Memory, forgetting, and silence: a critical study of Nidhi Chanani’s Pashmina

Nidhi Chanani’s Pashmina is the first ever graphic novel illustrated by an Indian-American immigrant. Chanani presents a tale about a diasporic family of Indian origin living in the USA and the way they straddle between the two worlds and two cultures. The graphic narrative discusses how an immigrant family’s family history is often subject to the notions of remembering and forgetting, owing to which their identities keep oscillating between nostalgic recollections of the past and the urge to build a new future in a new homeland. Chanani further explores how first-generation immigrants with inappropriate memories sometimes remain reticent about their past, culture, and homeland in order to make sure that their children remain unimpeded by the nightmares of their painful past. The removal of any possible remnants of the past from the present, along with the self-imposed layer of intergenerational silence by Nimisha Das, creates an environment of forgetfulness in the life of Priyanka Das, the protagonist of Chanani’s graphic novel. Moreover, Priyanka’s quest to dig into her mother’s past in search of identity and meaning can further be understood as an attempt to dismantle the layers of intergenerational silence imposed on her. This article investigates how the gaps in the family history of Priyanka create incoherence in her identity and further attempts to explore the numerous ways in which Chanani’s text deals with the questions of nostalgia and memory. The present paper, therefore, aims to examine how Chanani’s Pashmina highlights the process of diasporisation by incorporating various facets of the Das family’s everyday experiences as a family living in exile.