Question of Self in Namita Gokhale’s Paro: Dream of Passion

Abstract

Namita Gokhale is a remarkable signature in Indian English fiction. She very brilliantly pinpoints the quest of identity of a woman in her very first novel Paro: Dream of Passion. The novel gives stress on concrete individual existence and consequently on subjectivity, individual freedom and choice. By writing Paro: Dream of Passion Namita Gokhale has initiated a new phase in Indian writing in English. Through two women characters –Paro and Priya-Namita Gokhale explores an exceptionally esoteric strata of society. Namita Gokhale’s Paro: Dream of Passion is the world of affluent business class and their idle rich counterparts, the working middle class and the world of legal professional, politician and service cadres. Obviously, the world of the novel is not representative of a cross-structure of Indian society, either in class, occupation, and cultural affiliation. But it is an interpretation of the life of highly Westernized urban Indian.