Tilting Towards The Past-The Dilemma of Sindi Oberoi in Arun Joshi’s ‘The Foreigner’

Abstract

This study intends to focus on the tilting of Arun Joshi’s protagonists towards the past and his trying to explain the existential problems in the context of the Indian tradition of detachment and Karamyoga. Sindi Oberoi in The Foreigner, Billy Biswas in The Strange Case of Billy Biswas or Som Bhaskar in The Last Labyrinth, face an existentialist dilemma. According to R. S. Pathak, "Joshi's novels read like the spiritual odyssey of the twentieth century man who has lost his spiritual moorings" (109). This study aims at identifying the inner sources of Sindi’s life which sustain him in his worst crises and how he leans against his past, the sensibility of being an Indian which delivers him from the curses of modern living.