuary in the U. S. A. to identity Babu's corpse, Sindi Oberoi cannot but admit being Babu's friend and "perhaps a bit more" (Arun Joshi: The Foreigner, p6). There is a reference made to June Blyth and we see the devastating effect Babu Kherr]kha's death has on her. However Joshi suspends this aspect of the narrative to follow Oberoi to New Delhi and to his meeting with Babu Khernkha's rich father. Mr. Khemkha eventually employs Sindi. Prodded by Shiela, Babu's elegant sister Sindi Oberoi begins to relive the past. He is annoyed by this for reminiscing about Babu meant talking about himseK something he intensely disliked "Helplessly I watched my past overtake me. I had travailed half the world to escape Babu's ghost and still it stalked me &om behind those bronze statues. As Babu's friend,I had to talk " (p