Exploring Diaspora through 'Roots' and 'Routes'

Diasporas are essentially travellers occupying an in-between space. In this context then, the idea of diaspora involves the idea of departure. This idea of departure however is often fraught with tension, anxiety, trauma, memory, separation, (dis)placement, (dis)location and (dis)ease.The paper thereby is an attempt to explore this idea of diaspora using Vijay Mishra's idea of diasporic imaginary to examine Indian diasporic communities. In doing this, the paper will use Subhash Ghai's movie Pardes (1997) as a trope to further understand concepts of 'old' and 'new' diaspora