MOTHERHOOD AS THE LAST SHELTER AND THE PRACTICE OF CARE BEYOND BORDERS IN BAPSI SIDHWA CRACKING INDIA AND JHUMPA LAHIRI THE NAMESAKE

Nations collapse. Homes vanish. Mothers endure. Mothers care is the final refuge in Bapsi Sidhwa Cracking India and Jhumpa Lahiri The Namesake, to the extent that displacement has become survival, rupture continuity and domestic space turned into ethical refuge. The dividing border causes the breakage of families, though the motherly looks develop security: “However, the women had already shut the doors with their children, and no one was able to open it (Sidhwa 95). Diasporic exile comes with less obvious pressures, but this requires emotional work, cultural translation, and silent endurance: “Ashima had not yet learned how to make friends here, and each morning she woke with little panic of her own, the children, and Ashoke (Lahiri 45). Motherhood becomes a radical, ethical practice, which spans past biological or social roles. The exile and its voluntary variant intersect in maternal tactics that hold the memory, maintain the identity and withstand the process of fragmentation. In these writings, care stops being a personal affair but a place of action and repetition. Mothers are the builders of stability, culture memory and carriers of resilience, redefining the territories of home, nation and belonging. This work has a place in the South Asian diaspora and feminist literary studies in terms of focusing maternal labor as a political, emotional, and ethical power, uncovering motherhood as a decisive factor in creating the narratives about survival, memory, and cross-generational identity.