Salvation in A Jiffy: Gita Mehta’s Karma Cola

Narendra Kumar V. L. V. N.

(Government Polytechnic, India)

Abstract: Diasporic fiction constitutes the core of postcolonial discourse. An expatriate man of letters differs radically from a stay-at-home writer in that he experiences culture shock in the land he adopts. Beginning with Raja Rao, Indian diasporic fiction demonstrates rich diversity and complexity. Kamala Markandaya, Anita Desai, Bharati Mukherjee, Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry and Amitav Ghosh have added a new and significant dimension to Indian diasporic writing. Though Gita Mehta is an expatriate writer, she restricts herself to depiction of diverse strands of Indian life. She is firmly rooted in India and as such, her novels are steeped in Indian sensibility. Her first novel, Raj deals with the impact of colonialism on the life of a royal family in India and its resultant struggle to adapt in a new milieu. A River Sutra, her second novel, is a multilayered work that deftly demonstrates the profundity of Indian ethos. In this narrative, the Narmada, a river, is an important persona in the novelist’s scheme of things. In Karma Cola, Gita Mehta seeks to debunk a Western myth about yoga and Moksha (Salvation).

Key words: Diasporic, expatriate, debunk, yoga, salvation