Inherited Melancholia
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Migrant kids (1st, 2nd and subsequent generations) often struggle with language. That is not surprising. What I found to be surprising was Rajiv’s father’s disdain for his own Indianness and his volition to deny its manifestation in his own children. Migrant parents tend to want to preserve their languages and cultures.
This puts a kink in Rajiv’s externalization of locus of identity that many migrant generations experience. Add to that the fact that he is queer, and he becomes disposed to experience an identity in limbo. “How was it that these people who I came from hated themselves so much that they would rather kiss a white person’s ass than call themselves Indians” he laments (23). So, I see that his desire to learn his Aji’s language was a form of self-love. He could understand his father’s hatred and uses it to as anathema for the development of his own self-image.
He thinks that the indenture had stripped away his family’s language (26). He is going back to India to learn that language because he wants to preserves that his Aji taught him to be remembered (34). “It devastated me to think that these songs and stories would be lost for good” he confides (34). I see his pilgrimage to India as a migration in symmetry. But this time around it is about regaining what has been lost rather than losing something in order gain a place in the new environment.
Additionally, the fact that this stems (at least partially) from his relation with his Aji and her melancholia points to another pattern. He is living his melancholia that he has inherited from his Aji. My question is did (or does) the melancholia skip a generation here.