“Postcolonialism can be considered as a theoretical resistance to the mystifying amnesia of colonial consequences. It is a disciplinary project dedicated to the academic task of revisiting, remembering, and, above all, interrogating the colonial past” (Gandhi, 4). One of the most difficult aspects of a confusing or traumatic experience for the victim is the memory it leaves behind. More often than not, just the mention of a word, phrase, or place can suddenly take the victim back to the day or time something happened, forcing them to relive it all over again. In this case, the victim sometimes has the ability to silence a painful or difficult memory to protect themselves and not be further affected by it. It's as if it never happened and they enter a dangerous phase called denial. The question of whether it is healthy to address the issues in question or to sweep them under the rug is addressed in two works: a novel called Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie and Jhumpa Lahiri's short story, "Interpreter of Maladies." The effect of recurring memories on the characters in each postcolonial work suggests that neither produces a positive outcome in terms of remembering or forgetting. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayIn Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children, the narrator is Saleem Sinai, who travels back and forth over the years preceding his birth. present, many years later, when his experiences are far behind him. In this case, Rushdie's entire novel is a form of postcolonial memory. Saleem tells his fiancée as well as the reader about his family's background, the struggles he faced during his life, and the problems he still faces today: the ghosts he cannot leave behind him, but can't seem to shut him up. Bhabha wrote: “Remembering is never a silent act of introspection or retrospection. It is a painful memory, a reconstruction of the dismembered past to make sense of the trauma of the present” (Gandhi, 9). Saleem's memory of his family history, particularly when his mother, he learns, was unfaithful to his father, proves particularly painful for Saleem. In the chapter titled "Revelations", Saleem discovers that his parents are not his and that he was switched at birth with Shiva, his former rival and childhood friend. The truth is revealed by Mary Pereira, who switched children at birth, who finally breaks her silence after believing she saw the ghost of Joe D'Costa, her former boyfriend. His secret is the result of his memory of Joe who was a political radical and who once planted bombs in a tower. The revelations about Saleem's life continue to haunt him even more. He describes the great tragedies he went through as a chain reaction to something he did: “If I didn't want to be a hero, Mr. Zagallo would never have pulled my hair. If my hair had remained intact... Masha Miovic wouldn't have encouraged me to lose my finger. And from my finger flowed the blood that was neither Alpha nor Omega, and sent me into exile, and in exile I was filled with the desire for vengeance that led to the murder of Homi Catrack; and if Homi hadn’t died, maybe my uncle wouldn’t have come down from a roof… and then my grandfather wouldn’t… have been broken…” (Rushdie, 319). Saleem has great difficulty describing his life and hiding his guilt and pain from his fiancée and readers. He is obviously reading this passage, consumed with guilt for the things he has done. Although it may not benot directly responsible for these things, it is obvious that the act of remembering makes him think so. Midnight's Children explores how history takes on meaning through the recounting of individual experiences. For Saleem, born on the occasion of India's independence from Britain, his life became inextricably linked to the political, national and religious events of his time. Not only does Saleem experience many pivotal historical events, but he also claims some degree of involvement in them. Saleem expresses his observation that his private life has been remarkably public, from the moment of his conception. Therefore, his memory carries far more weight than anyone else's. Not only was he present during India's notable transformation, but his emotions and experiences shaped that era. In articulating what Saleem sees as the relationship between his personal life and the events of Indian nation formation, he recounts: "It is my firm belief that the hidden aim of the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War was nothing more or less than the elimination of my ignorant family from the face of the earth” (Rushdie, 386). Saleem values ​​his own family history more than the formative events of the entire nation. Furthermore, about the duality inherent in Pakistani citizenship due to division, Rushdie writes: "I suggest that at the deep basis of their unease is the fear of schizophrenia, or division, which was buried like an umbilical cord in every Pakistani heart. » (399). This “division of self” reflects a fragmentation of identity that Saleem knows all too well. Raised by those he thought were his parents, only to discover at the age of eleven that he is not their child, Saleem goes through a period of adaptation. His parents are distant, his sister becomes a peer. Saleem's fragmented identity is shared on a larger scale with the fragmented identity of his nation. The fragmentation of Britain's vast colonial territory into Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, with differing cultural, religious, political and linguistic traditions, presented a complex and daunting task. Consequently, India's early days as an independent nation were marked by division and conflict. Rushdie draws a comparison between India's struggles with its neighboring peoples and Saleem's struggles with various members of his family and with the other members of the Midnight Children's Club. Rushdie also uses metaphorical allusions to fragmentation or disintegration which indicate the loss of a sense of identity. For example, Rushdie describes Aadam Aziz and Saleem Sinai as possessing a void or hole in their centers due to their uncertainty about the existence of God. In their respective final days, Rushdie describes the "fissuring" and eventual disintegration of their exteriors. At the end of Midnight's Children, Saleem takes a particularly pessimistic view of the future. Saleem says, “My dream of saving the country was all about smoke and mirrors; insubstantial, the ravings of a fool” (Rushdie, 529). Linked to this feeling of despair are both the loss of his silver spittoon and the knowledge that all of Midnight's Children have been sterilized. Rushdie does not always accurately recount events in recent Indian history during Midnight's Children. Sometimes he makes mistakes on details or dates, but he does them intentionally, in order to comment on the unreliability of historical and biographical accounts. For example, Saleem informs the reader that one of his former lovers shot him in the heart; however, in the following chapter, he admits to having fabricated the circumstances of hisdead. At the end of the novel, Saleem talks about his impending thirty-first birthday. At the end of the novel, Aadam Aziz, after remaining silent for the first three years of his life, utters his first word: Abracadabra. The reference to magic refers both to the romantic genre, to magical realism and to the role of magic in the child's life. Rushdie writes: “My son, who will have to be a magician to cope with the world I leave him, finishes his formidable first word” (528). Saleem, despite the prevailing tones of pessimism in these final chapters, also expresses a certain degree of confidence in his young son and his ability to learn from the mistakes of his father's generation. Saleem says of his son: “Already, he is stronger, tougher, more resolute than me: when he sleeps, his eyeballs are motionless under their eyelids. Aadam Sinai, child of knees and noses, does not give way (as far as I know) to dreams” (529). Throughout the novel so far, Saleem has told us the story of his family and their experiences, revealing painful memories and experiences that seem too fresh or too difficult to handle. Today, he gives his son, who is not biologically his, hope for a better future. He wants for himself a life that is not affected by what his father left him and by the painful memory that Saleem retained. In Jhumpa Lahiri's short story, "Interpreter of Diseases," we follow, for a very brief moment, the experiences of an Indian family visiting their homeland. Although spoken in the third person, we get an astute filtration of the family through the eyes of their tour guide, a man named Mr. Kapasi. When we are given our first description of the family, it is not what we might expect. Indians who have emigrated, or even some who were born in America, often do not adopt the American way of dressing or behaving. They tend to be very sentimental or traditional in both areas. Although Mr. and Mrs. Das were not born in India, but rather in New Brunswick, New Jersey, they dress "like foreigners," so do their children, in "stiff, brightly colored clothes and caps with translucent visors.” » (Lahiri, 44), and when Mr Kapasi meets Mr Das, he “shakes hands like an American”. Mr. and Mrs. Das visit their parents, who have returned to India, where they were born. Mr. Kapasi pays particular attention to Mrs. Das, with whom he has the most contact throughout the story. He notices that she often gets angry and that she pays little attention to her three children: Tina, Ronny and Bobby. Their choice of names suggests Mr. and Mrs. Das's lack of interest in traditional Indian names and their desire for more American names, perhaps so that their children can be considered as American as they can be. Mr. Das says little throughout the story. He wears an expensive camera around his neck and is depicted as a tourist, a foreigner, in many ways. At one point he asks Mr. Kapasi to stop so he can take a photo of a homeless and emaciated Indian man, which can in some ways be seen as exploitation of his people and his very few of compassion for the state of the people. in India.Mr. and Ms. Das's disregard for their culture is shocking and a little disturbing. Everything they embody, from their manner to the way they dress, is extremely American. They give no importance to their family, ignoring their children and leaving them to their own free will. Even when they visit their home country, which they are doing as this novella takes place, they have no interest in participating or at least trying to adapt to the different lifestyles. They dress in American clothes,receive an English-speaking tour guide and either express little interest in the country in the case of Ms. Das, or act as a reporter in the case of Mr. Das, treating his country as a vacation spot, tuning out. of it all together. Lacan's ironic reversal of the Cartesian cogito "I think therefore I am" into "I think where I am not, therefore I am there where I do not think" (Gandhi, 9) expresses this notion quite well. Their inability, or perhaps lack of desire, to integrate into their culture turns them into what some stereotype Americans as: the label of the ugly American, who moves to another country and disrespects others. his culture by refusing to adapt to his lifestyle, by wanting everyone to adapt to him. The fact that Mr. and Mrs. Das belong to this culture makes this stubbornness all the more imminent. What is really happening in this story, if we place it in the context of postcolonial memory, is the story of Mr. and Mrs. Das' refusal to remember their culture. Postcolonial critic Homi Bhabha announces that “memory is the necessary and sometimes dangerous bridge between colonialism and the question of cultural identity” (Gandhi, 9). This explains why Mr. and Mrs. Das's education in their cultural identity either aborted or never had the chance to form due to their disinterest, or perhaps even fear, in remembering where they come from. They were both born in America and raised in an American culture. Although their parents were born in India, they have since returned home, further severing their ties to their roots, and Ms. Das even explained that she was never that close to her parents in the first place. It is never fully explained why Mr. and Mrs. Das turn a blind eye to something that is still a part of them and do not recognize their people as one of them. One particular scene where this manifests itself is when Mrs. Das stops to buy something to snack on and the shirtless man behind the counter starts singing a popular love song to her in Hindi. Mrs. Das walks away, appearing not to understand what he is saying, "because she expressed irritation, or embarrassment, or otherwise reacted to the man's statements" (Lahiri, 46 years old). Mrs. Das's reaction to this man, on a much larger scale, conveys her attitude towards the land, culture and people in general. Not understanding but not caring to understand, walking away as if it didn't exist. As Mr. Kapasi and Ms. Das talk, we learn of Mr. Kapasi's second profession: interpreting for a doctor. This additional means of work becomes very important. Mr. Kapasi, interpreter of illnesses, acts as an interpreter of illnesses of families as he learns about their private lives. Later, Mrs. Das confuses his profession after revealing to him a secret of her infidelity towards her husband which she had never told anyone until now. When Mr. Kapasi asks her why she did this, she explains that it is because she hopes he can help her. Although he is an interpreter for a doctor, he is only able to identify physical ailments, not psychological ones, but wishing to please Mrs. Das because of his growing affection for her, he tests a theory about her anyway . Ms. Das explains that she met her husband at a very young age, a sort of informal arranged marriage between their two parents. Although at first they were madly in love, they fell in love very quickly. Mrs. Das soon became overwhelmed by her premature marriage and slept with one of her husband's friends, to whom Bobby was born. When Mr. Kapasi asks her, “Is it really pain you feel, Ms. Das, or is it guilt?” (66 years old), Mrs. Das becomes furious and gets out of the car. This whole sequence, theaccount of the secrecy and breakdown of the marriage followed by Mr. Kapasi's curious but out-of-the-ordinary question, gives us a glimpse of Mrs. Das's disenchantment with her past, present and future. Her past is invaded by memories of her failed marriage to her Indian husband, her infidelity with a white man and her desperation to finally want to confide in someone. Bhabha explains how memories can be harmful: “While some memories are accessible to consciousness, others, which are blocked and prohibited – sometimes for good reasons – roam the unconscious in dangerous ways, causing seemingly inexplicable symptoms in daily life” (Gandhi, 9). . The "forbidden memory" of Mrs. Das's infidelity that readily surfaces in this scene could have caused her to do a variety of those things that Bahbha calls "symptoms." Either her symptom of her infidelity was then to neglect her culture because it repelled her, or, in a sort of paradox, her blocked memory of her culture pushed her to commit adultery. Either way, it shows that Mrs. Das's rejection of her culture has some sort of motive. It surrounds him; this represents a life she no longer wants, which is very obvious, so she has no concerns about cementing a bond or "remembering" In the final scene of the story, after Mrs. Das leaves the car angry to join her family who are exploring the terrain (it might be helpful to the thesis of this article to also point out that Mrs. Das initially refused to leave the car). and explores with her family, wanting to rest, indifferent to her relationship with the land), her son Bobby, who is not her husband's child, is attacked by monkeys. The fact that this is the climax of the story and the final action suggests a nefarious relationship between the Das and the land. Although the attack was partly the fault of Mrs. Das, who accidentally dropped food on the floor to excite the monkeys, the fact that this negative action occurred shows how much the Das do not belong and do not can't seem to learn to belong to this country. This all happens in a downward chain reaction. First with Mrs. Das's revelation, followed by Mr. Kapasi's offensive question, then with Mrs. Das's anger, leaving the car and dropping the food on the ground. This all relates to Mrs. Das's initial action of cheating on her husband, which then inadvertently caused harm to the child who was the result of that act. Ms. Das's memories of her past therefore carried over into her present, causing even more long-term harm. This suggests that the action of remembering is detrimental in the case of the Das'. This caused, albeit in a strange, yet intelligent way, direct harm to a member of their family. To conclude, after Mr. Kapasi saves the child from further harm, he stands aside while the family takes care of Bobby. When Ms. Das takes her hairbrush out of her bag, the paper on which Mr. Kapasi has written his name and address blows away with the wind. No one notices except Mr. Kapasi. This last link that would still have connected Mr. Kapasi to the Das and the Das to the land is lost forever, and Mr. Kapasi realizes that in a short time, he too will be forgotten. He looks at the family again, “knowing that it was the image of the Das family that he would keep in his mind forever” (Lahiri, 69). This final act of forgetting constitutes the final lines of the story, and this meeting between the Das and Mr. Kapasi will disappear like everything else. Salman Rushdie's novel and Lhumpa Lahiri's short story, which are chronicles of Indians. after colonization, are in a sense very similar but very different. While “Diseases” is, 1980.