Essence of nostalgia of Amit Chaudhuri in A New World

Pages: 684-686
Salonia Bishnoi (Department of English, Chaudhary Devi Lal University, Sirsa, Haryana)

The present paper has the glimpse of nostalgia of the author in his novel A New World. A New World (2000) is the study of Chaterjee, an economist, university lecturer and a divorced writer living in America and the visit he makes with his son Vikram to his elderly parent’s home in Calcutta. Jayojit travels back from the United States to his native India with his son, Vikram (otherwise known as Bonny). They are to stay for four months to take advantage of the custody settlement following Jayojit’s divorce. As father and son re-establish themselves in the city during the summer we are given a sense of the returning migrants’ disorientation within a landscape that is both familiar yet strange. Behind him, in America, is the broken relationship that has left Jayojit fragile and depressed, yet he cannot help glancing back at that land of wealth and opportunity as if it might also cure him. His creative focus falls on customs, traditions, superstitions, and the way people, talk, take bath, drape themselves, meet, worship and indulge in singing and music. Chaudhuri can touch, hear, see and even taste the city. There is nothing unusual either about the place or the people mentioned by him.