‘Mourning over the Past Is Negotiable If Today Be Sweet’: New Diasporic Consciousness in Thrity Umrigar’s If Today Be Sweet

Abstract

Ah, fill the Cup: — what boots it to repeat How Time is slipping underneath our Feet: Unborn Tomorrow and dead Yesterday, Why fret about them if Today be Sweet! - OMAR KHAYYÃM Indian Diasporic Literature has evolved significantly in the last few decades. Since the inception of the term ‘diaspora’, there have been radical changes in the semantics of the phenomenon till date. Dislocation remains at the core of the concept of diaspora and generically diaspora is the dispersal of people away from their homelands. In its generic form, diaspora meant a traumatic displacement which often was followed by a troublesome relationship with the host society in the new country or the country of the settlement and an acute longing for return to their homeland loomed large among the diasporic communities that had a collective memory or a group consciousness. With a departure from its classical meaning1, William Safran in 1980 used the term inclusively for ‘expatriates, expellees, political refugees, alien residents, immigrants and ethnic and racial minorities tout court’ (83). Since, dislocation of people in most of the countries occurred due to colonialism, postcolonial studies consider the diasporic discourse as an important area of inquiry.Thus, Diaspora Studies has been a significant aspect of postcolonial discourse.