Human relationship is an enduring theme in all literature because it never gets dated. Any literary text that deals with relationships remains relevant for all times and this is possible due to the fact that relationships can be studied, both, in isolation, as well as in context without losing any vitality in each case. The value of a literary text, especially the novel, stems from characterization and it is the depiction of relationships through which characterization develops. Thus the study of relationships forms the key to the critical study of that work.

The sense of displacement or dislocation taxes the human mind and its strains are felt very clearly on human relationships. In fact relationships best display the conditions of being in exile, of diasporic living, of migrant population and even temporary dislocation. The study of relationships in the context of displacement gives the sociological concept a literary base. Be it the uprooted Jew, Baumgartner, in India or the misfit Indian, Arun, in USA, their conditions can best be explored by examining the various relationships they get into. Relationships can be studied in social settings, in sexual wants, within familial ties, among friends and so on. It is not necessary that relationships should be permanent – even temporary, intermittent relationships have their distinct place in the larger jigsaw of immigrant experience. The forging of new relationships and the demise of certain other relationships give a dynamic quality to the enriching effect of relationships on individuals. The emotional wants in diasporic life are enormous and relationships are the most tangible expression of such emotions.

Parent-child relationship is the fundamental relationship in human life. It is the only relationship a child is born with and by virtue of which certain other relationships come into existence. Unlike all other relationships, the parent-child relationship bears a vertical structure because of its hierarchical quality. It is a relationship between two immediate generations – the progenitor and its progeny. This special quality of parent-child relationship gains an added emphasis in the context of displacement. Diasporic life heightens the conflict between generations by adding the socio-cultural differences between the two generations. But diasporic life also heightens the sense of longing between the parent and the child especially when the generation gap is given a concrete reality in the form of physical distance. Thus the tension arising out of the antagonism between conflict and longing makes the parent-child relationship a very important aspect in the study of human relationships in displaced contexts.

The sense of longing that helps to develop the parent-child relationship when the parent and the child suffer from physical estrangement from each other is very well depicted in Anita Desai’s novel Baumgartner’s Bombay (1988). Hugo Baumgartner, the German Jew, has escaped from the holocaust of Hitler’s Germany by exiling himself in British India but his mother stays back in Germany. Baumgartner bears the cross of being in exile with the consolation being that his exile is a life-saving one. Her mother has saved herself from being in exile but at a grave risk to her own life. In such a situation the prime concern of both the parent and the child is to see to the well being of each other but the volatile political atmosphere forces them into inaction. Neither can Baumgartner go back to Germany nor can his mother escape from there. The only means of communication between them is through letters that prove to be of little consolation after going through Nazi censorship.

The less the amount of message in the letters received by Baumgartner from his mother paradoxically makes the letters more important. The little bits of information on the letters like the date and number ‘J673/1’ stamped on them identifying the inmate of the concentration camp reveal more than they hide. The very fact that Baumgartner stored these ‘brittle bits of paper’ (Baumgartner’s Bombay, Vintage, UK, 1998, p. 230) carefully long after they have stopped coming indicates their importance as a source of sustenance for the protagonist. This relationship between Baumgartner and his mother is so overloaded with concern and fear that it appears in stark contrast to their relationship when they were together in Germany. Fawzia Afzal-Khan in the essay ‘Anita Desai: The Morality of Realism Versus the Aestheticism of Myth’ writes about the relationship between Hugo and his mother as –

Hugo’s ‘disdain’ seems to be aggravating when he is annoyed at his mother for staying too long at the Friedmanns leaving Herr Baumgartner alone at home. But when the duo get back to their apartment to find that Hugo’s father has gassed himself to death, Hugo’s ‘disdain’ curiously does not increase. Instead Hugo comes closer to his mother.

This closeness is temporary because it is to be followed by a permanent distancing brought about by Hugo’s departure for India.

The parent-child relationship between Baumgartner and his mother is not merely a relationship. It is Hugo’s link with the past, with the Germany of his childhood and in a broader sense a link with his Jewish origin. Even when the link seems to be severed and the cryptic epistles stop coming, the memory of it acts as an able substitute. That Lotte ‘out of a desperate wish to keep something of Hugo for herself’ (Baumgartner’s Bombay, Vintage, UK, 1998, p. 228) salvages those letters is symbolic of not only their importance but also of the relationship they represent.

The case of the Italian spiritual seeker Matteo in India of the 1970s from the novel Journey to Ithaca (1995) is very different from Baumgartner. Although, like Baumgartner, he also leaves his parents back in Europe and comes to India, he does not have any Baumgartner-like longing for his parents. This is because Matteo by becoming a devotee of the mysterious Mother subconsciously replaces his parents with this spiritual guide. He subdues genuine parentage with surrogate parentage but his wife Sophie prefers the sanctity of the original parent-child relationship. When Matteo and Sophie’s son is born the Mother wished him to be named after the Master, ‘Prem Krishna’. But Sophie asserts herself and names the child ‘Giacomo’, a family name. After the Mother’s death, Matteo disappears from the ashram and Sophie goes in search of him. Back in the Lake Como region of Italy, Giacomo stays with his grandparents. One day Giacomo comes and tells Isabel that he has seen father –

"… He had a white cloth tied around his waist, like an apron" … "and he was very thin." (p. 300)

Parent-child relationship assumes such surreal aspect in the children’s experience when the parents are conspicuous in their absence. This reiterates the fact about the fundamental nature of parent-child relationship.

Edward W. Said in his book Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient says about ‘filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness’ (Orientalism, Penguin, India, 2001, p. 6). Such passage into the Western consciousness in Oriental settings has been done successfully since the time of E. M. Forster, Kipling, and Conrad and Desai’s characters like Baumgartner and Matteo can be seen as a continuation of that exploration. The only difference here is perhaps the absence of hegemonic Eurocentric perspective. But it is not only the Western consciousness that is worth exploring. The advent of postcolonialism has seen a reverse trend whereby writers have delved into the Eastern consciousness filtered through the Occident. Anita Desai’s novel Bye-Bye Blackbird (1969) is a study in that regard. Basically what is being done is using displacement as the key to enter into the human consciousness and laying bare the fact that there is no essential difference between the ‘Orient’ and the ‘Occident’ because, as in the words of Edward W. Said, they ‘correspond to no stable reality that exists as a natural fact’ (Orientalism, Penguin, India, 2001, p. 331).

Adit Sen, the protagonist of Bye-Bye Blackbird, is a migrant Indian in UK who has an English wife, Sarah. Adit has left behind his parents and come to reside in a new country, though like Baumgartner, he is not forced into exile without any chance of a return. For the major part of the novel Adit shows no inclination to go back to his parents in India or even pay a brief visit to them despite Sarah’s suggestion to do so. Adit is in a Matteo-like existence seeking surrogate parents in the country of his adoption. This fact is not blatantly stated in the novel but a few incidents indicate that Adit really seeks parental succour. Adit makes it a point to go to visit Mrs. Miller, his former landlady, in Harrow, once every year without fail. The Millers are German migrants in England and it could have proved as a point of bonding between Adit and them but Mrs. Miller’s attitude shows as much that she is not exactly happy with these visits of Adit. Adit’s relationship with the Millers is nowhere close to any parent-child relationship.

Adit makes another attempt in his search this time with Sarah’s parents, the Roscommon-James. Adit, with his wife and friends on a visit to his in-laws, makes himself at home there. He seems to be exuberant – invading the kitchen, frying ‘pakoras’ – as if at his own home, only to excite Mrs. Roscommon-James’s ‘sniffs’ and ‘barks’. That Adit did not find in Sarah’s father and mother any sense of attachment hurts him. It ignites his latent longing for his country – to be back with his parents. It revived memories of the Bengali feast that his mother used to prepare for him and his mother’s white sari bordered with vermilion. Adit’s nostalgia is brought about because in England he could find a wife but not parents. The lack of this fundamental relationship makes him nostalgic.

The ferocity of his growing nostalgia broke that stone dam that had silenced him for so long …

and he decides to return to India and erase the distance that has hyphenated the parent-child relationship, something that Baumgartner could never do despite having intense longing for his mother.

The parental longing of both Baumgartner and Adit proves that in matters of human relationships there is no fundamental distinction between the Orient and the Occident. Parent-child relationship or rather the lack of it affects every individual alike irrespective of their geographical location and cultural background. Even if the displacement is temporary and the parent-child relationship does not have any pleasantness for the concerned parties, the relationship does not lose its significance.

Arun, from Anita Desai’s novel Fasting, Feasting (1999) is given no choice by his parents but to go to Massachusetts for higher studies. Arun has no liking for his overbearing parents and should have been elated to be away from them but on a number of counts he feels betrayed from his joy. Firstly, it is according to the dictates of his parents and not on his own will that he is away from home. Secondly, since he is dependent on his parents, he fills obligated to fulfill their wishes. Thirdly, staying with the Patton family in the suburbs of Massachusetts he is made to reassess parent-child relationship anew. The parent-child relationship in the Patton family is based on freedom and license and yet there is something troubling about it. When Mrs. Patton starts taking special care about Arun’s food he wants to tell her –

… that he is not her family. He considers saying something about Melanie’s needs …

Arun finds that Rod and Melanie, the son and daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Patton, are in much need of parental care and guidance. Arun’s migration into the American society makes him realize that lack of restriction damages parent-child relationship as much as too much restriction does.

Living in exile or in a diaspora or as a migrant does not necessarily mean that one has to pine away in longing for one’s parents especially when the world is seen as a global village and human beings as global citizens. Displaced existence does have its benefits in terms of economic prosperity, educational opportunities and a detached perspective that is so important for intermingling of people of differing cultures, societies, backgrounds and origins. This distancing also gives charm to relationships that are otherwise taken for granted. The non-resident Indian Rakesh in the short story ‘Winterscape’ from Anita Desai’s book Diamond Dust and Other Stories (2000) is a case in point. Rakesh is married to Beth and on the occasion of the birth of his child his mother and aunt visit him from India. Rakesh is happy of their visit but he is so well grooved in Western society that he finds little fascination in the gossips and stories they bring from India, he has not much appetite for the Indian food they cook for him and he finds himself not quite accustomed of their presence in his house. Rakesh, in his diasporic existence, has no doubt psyched himself into making adjustments and has got used to a new lifestyle. The arrival of his mother and aunt demands him to make readjustments, albeit temporarily, that he cannot do because it will mean that he has to come out of his groove and be in limbo as an easy target for the sense of non-belonging, ambivalence and longing. But this does not mean that diasporic life has brought about any fundamental change in the parent-child relationship. Diasporic life brings about only cosmetic changes in human relationships so that one can survive away from home.

Anita Desai in depicting parent-child relationship in the context of displacement has explored the themes of longing, emotional wants, and non-belonging in her fiction. Desai’s forte has been the study of isolated characters but by delving into their minds and through their actions she brings out either concretely or symbolically the relationships they engage in, their want of relationships as well as the memory of relationships. If for Baumgartner the memory of parent-child relationship is preponderant, for Adit it is the want of such a relationship. If Arun’s displacement leads him to see parent-child relationship in a new light, Rakesh’s diasporic life displays the adjustments made in parent-child relationship. Desai’s exploration of the different facets of parent-child relationship in diasporic life is commendable.