Parochial Anxiety of Namita Gokhale’s Novel The Himalayan

Abstract

Namita Gokhale is one of the prominent novelists writing in English. She depicts the challenges which women face women in their personal, professional, religious and socio-political levels. Through her novels, Namita Gokhale has projected the dreams and desires of Indian women in a remarkable way. She has depicted women in the context of the contemporary world as an individual with freedom of choices. The modern Indian women appear as the protagonists of her novels. With the help of her novels, Gokhale has very skillfully captured the Indian ethos. She exhibits a deep insight into human nature and understanding of day-to-day problems. The themes dealt by her depict clash between modernity and tradition, Indian woman’s search for independence, the East-West conflict and freedom struggle movement. In her works, Namita Gokhale interweaves two distinct strands of primary topics and their collaterals before joining them all together to form a cohesive whole. The desire for harmony and balance in a world full of conflicts and tensions is related to the second thematic pattern in her writings. The present paper brings to light the major themes of Gokhale’s novel The Himalayan Love Story.