India For Indian Diaspora: ‘My Damned Soil’ , Modern India
India’ has been the sole interest for the Indian diaspora and Gita Mehta is one of them. She begins with Karma Cola, lingers over A River Sutra and concludes in Snakes and Ladders. The present paper seeks to examine Gita Mehta’s endeavour to present her native place India in ‘glacial progress towards liberation; more than the political freedom’, the modern India: beyond comprehension – to be marvelled upon, with specific case of Snakes and Ladders, a non-fiction.
Snakes and Ladders happens to be a collection of her brilliant essays on modern India which are at once fragmentary and personal, as she herself admits in the Foreword of the book. The game of ‘Snakes and Ladders’ is primarily the ‘Game of Knowledge’ used by the author as a metaphor for ‘a meditation on humanity’s progress towards liberation’, for the ‘roller-coaster ride’ after Independence, the ‘highs so sudden we have become light-headed with exhilaration, the laws too deep to even contemplate solution’; it illustrates our attempts to move our ancient civilization towards modern enlightenment.
Dr. Gauri Shankar Jha