No Country for Old Men: Representing the Dilemmas of Old Age and Migration in Rishi Reddi’s “Justice Shiva Ram Murthy” and “Bangles”

Abstract

The spreading of familial ties across the globe has highlighted a range of questions about the family structure and the impact of migration especially on older people. Their involuntarily movement leaves many a consequences as they find it pretty much difficult to cope with the socio-cultural changes one has to undergo. In this sudden change of practice, with ever new essence of land and people, they feel uncomfortable and, in a way, get disrupted with their belief system. Sometimes, it comes with the price of sacrificing their homely happiness into this late years of life before an illusionary vision of paradise on the other side of the sea. The dichotomy for the aged people lies into the caregiving notion of East and the West’s respective familial ties. While one is a collective society where people live into the large family bondage, the other is individualistic in its outlook taking care of their own themselves. The dialectics of home and migration of elderly people creates a complex meaning of family and familiarity. This happens as being with family they lack their familiar space. A selection of Rishi Reddy’s two short stories from the collection “Karma and Other Stories” bring us the life of two migrants into the opportunities of the West in their late age and get perennially mixed up into the new world order.