Kaleidoscope of Diaspora: 'Orienting an India in Japan'

‘Diaspora’ is a Greek word which means to scatter or to move or to disperse. It is the term of greater importance from the origin of human civilizations. People had been moving around from one place to another, from one country to another, from one region to another in same country, from one continent to another. The three notable mass migrations in the history are The Jewish, the Armenian, and the African. Diaspora Writing, a special genre of literature explaining the activity of Diasporas, emerged in the second half of the twentieth century. It depicted the experiences of Diasporas in the short stories, the novels and the poems. Pallavi Aiyar’s travelogue Orienting: An India in Japan published in August 2021 is the recent example of the Diaspora writing. It depicts contrasting features of the host land Japan to her homeland India. The present article briefly presents different aspects of the Diaspora and cultural identity of an immigrant in Japan.