Vol. 5 No. 4 (2021)
Articles

A Collage of Contemporary India: A Study of Gita Mehta's Selected Works

Published 2021-12-23

Keywords

  • stereotype, east west encounter, Indianness, modernity, Spiritual.

Abstract

Boredom, nostalgia, historical and political events in India, and the perennial theme of East-West encounter are only a few of the topics explored effortlessly by Gita Mehta. Each work focuses on India, a real India, and the author takes care to avoid letting any of the other topics take centre stage because doing so would divert readers' attention from contemporary India. Gita Mehta is not an exception to the stereotype that migrant writers create "imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind," and that their portrayals of India and Indianness are hybrid and aimed at western readers. She makes profound literary and cultural references to Indian tradition, religion, mysticism, and the people's aspiration of a new born nation by synthesizing the various perspective of contemporary socio-political issues. Her works reflect the twin facets of contemporary India, namely tradition and modernity, happily co-exist and work together to make a developing country into a developed one in every aspect. Four major works by Mehta have been selected to make this paper's endeavour successful in showing the important changes of India since Independence to modern times. The author tries to delve deep into modern India's search for spiritual values and its dilution or deterioration in the present Indian scenario.