As an Indian local with English proficiency, Mr. Kapasi works as a part-time tour guide to receive foreign tourists. Therefore, the Indian host dutifully serves the
second-generation Indian American tourists and their children who were ―born and raised‖ in America (Lahiri 45). While Mrs. Das ―smiled dutifully at Mr. Kapasi (44),‖
she expresses indifference to him and the trip itself as she ―polish[es] her nails‖
without removing her sunglasses (49). Her smile in the beginning does not represent a form of welcome to the other than herself. Instead, she sets up a distinctive Self-Other boundary that does not permit transgression. Her underlying hostility to the alterity demonstrates along the way to the Sun Temple. As a tourist who visits India, she neglects the sight of monkeys and sceneries. This indicates that she refuses to expose herself to Indian locals and its culture. Rather, she is absorbed in her own trivia without taking off her sunglasses most of the time during the drive.
Furthermore, the second-generation Indian American severs her possibility to connect to Indian identity now that ―her parents now live on the other side of the world, but she had never been very close to them‖ (63). That is to say, completely acculturating herself to America, Mrs. Das never intends to develop her Indian cultural identity. She ostensibly denies any opportunity to further interact with her Indian cultural heritage. Even though the Americanized Indian visits her motherland India that defines her roots, her ―drowsy‖ (50) gaze at Mr. Kapasi and the Indian surroundings show her absent presence. She physically visits her homeland but remains absent psychologically like a phantom.
Compared with his wife, Mr. Das approaches Mr. Kapsi with seeming openness and is willing to talk about his work and family. Nevertheless, such friendliness does not exist without hostility. Mr. Das interacts with Mr. Kapasi not because he attempts
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to bond with his native country and establish Indian cultural identity through Mr.
Kapasi. As soon as he declares he and his wife are ―both born in America . . . . with an air of sudden confidence,‖ (45) his Center-Other ideology proves to be a form of hostility toward non-American cultural system. Such a declaration of his
American-born status suggests his intention to reassert his identity as an American (Dobrinescu 105). He carries Americentrism and subconsciously regards his
American-born status to be superior to that of his Indian compatriot. In this sense, his hospitality toward Mr. Kapasi does not lie in the fact that he welcomes the alterity without biases. He interacts with the Indian Mr. Kapasi frequently because of his exoticism. As a science teacher and paying tourist, he requires constant cultural interchange to prove that the trip pays off. Dobrinescu points out that ―what stirs his curiosity is the exoticism of the people and places in India‖ (105). Like an amazed tourist who enters into a museum displaying exotic creatures and landscapes, he is bewildered at the sight of monkeys and historic relics. On the way to the Sun Temple, he takes pictures, referring to his tour book fervently, and yearning to acquire the so-called education and knowledge through Mr. Kapasi‘s explanations as an Indian local. Instead of treating Mr. Kapasi as an individual, Mr. Das conceives the Indian Mr.
Kapasi as a living account of Indianness.
When Mr. Das talks to Mr. Kapasi and asks him about Indian cultural practices, their conversation figuratively transforms into a form of verbal documentation that exemplifies his Indian exoticism. He keeps loading new rolls of films in the camera and took pictures. Such an act of photo shooting does not stand for his emotional attachment to his country of origin. In fact, knowing little about his ancestral culture, this Indian American desperately attempts to systemize Indian nature through photo shooting classification. Since he would never be able to comprehend India as a result of his western upbringing, he conceives Indian culture as ―an academic label‖ (Said,
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Orientalism 2). India, thus, is reduced to a cultural product of power relation which
serves ―as a Western style for dominating, reconstructing, and having authority over the Orient‖ (Said 3). To westerners, the idea of the Orient is filled with ―romantic, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences‖ (Said 1).
That is to say, the Orient functions as a Western projection of its own imagination on the non-European regions in order to assert its authority. Ironically, such an ideology not only exists in Europeans and Americans, but also roots deeply within an Indian American‘s consciousness. In this sense, Mr. Das attempts to define and preserve Indianness within the frames of pictures and bring back his ―authentic‖ Indian cultural experience so as to categorize everything into a system of knowledge. By doing this, he aspires to pass on the fragmented, categorized system of constructed
preconceptions to his American science class students just as he takes them ―on a trip to the Museum of Natural History in New York City‖ (45) where historians classify artifacts, fossils, and artifacts according into different historical ages.
In ―Mrs. Sen‘s,‖ the scenario of the hospitable encounter shifts from India to American home. As I have discussed in the previous section, as an Indian expatriate, Mrs. Sen does not let go of her Indian past, nor does she learn driving to assimilate to American culture. Her daily routines in American house merely consist of her
replication of Indian cultural practices in a place within a place. On the surface, she leaves India and embarks on a new life in America. Nevertheless, this Indian hostess imprisons herself in this place within the place and excludes the possibility of the exposure to otherness. Imprisoning him/herself at home, the host/hostess intends to retain authority. However, at the same time the host/hostess transforms into the prisoner of himself/herself as well. According to Derrida, ―it‘s as if the master, qua master, were prisoner of his place and his power, of his ipseity, of his subjectivity‖ (Of Hospitality 123). In this sense, Mrs. Sen subconsciously rejects her connection to the
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alterity in the States. Through the replication of Indianness in the domain of American home, she imprisons herself in her American apartment. Even though the dislocated hostess seems to reach out to the mainstream American culture, represented by Eliot and his mother, her hospitality toward the otherness lurks hostility.
Mrs. Sen and Eliot do not relate to each other biologically, and they do not even share the same culture and ethnicity. Therefore, she does not take care of the child out of her unconditional love for her own child. That is to say, hospitality sustains under the condition that the host/ hostess possesses absolute mastery through his/her exclusionary terms and conditions. Due to its aporetic nature, hostility always lurks beneath the host/hostess‘s hospitality in order to maintain the host/hostess‘s
subjectivity against the full intrusion of the otherness. With regard to the aporia of the notion of hospitality, Derrida indicates that ―no hospitality, in the classic sense, without sovereignty of oneself over one‘s home, but since there is also no hospitality without finitude, sovereignty can only be exercised by filtering, choosing, and thus by excluding and doing violence‖ (Of Hospitality 55). As a result, as the hostess of the apartment, Mrs. Sen receives otherness based on the ground that she works as a
babysitter. By doing this, she spends her time bridging herself to the American culture.
Additionally, now that she ―did not know how to drive,‖ (Lahiri 111) she accepts the job under the condition that Eliot‘s mother sends the boy to Mrs. Sen‘s apartment.
That is to say, the Indian hostess does not let in otherness without the underneath hostility. She only welcomes the American guest supposed that they conform to all of the prerequisites so as to retain her mastery in the apartment.
On the surface, Mrs. Sen reproduces Indianness and requires the Other to follow her rules in the place within the place. Nonetheless, immigrating to the land of the U.S., the Indian American actually remains an ethnic minority in the American whites‘
eyes. Therefore, the Self confronts challenges within the domain of home. As the
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American culture‘s representative, Eliot‘s mother doubts Mrs. Sen‘s ability to be a qualified babysitter. The Self and the Other, therefore, are involved in an on-going negotiations in this apartment. Although Mrs. Sen offers some Indian snacks and demanded Eliot‘s mother to eat them each time she came over, Eliot‘s mother refuses Mrs. Sen‘s biscuit and does not want to take off her high heels to come inside Mrs.
Sen‘s apartment. That is to say, the Other refuses to make further contact with the Self.
Similarly, another short story ―When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine‖ also embodies such underlying hostility beneath the hospitality. As the host and hostess of the house, Lilia‘s first-generation Indian parents invites ―compatriots‖ with ―familiar‖ origins and surnames (Lahiri 24) to their home as guests. In other words, although Lilia‘s Hindus parents welcome the Muslim Mr. Pirzada regardless of their different nationalities and religious beliefs, this acceptance of the Other remains conditional.
As the host and the hostess, they only receive him as an invited guest under the condition they acquire his origin and his family milieu before they open the door to the alterity.
As a descendant of the first-generation Indian American, the American born Lilia poses on guards against the East Pakistan guest. Different from her parents and Mr.
Pirzada‘s identity as expatriates, Lilia is born and raised in America with Indian ethnicity. Her initial hospitality establishes itself merely on the basis that the invited guest shares ethnic similarities with her own parents. Nevertheless, the
second-generation Indian American hostess, at first, shows ―no response, offered no comment, betrayed no visible reaction‖ to Mr. Pirzada‘s treats of―the steady stream of honey-filled lozenges, the raspberry truffles, the slender rolls of sour pastilles‖ (29).
That is to say, her initial reserved and lukewarm attitude towards those tokens of hospitality suggests the hostility of the Self toward the Other. In the face of otherness
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that intends to infuse itself with the Self, she poses on guards and is intimidated in the terrain of home.
Likewise, the Pakistani guest also displays hostipitality toward the second-generation Indian American hostess. Different from Lilia‘s silence and defensive attitude, Mr. Pirzada‘s hospitality shows as he gives her candies as a daily
―ritual‖ even though they do not speak to each other directly for the first several weeks (29). The candy-giving behavior serves as a possible Self-Other
communicating channel regardless of the hostess‘s seeming hostility. Nevertheless, when the Americanized Lilia thanks Mr. Pirzada for his treat for the first time, Mr.
Pirzada replies in confusion: ―What is this thank-you?‖ (29). He then continues to complain that too many American strangers use this expression in almost any
occasions: ―The lady at the bank thanks me, the cashier at the shop thanks me. . . . If I am buried in this country I will be thanked, no doubt, at my funeral‖ (29).
Lilia‘s use of the of the phrase thank-you and Mr. Pirzada‘s comment on the expression exactly manifest the American and the Indian‘s varied opinions on the notion of hospitality. Regarding the American hospitality, Noelle Brada-Williams indicates that ―the American model of polite behavior . . . is to be wholly in one‘s own world and to maintain the smells, sounds, and emotions of that world so that they do not encroach upon another individual‘s life‖ (459). Since American hospitality emphasizes the preservation of the tangible/ intangible personal space, people keep a distance with one another mentally and physically. This American culture then relates the phrase ―thank you‖ to two levels. To strangers or nodding acquaintances, a ―thank you‖ means an exchange of polite mannerism between people without in depth emotional attachment. However, to friends or the beloved ones, the same ―thank you‖
connotes the understanding gratitude from the bottom of one‘s heart.
Raised in America, Lilia learns to say ―thank you‖ as an institutionalized
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response to politeness even though the advent of this stranger ―unsettled‖ and bewildered her mentally (Lahiri 29). Instead of expressing a genuine and heart-felt gratitude for Mr. Pirzada, Lilia‘s ―thank-you‖ designates a clear Self-Other boundary with underneath hostility that prevents the intrusion of the other. On the other hand, without close friends and family members in the States, Mr. Pirzada regards the one who thanks him as strangers for pure business. In this sense, being aware of the fact that Lilia simply treats him as a stranger, he also displays hostile and confounding attitude toward this American expression that intends to show politeness but hinders the intimacy between people with underlying aloofness.