Between aspiration and imagination: Exploring native-cosmopolitanism in Adib Khan's Spiral Road and Mohammad Hanif's Our Lady of Alice Bhatti

Abstract

The notion of a postcolonial urban outcast is both complex and intriguing. It is a complex position because the individual envisions freedom of movement and expression of opinions in spite of the limitations that the city imposes in time and space. It is indeed a struggle on the part of the individual to continue being among their compatriots, family, and friends; while becoming equally conscious about experiencing a sense of internal exile. These individuals, trapped in the continuing dilemmas of being torn between city and citizenship, churn out as the native cosmopolitans. The position of such individuals as native cosmopolitans is also intriguing since there is a willingness to continue in spite of the growing sense of exile within the mind. There is also, a lingering hope to live within the layered ambivalence of the city, even though they display an aesthetic resistance through a kind of self-distancing. Thus, the native cosmopolitans become urban outcasts in either ways—within their own self and also get formed by others. On one hand, they materialize their identity as urban outcasts by living with a sense of exile without isolating themselves completely from the city. Whereas on the other hand, they also endure being critiqued by their own people and suffocate within their familiar surroundings. In this paper, we observe the emergence of individuals as native cosmopolitans in the South Asian cities of Dhaka and Karachi through Adib Khan's Spiral Road (2007) and Mohammed Hanif's Our Lady of Alice Bhatti (2011). We argue that there are, in these novels, individuals who are cosmopolitans in their own ways despite being rooted in their respective cities and cultures. We challenge the dichotomy in the understanding of the cosmopolitan as opposed to the native and attempt to emphasize the possibility of a concurrent existence of these aspects in such individuals.