Tishani Doshi’s “Listening to Abida Parveen on Loop I Understand Why I Miss Home and Why It Must Be So”: A Pastiche and Epitome of Hypernationalism

Tishani Doshi, an Indian poet, journalist, dancer and a progeny of cross-cultural parents delineates herself as a hyper nationalist in her book “A God at the Door “which is an exquisite collection of many verses and it reaches its climax in the poem “Listening to Abida Parveen on Loop I Understand Why I Miss Home and Why it Must Be So.” Hypernationalism is extreme nationalism and believing in preserving the culture and national identity of a nation. A pastiche is a work of art, piece of writing that is created by deliberately copying the traits related to subject matter, extracted from different works and loosely mixed. Its intention is serious. Thus it is also a pastiche of Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia regarded as the earliest surviving Literature. The poem also epitomizes the quest of an immigrant in an alien land.