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I was thrilled when Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake had been published. I had fallen half in love with her collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies. The book had given me that rare and wonderful feeling of rediscovering my own life, not just as a Bengali-American familiar with the haunts of Boston and Calcutta, but as a human who could relate to the frustration of failed marriages, the pain of thwarted love, the fractures that creep into a relationship, and the alienation of immigration. What she had done so well was to capture universal human emotions and experiences through the perspective of being Indian-American. Why it worked so well was because what was collective—culture, ethnicity, race—was secondary to what was individual, distinct, and private.

With so much anticipation going into reading The Namesake, the disappointment I felt afterwards was all the more keen. Instead of characters I discovered caricatures, and I found the experience of being Indian-American to have dominated the narrative to the exclusion of the experience of being human. Though the multifaceted complexities of straddling two cultures was narrated with attentive detail and eloquence, the story rang hollow as the sociological treatise aspect of the novel overpowered the emotional undercurrents of the story. Events and plot developments were narrated in the context of the second-generation experience without registering their impact on the characters and family relationships.

However, when I discussed the novel with many other people, mostly those of Indian, and in particular, Bengali descent, I discovered quite a different reaction. Whereas I had found the novel to be too self-consciously Indian-American, the main complaint of many others seemed to be that she had just gotten the Indian-American experience, particularly the Indian part, wrong. There were claims that what she had written was not in sync with what it really meant to be Bengali or Bengali-American, that her Calcutta was not the true Calcutta, that her depiction of what it was to be Indian-American was not attuned to the on-the-ground reality, that her fictitious world was inaccurate, artificial, and overdone. To an extent, I agree with these criticisms of her portrayal, but they were not in my mind any reason to dismiss her novel—just because her India-America was different from my India-America did not make her portrayal unauthentic or invalid.

Yet these questions, these challenges to her legitimacy as a novelist, lingered, not just in the minds of those with whom I conversed but in mine as well. I wondered if much of why I loved her first work so much and had looked forward to The Namesake with such excitement was because she was a fellow Bengali-American and I found validation for my experiences in her writing, because I could read her stories and say Aha! I know exactly what she means. Did I appreciate her because she was a fine writer worthy of the Pulitzer Prize or because she came from a similar background and so I could relate to her more easily and more completely than I can with many other authors? The answer is probably that it is a mix of both, but it has led me to question where the line is between ethnicity and artistry. When does an author (or any artist for that matter) become an ambassador, and is it a role that should be rejected or embraced?

Authors become ambassadors when they are openly from or seek to represent a minority culture be it based on race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, or in some cases, gender. Ambassadors are needed where their country culture is not represented; their role is to translate an original (the minority experience) into a foreign context (the mainstream). The diplomacy is mediation between two different cultures.

It is a role we take up frequently in our personal lives. For example, while I may make jokes about some Indian customs or trends among Indians, I would almost never do so among non-Indians. Similarly, while I may carp on and on among American friends about the intellectual & moral deficiencies of the Bush administration, I would be much more guarded in my comments among foreigners. This differentiated behavior is due to the role I am conscious of playing when I speak of these issues to a particular audience: since other Indians have much more exposure to all things Indian, they can contextualize jokes and comments about India in the framework of their more extensive knowledge about all things Indian, and the same goes for Americans and America. However, when I discuss India with Americans, or America with Indians, I am aware that they have a more limited background in which to contextualize the information, that my words may constitute a disproportionately large basis for their perceptions about the society I am discussing.

When I interact with a predominantly NRI group, I am the voice of the second generation. I usually make a disclaiming statement to the effect that I am not the "typical" Indian-American, not because I am so atypical, but in recognition of the fact that there is no such thing as a "typical" Indian-American or a "typical" India or a "typical" anything. We are all products of a mixture of circumstances and personality, and while there may be broad similarities in some regards between groups of people, that does not mean there exists a prototype of a person of x or y background. However, that does not make my role any less meaningful or important when I seek to portray a particular culture or society to a "foreign" audience.

Similarly, while my instinctive response to claims that Lahiri’s India or America is not authentic or valid is that there is no such thing as an authentic India or Indian, I cannot so easily dismiss such criticisms because Lahiri, like many other authors and artists, is playing an extra role, one which she may want to bear or intentionally take up, but one that society and her readership has nonetheless granted her. She is a representative of the Indian-American experience, not necessarily because she wants to be one but because we view and read her as such.

That is reality, just as it is a reality that humans stereotype and generalize, have prejudices that are sometimes subtle and all too frequently blatant. The normative question of whether such a reality should be accepted and deferred to is separate but no less important. Should Rushdie have been extra careful in writing Satanic Verses, knowing that the novel would be treated as a depiction of Islam to non-Muslims? Should Deepa Mehta have thought twice before releasing Fire to a primarily Western audience vastly ignorant about Hinduism? Should Lahiri have modified her portrayal of Bengalis in Boston to suit the expectations of potential readers?

One answer is that the responsibility remains with the reader to not ascribe to an artist the authority of an anthropologist or the role of an ambassador. One could say that it is not fair to curtail artistic freedom out of deference to public sentiment. All of that is true, but it must also be remembered that we live in a system of rights and responsibilities and not just rights alone.

Disseminators of information are always held to standards of legitimacy because of public reliance upon their statements and opinions. Academia is dependent on peer review, on flawless citations, and carefully tested hypotheses. Journalists are held to the rigors of objectivity and scrupulous fact-checking. History is questioned, challenged, revised. Scientific truth is confirmed only when numerous experiments lead to the same result.

Artists are also disseminators of information with the only distinction being that this information is subjective rather than objective. Artists’ sources are not scholarly articles or the strictures passed down by professors; they are the products of our psyche culled from the sources of our experience, perceptions, cultural background, and value systems. Our biases are not systemic inaccuracies or political ideologies but the skewed perspective that comes from the singular experience of being one unique individual.

And yet what artists convey is not just the story of one unique individual, but the amalgam between the individual and the socialized, the combination of the culture we are steeped in and our individual reactions to it. Our legitimacy is not about the validity of our experience or the veracity of our emotional responses or the authenticity of the story we choose to tell. Rather, it is about what it is that this individual experience (inextricably linked with the socialized as it is) is meant to represent.

Our responsibility is not to censor our narratives but to be cognizant of their idiosyncratic origins, that it is simply one story out of thousands that could be told about the same relevant experience, and that, despite all of that, others may choose to read it as something much larger than what it is, as a representation not just of the author but also of the ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality that may be associated with the author. The responsibility of the artist is the responsibility of awareness—awareness of subjectivity, awareness of the meanings being expressed and the alternative ways in which they may be interpreted.

Accepting this responsibility results not in censorship but in sensitivity. It requires not diplomacy in the sense of politeness or muted criticism, but the understanding that the process of communication between a minority and majority voice in and of itself constitutes a form of diplomacy. The mission is not to sell a particular image but to realize that marketing is happening all the same. Perhaps this sense of responsibility will not alter the content of art, but it might just frame it more appropriately, paving the way towards a more nuanced reception from the audience.

For example, I strongly disliked Deepa Mehta’s Fire. Not because I object to stories about lesbianism or critiques of Indian society or certain Hindu traditions, but because of the way it was framed. It was not the story of two women who found love and companionship in each other’s arms in the background of general oppression from a patriarchal society. It was a causal allegory about Radha and Sita (two of the most prominent female figures in Hindu lore) and how the oppressive anti-women nature of Hinduism and the perverted patriarchy under which they were subordinated forced them to turn to lesbianism.

This premise was offensive on many levels, not because of the story being told, but because I felt that this story was being pushed as the story of what women face in India today because of certain ingrained traits of the dominant religious culture. Had Mehta framed it differently, as one narrative of many about women in Indian society, I would have been more amenable to her substantive critiques about Indian society and Hindu culture.

Art is not a monologue but a dialogue between the artist and the audience. It is a process of mediating between what the artist means to express and what the audience in turn interprets. In that regard, the artist needs to be aware of the potential audience reaction to his or her piece of art, to anticipate the framework of the conversation between them.

As an aspiring writer, I know that if I am read, I will be read as an individual and also as a woman, an Indian-American, a Hindu, a heterosexual of a certain age and professional background. Most of all, I will be read as "Aditi," a name extending back to the Vedas given to me by my mother, an exotic name to some, a boringly familiar one to others, oh-dhi-thee to Bengalis, uh-dee-thee to other Indians, uh-dee-dee to non-Indians, Adidas to those who want to annoy me, Aditi, spoken with the loving caress of cared ones, or stated questioningly with stumbling pronunciation by strangers. I have come to assume these multiple identities and I have grown into all these Aditi’s. That is my namesake, one that I am proud to bear, aware of all the meanings that one name can entail.

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