Author: Leena Dhingra

“Amritvela tells of a story of Meera’s return visit to India. Meera, who was taken to England as a child by her parents, is now married to an Englishman and has a younger daughter – so Meera’s East-West identity is tied to both space and family. Because her husband, Martin, has recently moved to another city in Britain to take up a new job, he and Meera are temporarily living apart. As a result, Meera feels isolated, and she returns to India on her own to consider the posibility of shifting back there permanently with her daughter (with the intention of leaving behind her husband, who represents the British aspect of her identity, but, significantly, not her daughter, who is the true in-between character, and Anglo-Indian).”

Source: Ralph J. Crane, ” ‘Who … am … I?’ Displacement and identity in Leena Dhingra’s Amritvela‘, in Ralph J. Crane & Radhika Mohanram (eds.), Shifting Continents / Coliding Cultures: Diaspora Writing of the Indian Subcontinent (Brill: Amsterdam, 2021),  p. 6