When the East Meets the West: Negotiating Upheavals Physical and Psychological in The Inscrutable Americans

Abstract

“Oh, East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet,” said Rudyard Kipling. Anurag Mathur’s The Inscrutable Americans not just chronicles such a meeting but prophesies happy tidings for the future in form of more such meetings of true minds. The saga of Gopal’s visit to the United States of America is a saga of India, for long caught up in the diffidence typical of a former colony, gradually emerging out of the cocoon and after a lot of uncertain baby steps, step into confident strides in its engagement with the global superpower. The language in which the novel is scripted effortlessly captures Gopal’s predicament in the USA, his coming to terms with it and his growth in awareness of myriad kinds. The novel therefore offers a kaleidoscopic view of the early 1990’s India. With the help of a rib-tickling narrative, Mathur captures the Indian psyche of those times by tracing the roller coaster ride that characterised one year in the life of the country bumpkin –Gopal, in America. The paper thus traces the trajectory of Gopal’s growth and how it mirrors the story of his native land.