Cultural Conflicts and Hyphenated Existence in Meera Syal’s Anita and Me

A second generation immigrant in Britain and a versatile personality, Meera Syal portrays the Indian diaspora in Britain who try to preserve their Indian traditions and cultural values alive in Britain and adapt to the culture of the adopted country. This paper attempts to explore cultural conflicts and hyphenated existence of the Indian diasporas dealt in her debut novel Anita and Me. The novel is set in 1960s and the story moves round the nine year old protagonist Meena and her British friend Anita Rutter. Meena is the daughter of the Kumars the only Punjabi family living in Tollington, a mining area near Birmingham. Through the consciousness of Meena the cultural conflicts between the Indian and the British culture are presented. Meena tries hard to escape her community and become the member of general British community. To achieve this end she befriends Anita Rutter. As she grows up she experiences racial hatred at the hands of her British friends whom she loved from the core of her heart. She has also seen her parents being humiliated there. Ultimately she realizes their secondary status in Britain, and also realizes that she cannot desert her community, and decides to be a traditional Punjabi girl. Thus the immigrants are trapped between two cultures and are forced to lead a hyphenated existence.