Change

Change is apart of life.  Some people are easily malleable and embrace the new that comes with change.  While other people are more rigid and take much longer to adapt.  Whichever the type of person, one experiences change.

The experience of immigrating into a new country is a true test of a person’s adaptability to new situation, environment, and life.  Keeping the old culture within the new culture eases the transition of the new country.

Bharati Mukherjee’s character Jasmine, in her book Jasmine, has newly (illegally) immigrated to America.  Jasmine lives with her dead husband’s former professor, Professorji, and his family.  The family and Jasmine experience a pseudo-Hindi world in New York.  The building she resides in houses 32 Indian families.  On their block are Indian food and clothing stores, Punjabi newspapers, and Hindi film magazines at the corner stands.  With all these familiar amenities surrounding them, their desire to branch beyond their comfort zone is stunted.  “Professorji and Nirmala did not go out at night. ‘Why waste the money when we have everything here?’  And they truly did.” (p.145).  They stay in their apartment, immersed into their old identity and culture, not adapting and growing to the new culture.  Their development into becoming Americanized is not completely achieved.  

During the day, Jasmine cares for Professorji’s elderly parents.  She takes them to visit or helps entertain Hindi families.  English is not spoken in the house, nor is American television watched.  Jasmine is expected to wear the traditional modest saris of a widow, instead of the American tees and cords that she’s become comfortable wearing.  Living with Professorji and his family gives Jasmine the advantages of America and her homeland.  She has aesthetic comforts of her former home paired with the potential progressive possibilities of America.  Living with the constant duality is initially comforting but eventually becomes suffocating.  She craves to shed her old identity as a widow.  Professorji and his family represent the life that she could not live with her husband.  She wants to live after her husband’s death, (even though she may not have wanted to continue before) like he would have expected her to. 

Living with this family has provided Jasmine with the transitional period to decide her identity, her future.  She doesn’t want to be the teenaged widow, but rather move on to fulfill her destiny.  Jasmine purchases a forged green card with a loan from Professorji, which allows her to become emerge into America instead of just live in the block of her apartment.  Jasmine developed and changed her identity.