Who Is Afraid Of Shadow Lines Analysis

She is pained to know that she is much more a foreigner in her place of birth than May, as the latter does not need a visa to make a trip Dhaka. As for ‘her’ Dhaka, it had long since disappeared into the past and she can only visit and revisit it only in memory! Her poor consolation is that at least the memory cannot be divided. And what about the nation to which she belongs? It seems to have failed her, as it is aptly summed up by Tridib:
“All she wanted was a middle-class life in which, like the middle classes the world over, she would thrive believing in the unity of nationhood and territory, of self- respect and national power: that was all she wanted-a modern middle-class life, a small thing that history has denied her in its fullness and for which she could never forgive it”(Ghosh 78) . …show more content…
Kaul also has a similar view to present in his paper “Who Is Afraid of Shadow Lines?” He opines that the grandmother, who had passionately clung on to her space in the historical narrative, and who understands the forces of history-seeing them as catalysts of social change, is dead; and the younger characters in the novel are reluctant to take on the mantle at this stage. Their priority is to be individuals rather than aggressive citizens, with unconditional loyalty to the nation-state. Ila, Robi and the narrator come across as different versions of the post-colonial Indian, trying to grapple with the reality in their own diverse ways. Although they believed the boundaries between nations to be the shadow lines, they found them precipitating divisiveness and bloodshed. The Shadow Lines is a fitting revelation of the frailty of partition, borderlines between countries and the cartographical lines which claim to separate people and communities. Ghosh analyses that border line is not a division that brings about a fundamental change in the identity of people on either side of the