READING CULTURAL TRAITS IN MANJU KAPUR’S NOVEL, “THE IMMIGRANT”

We develop the invisible (virtual) world of particular culture around us and knowingly or unknowingly these cultural traits become the governing factors of our life. We grow with the native culture of our country. Our thoughts, emotional shades, selection of language, food habits, beliefs and hopes are developed through the cultural injections into our mind. However, the mind dazzling revolution in the sphere of economics, science and technology has brought the nations so close to each other that the collision and assimilation of different cultures became unavoidable and this phenomena has resulted into the birth of terms like diasporas, quest for identity, east-west encounter on the canon of world literature. The present paper aims to probe into the question- what happens if we are forced to live in the midst of two different cultures with reference to Manju Kapur's novel “Immigrant”. It strives to explore the peculiarity of how the inner personality of Anand and Nina, the protagonists of the novel wear the Indian culture but are forced to wear alien culture on their external personality. They are exposed to the cultural battle, one (alien culture) is striking the blows outwardly and the other one (native culture) is providing resistance to the former, eventually, yielding to it due to the socio-economic and political intervention into the battle.