Chapter- IV
The fourth chapter focuses on male chauvinism and gender
inequality with reference to In Custody and Voices in The City. It
describes how women are treated like human machines though
the constitution of India guarantees the equality of women with
men socially, economically and politically.
The constitution of India guarantees in clear terms the
equality of women with men socially, economically and politically.
But this is observed more in the breach than in practice. Age old
customs and traditions continue to denigrate women. They are
treated like human machines and all their activities are expected
to be confined to the male approved domains. Any attempt
made by a woman to modify the male-made boundaries of
feminine existence is curbed down. Such is the forced state of
subordination of the Indian women in every sphere of life. This
becomes the focal point of Anita Desai’s novel In Custody.
Unlike her other novels this novel has a male protagonist as
both its axis and frame. Her main preoccupation is portrayed in an
altogether new perspective; the woman protagonist and her
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plight are presented from a man’s angle. It exhibits “a widening
out of human concerns and willingness to integrate concrete
historical and specific cultural dimensions in the creation of interior
landscape” (The Expression of Feminine Sensibility in Anita Desai’s
Novels.P.43). The theme of In Custody seems to be revolving round
the trials and tribulations of a meek college lecturer, Deven and his
admiration for a celebrated Urdu Poet. The unbridgeable gulf
between illusion and reality, expectations and occurrences are
touched upon. In Custody has a male protagonist who comes from
a lower middle class family and whose consciousness is essentially
directed towards wider world beyond himself and his family Deven
In Custody is socially a “Secure” person. He has a family and
profession. The novel depicts the world beyond the individual. In
doing so, Desai evokes the dominant attributes of contemporary
Indian society through the character of Deven. The diverse trends
that affect the contemporary middle class Indian are unified into
the sensibility of the protagonist. He is a teacher of Hindi in Lala
Ramlal College, Mirpore and he seeks to reach out into a wider
world in the hope of self-fulfillment. He undergoes experiences of
various shades and complexities and eventually
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emerges a wiser man with a more complete knowledge of being in
this world.
Deven is the deprived one, a widow’s son working in a
mundane job while Murad, an old friend of his, the editor of the
Urdu magazine “Awaaz”, is the rich man’s son and doing a job
after his heart. As for as Deven is concerned, a Miracle does come
to pass and despite all his fore- bodings he finds himself pushed by
some inner madness towards this goal which, Murad has set him.
He requests him to interview the one-time celebrated Urdu Poet
Nur for a special issue of his Magazine.
Deven is suddenly pushed into a different world by his friend
and is exposed to a totally new experience. But the world which
opens out in front of him is of crowded homes, of greedy poets, of
the back lanes and brother houses in Chandni Chowk. There is Nur
the poet and Nur the senile, greedy, lustful man constantly making
claims on Deven. The ideal and the real are juxtaposed in him and
woven together inextricably. He acquires qualities he had never
possessed-some shrewdness, a great deal of courage- and
manages to find ways and means of meeting the expenses and
comes through the experience a different man.
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The poet mocks at him and his mission when he meets for the
first time. But this meeting was cut short due to the arrival of the
poet’s companions. From their conversation, he learns the evil side
of the poet’s personality. His fondness for wrestling matches, wine
and women. As he gets to know him better is divided between the
two Nur’s, attracted by one and repelled by the other. Murad’s
hint of an interview generates expectation and excitement in
Deven and in his first meeting with nur he feels “another warm
moist tide of jubilation rie and increase inside him at being
recognized” (The Mind and Art of Anita Desai p.140).
Failure of interview initially creates bitterness but he manages to
snatch a “peace of mind, contentment with things the way they
were” in the walk with his son Manu (Ibid P.140).
One fine morning he receives a letter from Nur, telling him
that he is happy to learn from Murad of Deven’s decision to work
as his private secretary and adding that he was willing to dictate
some poems to him for “Awaaz”. When he visit’s poet’s place, he is
puzzled to see a small gathering around Nur’s wife. The one who
had ordered him to clean the room, which was dirtied by his vomit.
Deven has to seek financial assistance to get tape-recorder
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to record the poet’s interview. But the recording virtually never
takes place because of the his moody nature.
Deven’s running away from the poet’s house when Nur’s wife
screams at him for spoiling the room with vomit suggests that he is
incapable of facing the seamy, repulsive side of life and that he
can only live in his dream world. When he returns to Mirpore, he
dares not face his wife’s anger and so he goes straight to his
college. This again shows his inability to confront the reality of life.
He always tries to escape from the real hard life and seek shelter in
his own dream world. When he reaches home, he finds his wife in a
very angry mood. She looks like the “picture of on abandoned
wife”. Her silent indignation makes him feel “aged and mouldy”.
They have no mutual communication. He is incapable of sharing
his feelings and experiences with his wife. He cannot tell her about
his bitter experience at Nur’s and cannot seek relief by sharing his
defeat with her. He has a passion for Urdu Poetry, which his wife
does not relish at all.
The timid lecturer is a different person once he enters his
household. He orders his wife Sarla about. He allots no time to think
about her problems and lessen them. He is a chauvinist in the
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sense that he expects his male ego to be gratified by the implicit
obedience of Sarla and also her parents for that matter. “His
irritability and anger with Sarla appear to be the outcome of his
hurt male ego” (The Novels of Anita Desai P.156). But deep inside,
he knows that he has failed to provide a happy home. “He
understood because like her he had been defeated too: like her
he was victim… A victim does not look for help from another victim;
he looks for a dreamer” (In Custody P.68). In Deven Desai offers the
plight of an average person who like the heroes of R.K. Narayan,
aspires for the fantastic, and after a lot of trials and tribulations,
returns to the average once again.
In Mirpore there is “no making permanent what had
remained through the centuries so stubbornly temporary”. This in
fact is his own condition. Deven is not satisfied with his life and does
not feel settle in his job. This is the reason why he is haunted by the
feeling
that
everything
is
uncertain,
temporary,
and
not
permanent. This feeling is the root cause of his acceptance of
Murad’s proposal to interview Nur. His inner desire is to do
something worthwhile in the field of his interest is suggested by his
action. He tells the poet about the purpose of his visit i.e. to
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interview him for an Urdu magazine. The Poet angrily affirms that
Hindi is being given Top-Priority just to finish the Urdu Language.
Deven’s deep love for Urdu Poetry and teaching Hindi literature in
a college suggest that the reality of life is totally different from the
dream of it. Though he loved Urdu, he cannot earn a living by it.
Having been educated in a colonial system of education
and having been exposed to western intellectual thought, Deven
has internalized some modern western concepts of existence. As a
consequence, he finds his own existence, “mean, disordered and
hopeless” (JC.P.40). Deven at one level is like the typical western
existential hero who is “acutely aware that only the solitariness of
decision discharges the responsibility responsibly”
(The New Indian Novel in English P.211). He decides to interview
despite the knowledge that it will cause him trouble both financial
and personal. Dominant in his mind is the desire to achieve
distinction,
to
transcend
the
“entirely
static
and
stagnant
backwaters of his existence”, to break out of his marginality, to
push himself to the centre where he can find gratification. At
another level, his sense of isolation grows out of the knowledge
that his ill equipped and incapable of adapting himself to the
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emerging complexities of contemporary society. He is almost
Faustian in his spirit of discontentment and thirst for fame and
identity.
Deven’s quest for identity in In Custody culminates in valuediscovery, in his positive identification with the historicity of life and
the existential problems of man. It is only through self-affirmation
that he is able to feel a way out of the psychic impasse. Deven is
stranded between his authentic self-image and his idealized selfimage, conflicting situations. Socio- economic and domesticfrustrates his prospects for psychic equanimity and wholeness of
personality. A humble and noble self in society but a victim at
home, he grows into a divided self. The harsh reality of existence
produces in him tense sensation of hostility. But he cannot revolt.
He cannot evade the cross and sordid aspects of life. he cannot
stand alone.
Compulsively drawn to Nur, he has a desire to identify with
the tangible and shabby world of the poet. But every move he
makes is frustrated by his self-effacing nature. Self-pity befogs his
psychic trek for self-expression. Discomfiture and defeatism dog
him, but his journey continues with a renewed hope and
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determination. Despite his frustration and disillusionment, he does
not give up his commitment to Nur’s poetry. Ultimately, he accepts
the gift of Nur’s poetry and begins to identify himself with his soul
and spirit. He becomes the “custodian of the poet’s genius”. He
faces reality and attains the identity of growth-oriented and
enterprising individuals. His is a journey from failure to success, from
alienation to identification.
What Deven undertakes is not merely a journey from
Mirpore to Delhi, which in terms of miles is hardly worth talking
about, but what is of greater significance, a journey a kin to an
adventure, a challenge which calls forth all his ingenuity; it is an
expansion of his experience, it is journeying forth into the “promised
land”. It is as Henry James wrote in his preface to the American of
an experience “disengaged, disembroiled, disencumbered, and
exempt from the conditions that we usually… attach to it”. (Stairs
to the Attic P.54).
In In Custody Deven’s desire for freedom from mundane
existence is also visible in the romantic notions he fosters about
himself and his job. He finds reality, his job, his family oppressive and
believes that he is chained to the necessity of “earning a
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livelihood” in order to “support his family”. Such an assumption has
imported onto him a sense of defeat, which prevents him from
total absorption in his ill-paid profession.
Though his hopes of a higher life, a life of culture are
shattered by his contact with actual reality, he doggedly continues
in his venture and he feels thwarted and obstructed at every
stage. His loneliness is accentuated by his realization that even Nur
with all his achievements and responsibility is trapped
(sick wife, child, poverty, dependents). It is only at this point that
Deven first relates himself to the poet’s life. This makes a
transformation within him as earlier he had conceived of himself
strictly in relation to Nur’s poetry.
He recognizes that Sarla, like himself too may have had some
aspirations to a better life. He attributes her disappointment entirely
to his low salary as a teacher. Both he and his wife have a deep
sense of failure, but they have little understanding of each other.
This lack of togetherness combined with his idea of being a victim
alienates him both from his wife and his only child Manu. In a
desperate attempt to escape from a terrible sense of isolation, he
seeks refuge in the fantasy-world of Urdu poetry where he
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hopes to fulfill himself. Deven realised that living in fantasy is much
more dangerous than leading a simple real life. He understands
that the world of fantasy always demands the best of man, while
the real life can do with anything and often it gives something. But
his realization of this truth of life does not stand for long.
Deven’s flight into the world of fantasy is reflected through his
thought process. The name of Nur opens door, changes
expressions, causes dust and cobwebs to disappear, visions to
appear, bathed in radiance. He has deep regards for the pious
image of Nur and places him in high esteem. But when he sees the
crowd that surrounds Nur, he is jolted out of the “fantasy of being
poet and Artist” (Ic P.50). The contradiction between what he
thought of Nur and what he finds him to he, shatters the image of
his “ideal” in life.
In In Custody Deven is in search of “pure freedom”. The
possibility of release is visualized in the romantic world of Urdu
Poetry. Murad’s suggestion to have an interview with the famous
poet brings before his mind’s eye a bright new world of fame and
recognition. He plunges head long into a world of fantasy
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imagining himself to be the “custodian of Nur’s very soul and spirit”.
Human being may belong to any stratum, but he cannot
escape from the burden and restrictions of his responsibilities. This
also indicates that marriage usually does not afford fulfillment to
anyone. Married life is often like a cage only, it is usually hollow
marked by the bitterness of relationship and selfish motives. Human
beings are doomed to live in this world; they are entrapped into it
and are not free to go out of it. Even nature is not about to help a
person escape from this trap and get full freedom. Man’s innate
urge for freedom is shown through siddique’s desire to be away
from his ancestral property to live freely in Delhi. This is the symbolic
of man’s desire to be free from all responsibilities and restrictions.
Deven is economically hard processed unable to fulfill the
demands of his wife and child. His motive of writing the article is
poetic love and material gain. He succeeds in publishing the
article and takes pain and makes sacrifices. For this he ignores
even the affections of his wife and thus becomes an impressive
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intellectual and the memorable being. Nur’s poetry expresses
suffering and pain:
“Life is no more than a funeral procession winding toward their
grave. Its small joys the flowers of funeral wreaths…. Life is drowned
in the gloom of suffering: art and friendship supply hope”. Nur’s
belief in atonement of sense through suffering is essentially a
religious idea (The Mind and Art of Anita Desai P.147).
Anita Desai writes with an acute Indian sensibility. She had
left Deven struggling with a world where evil dominated and the
innocence suffer in poverty, degradation and desolation. She
would have portrayed him weak and innocent and that would
have strengthened the theme. Like Shakespeare in King Lear and
Conrad, she shows the degraded self as a result of forces beyond
their control. Deven’s miserable life with unsympathetic and
sarcastic wife makes him think that, “he must look like a caged
animal in a zoo to any creature that might be looking down at
earth from another planet” (The Mind and Art of Anita Desai
P.149). The author makes him find courage to face the
Challenges instead of leaving him with his defeat of dream.
In Custody postulates that the artistic sensibility should be
deeply rooted in life, in the particular social context of which the
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artist is an integral part and that criticism should also approach art
from this perspective. This is elucidated in the growth of the
protagonist Deven. He fails as an artist because he is alienated
from life and its realities and he considers art to be separated from
life. His growth into an artist through the encounters with the Urdu
poet is
characterized
by
the transformation of
his earlier
perception of the separateness of art, life and the artist into a
wider vision of their inseparability and mutual compatibility.
Deven as a critic and Nur as a poet spring from the same
basket. They are caught up in the world of illusion. Desai explores
how their ‘life’ at its core is absurd and has no ultimate meaning.
The human predicament is one where man’s visionary spirit is
trapped in his materialistic body: and the responsibility of the
individual is to confront these painful truths but yet not succumb to
them. His is a denial of the inevitable responsibilities of life, which
are so crucial to his existence in the Indian social context. This
implies a disoriented sense of life and his rootlessness, his lack of a
vantage point from which to approach life. He strives to change
his existence by moving away from mundane realities and creating
a reality of his own in the domain of art, which he loves
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“above any reality”. By entertaining such a vision, Desai suggests
an overt cultural and social dislocation, which makes Deven,
resemble the western existential hero.
Being gullible Deven yields to Murad’s promise that he can be
the celebrated Urdu poet’s biographer. They plau to record the
interview but Deven has to seek financial assistance from the
college authorities to buy a tape recorder. The Urdu lecturer,
Siddique assists him in this Endeavour on condition that the
recordings will be the property of the college. So Murad assists him
by sending a boy, Chiku who will do the entire recording for him.
His problems do not end there. The recording virtually never takes
place because either the poet becomes moody or the machine
malfunctions.
In Custody is a re-creation of the problems and the agonies
of the wounded self. It has as its centre an ineffectual but wellmeaning young man whose problems are not just personal and
private but public and social. Deven has great passion for Urdu
Poetry. The cultural past of India becomes part and parcel of the
bubbling and throbbing consciousness of Deven.
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The riff-raff that gathers round Nur every evening and the
incessant friction between his wives are the unsurmountable
obstacles any admirer of the poet has to face. The social and the
cultural significance of (In Custody) the novel in terms of the self
consists
in
Deven’s
honest
efforts
to
surmount
these
unsurmountable problems. His efforts to escape the cage of
marriage a family and a job land him in the public world of Urdu
poetry and intellectual fame. Whether it is the private world or the
public world, the self does not find freedom for itself, for the
obvious reason that the forces that control the two worlds are
beyond its control. Even after the failure of the entire projects,
Deven is under social pressure. His students helped him, demand
first division marks. Nur writes to him for medical allowance. Murad
wants him to complete his article on the poet. Reeling under
various kinds of pressures and demands, he feels that, “he had
imagined he was taking Nur’s poetry into safe custody and not
realized that if he was to be the custodian of Nur’s genius”
(IC.P.203).
In Wordsworth’s poem “Rob Roy’s Grave” the speaker feels
that the scotch thief, who was brave and wise, entered society,
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“an age too late/or shall we say an age too soon?” for the reason
that his love for freedom or liberty, has to encounter a society
dominated by “rents and factors, rights of chance /sheriffs and
lairds and their domains” (Anita Desai and The Wounded
Self.P.147). Rob Roy felt that books and statutes are the barriers
that man himself placed against the self. Like Roy Deven’s free
spirit longs for freshness and stimulation at the time when social
civility has deteriorated into special uncivility. His determined effort
to keep what he has achieved and in the process heal the
wounded self. He tries to salvage the self by patiently resisting the
social and the anti-social forces.
The novel dramatizes the influence of the poet’s personality
and poetry on the lives of several people. His personality affects
not only those who are closely associated with him, but also those
who are distant, like Deven and Murad. The poet has fallen from his
former state of glory not only as a poet but also as a human being.
Nur’s pitiable condition is emphasized by the novelist with the series
of letters he writes to Deven complaining of paucity of funds. He is
no longer the great poet Deven had longed and hoped to meet.
The poet’s fall in Deven’s esteem is suggested by
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a powerful symbol the demolition of Siddique’s ancient mansion.
The collapse of this mansion symbolizes both the poet’s fall as a
poet and his image in Deven’s esteem. Though a great and
famous poet Nur is not a good human being. He leads an
indisciplined life and does not possess any moral values.
Deven not only sees and appreciates Nur as a separate
human being but also reviews his relationship with as one of mutual
belonging. As a critic has observed:
“In giving him custody of his work, Nur in turn has earned the right
to become Deven’s custodian…. In vowing to commitment. Deven
discovers his identity and his worth”(The New Indian Novel in English
P.276).
With this realization he now decides to face and counter
reality. He is transformed from an escapist into a realist who is ready
to face reality unflinchingly with all its concomitant problems,
demands and conflicts because man may not escape from his
responsibility and duties to those who are in his custody….
The monotonous life of a college professor and his materially
disappointed wife in the economic and cultural backwardness of
Mirpore is an important theme. More important in his literary
ambition of transcending his dull life by chronicling the life and
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poetry of Nur. He acquires distinction in the college through
association with a living poet. But this artistic motive is harmonized
with a more materialistic one of getting promotion through the
publication of an article.
Many themes are packed in this book. Indian intellectual’s
devotion of art, suffering, neglect and lack of recognitions are
mentioned by Murad in the opening. As a natural corollary, most of
the intellectuals, feeling frustrated in India, dream of going to
America “where the women are tall, white, blonde…” humorous
but meaningful is the mention that in the universities science
departments were ‘Rajas’ and the humanities ‘Languished’.
Religious sentiments are depicted in the mention of the early
morning hymns sung by groups walking in town to awaken the
spiritually idle people in India. Vital religious feelings of human
service and eternal prayers to God for redemption are delineated
in the character of Raj’s aunt. Comparative description of mosques
and temples in Mirpore and of Hindu-Muslim antagonism and riots
and the resulting chaos enhance lifelikeness. Mention of Siddique’s
family, the way of life at Nur’s and the history of Mirpore enrich the
Muslim background.
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In the character of Sarla, Desai outlines the predicament of
the average wife in male dominated society. Belonging to a
middle class family, she is entirely dependent on her husband for
her happiness. Herself unemployed and married to lecturer with
moderate means of income, her dream remains dream. Hers is the
lot of countless women in Indian society. Her young husband can
appreciate Urdu poetry but makes hardly any effort to understand
a woman. Sarla is the typical Hindu wife simple, timid, obscure,
domineered, undemanding, co-operative. Deven has the poetry
for satisfaction but she has nothing, their mutual anger finds
expression in Sarla’s occasional silence and sullenness.
Sarla of In Custody whose aspiration have been shattered
into pieces against the rock of harsh reality of life. Her miserable ,
routine life, full of labour “the shabbiness of her limp, worn clothes,
or her hunched, twisted posture, her untidy hair or sullen
expression” (Feminism and Recent Fiction In English P.102) were
integral parts of her humiliation. Anita Desai’s novels are in a way,
an advocacy for the legitimate rights and freedom of such
unfortunate women. She represents the destiny of most of the
Indian women. She never lifted her voice in Deven’s presence.
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Countless generations of Hindu womanhood behind her stood in
her way, preventing her from displaying open rebellion. Deven
knew she would scream and abuse only when she was safely out
of the way, preferably in the kitchen her own domain. The
emotional relationship between Deven and his wife except for a
permanent tension based on economic hardships.
Imtiaz Begum, the female protagonist embodies the
concept of suppressed woman in a patriarchal society. Begum, a
thoroughly revolting one is more repulsive to Deven. He is shocked
to see her shouting in a “shrill voice” to his hero to clean her room
and leave her in peace. He is appalled by her refusal to treat Nur
as a human being, leaving alone a poet. He concludes she is
malevolence
personified.
Her
indignation
towards
Nur
is
understandable. “The party, the friends, the feasts and furies make
her harsh and accusing” (Women and Society in the Novels of
Anita Desai P.91).
She is surrounded by a gathering as she is reciting some of
what Deven thinks are poem. Using the interior monologue Desai
presents Deven’s reactions to her efforts:
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“When Deven brought himself to listen to a line or two, it was just as
he thought: she said she was a bird in cage, that she longed for
flight that her lover waited for her. She said the bars that held her
were cruel and unjust… “(IC.82).
This passage is a fine example of Desai’s narrative technique
instead of commenting directly on the conduct of Imtiaz, She
projects the proceeding through the prejudiced eyes of Deven.
Sofia Begum, Nur’s first wife refuses to believe her when she is
bedridden and treats it as pretence. Imtiaz was content with his
presence and poetry at the beginning but later she wanted
everything: “his name and reputation and… even his admirers”
(IC-37). Sofia calls her a scheming villainess and accuses her of
usurping Nur’s reputation.
We come to know the real worth of the stifled talent of Imtiaz
by this letter:
“Are you not guilty of assuming that because you are amale, you
have a right to brains, talent, reputation and achievement, while I,
because I was born female, am condemned to find to what
satisfaction I can in being maligned, mocked, ignored and
neglected?” (IC.195-96).
This letter brings out the agony of sensitive and talented woman
who is unable to give full expression to her native talents and find
any encouraging response. Her reactions uphold the bleeding
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heart inside her. The role of the loose woman, which she plays, is
thrust upon her. But she is a bold presentation of the novelist who
asks a universal question of the privileges of women.
Deven’s conversation with Nur’s wife reveals certain basic
facts of life. She hates poets as they live in fantasy, completely
oblivious of the demands and realities of everyday existence.
Frustrations and disappointment are the only rewards the wife and
children of a poet get. Their time and resources are eaten up by
their admirers. She says: “see what my child has to witness the
depth to which his father has been brought by you-you” (IC.60).
Though the arguments of the poet’s wife are convincing, yet he
does not want to accept them, as it is difficult for him to establish a
contact between fantasy and reality.
Desai has revealed glimpses of the repressed condition of
women in society. The piteously helpless condition of these women,
which does not allow them even minimum freedom for cultivation
of their selves, is primarily responsible for all repression and tyrannies
heaped upon them. They lose their physical charm with the
passage of time. There is no deeper purpose behind the life of
these unfortunate creatures. Death winds up the threads of
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their life long meaningless activities and sordid existence. They
“anticipate death as they do everything with resignation. There is
no dignity in their death as in the death of that proud and glories
beast, but only a little melancholy as in the setting of a puff of dust
upon the earth”. The idea of freedom is simply inconceivable to
these women. (Feminism and Recent Fiction in English P.105).
Desai criticizes traditional society but her novel focuses on a
pathetic, trapped male character whose wife despises his inability
to succeed financially. A terrified, insignificant person Deven moves
from mediocrity as a college lecturer to impending professional
and financial ruin as he incurs increasing monetary debts, which he
finally decides to endure rather than committing suicide. His wife
gives him little support, infact, the women in the book seem rather
nasty, especially the enraged young wife of Deven’s hero, the
poet Nur. Desai makes clear that just as the male characters are
trapped in a world that offers no possibility for success. The female
characters have even more right to feel frustrated with a sexist
society that reduces them to clinging to these men who cannot
provide them with what they want.
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Unlike the evil kunthi from Kamala Markandaya’s Nector in a
Sieve, Desai’s character seem justified when they act out of selfpreservation. Further more, unlike Markandaya’s Rukmani and Ira
who appear justified for their rebellion yet suffer punishment away.
Desai’s women successfully defy traditional mores. The Urdu poet’s
young wife in In Custody, who rages at her limitations and writes in
her own defense, stands out as the most outrageous of these
women. In fact, she radically redefines her experience by insisting
on telling her story.
Deven’s journey to Delhi for attaining material progress
transfers our thoughts to the material development attained by the
industrialization. His journey back to Mirpore is a journey from
ignorance to reality to its awareness. He intends to replace
nightmare by reality, illusion by facts of life. To him, Mirpore is a
place much like hell. His trip to Delhi becomes a trip of selfdiscovery and recognition of reality.
He discovers the answer to reality provided by art through a
process of self examination during which he learns to relate himself
to his life. The uprooting of the artistic sensibility from its very life line,
that is the real experiences of life causes Deven’s failure. But
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the realization that his attempts turned out to be useless shows
Deven’s new awareness that reality cannot be denied. With the
acceptance of life in all it shades he moves towards a greater
realization of the truth that “there is no release or escape”. With the
extinction
of
the
possibility
of
release
and
escape
from
phenomenal existence, he gets a new lease of life. Now he is
prepared to face reality squarely.
On return to Mirpore he wishes for a return to his former life, “of
non-events, non-happenings,… empty and hopeless, safe and
endurable. That was the only life, he was made for, although life is
not perhaps the right term”(IC-183-184).
He realizes that he does not have the requisite degree of
boldness to feel involved with them. He wants to know the end of
his relationship with Nur. He thinks that perhaps the poet’s death
will be the end of it, but he realizes that he would have to pay for
funeral. Support the widows, raise his son. He is confident to face
life successfully with the help of these poems, which embody the
very essence of light and happiness.
Desai does more than simply subvert a male society’s attitude
towards women since she portrays a flawed Sita-like
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image in her main male character, not her female ones, who her
too disillusioned and angry to want to fulfill self-sacrificing ideas.
Anita Desai tried to portray the tragedy of human souls
trapped in the adverse circumstances of life. The novel Voices in
The City highlights the hollow existence of the urban people living
in the transition phase of India in the post independence era. It
projects the voices of the protagonists Monisha, Amla and Nirode
who are struggling for life in the formidable city of Calcutta.
The story revolves round a feudal family of Kalimpong with
an inferior father who is most of the time drunk, two sons and two
daughters. Arun leaves to England for higher studies, Nirode to
Calcutta to work in a news paper office as a clerk. Monisha is
married to Jiban, a middle-rung officer in government department
living with a large family. The younger sister Amla after training as a
commercial artist comes to Calcutta to join an advertisement firm
with high hopes which end in total disillusionment. The father is no
more and the mother has an affair with retired military officer.
Nirode’s life is presented as a succession of failures. Monisha’s illmatched marriage, her loneliness, sterility and the stress of living in
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a joint family with an insensitive husband push her to the breaking
point and she commits suicide by self-immolation.
Monisha, the woman is the victim of the crippling life within
the joint family. An educated girl with a refined sensibility, her
expectation of happy life are shattered to pieces when her father
marries her to Jiban against her will. Her aunt tells Amla that he is
“completely unsuitable to Monisha’s taste and inclinations. So your
father decided he was the right man, that it was right family”
(Voices in the City.P.199). Thus a highly sensitive imaginative girl
married to a ‘boring non-entity’ and a ‘blind moralist’ who often
complacently quotes Gandhi and Tagore, the champions of
women liberation, but never puts their ideals into practice in the
treatment of his wife. This shows that she is ill-fated to militate
against a corrosive emptiness within as well as without.
The novel is all the more explicit in exposing the traditional
values circumscribing the life and role of women. Monisha’s diary
begins with the “reception arranged by the heads of this many
headed family”(Voices In The City.P.113). When she forgets to
proceed according to the prescribed rituals she is surreptitiously
pushed by her husband. She is propelled forward into the
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embrace of his mother, she also pushes a little harder. They do not
however have any sense of respect or consideration for other’s
person. She is treated as a marionette and is reduced to the status
of a “small, shrunken shell”.
Her husband’s inability to fathom her needs and the hard
heartedness of his family aggravate her problems. Callously
enough they talk about her organs, the reason she cannot have a
child what is sacred and secretive. She is treated like a servant who
has to confine herself only to the kitchen. Even a slight and
unconscious negligence has been criticized by the family members
and she would not be allowed to go with her brother. No sensitive
woman will tolerate inhuman discussion of her physical deformity
by others in her presence.
In the traditional Indian joint family the daughter - in - law is
always treated as an outsider. They are not allowed even to
access their husband’s money. For instance Monisha takes some
money from her husband’s purse to treat her brother Nirode when
he falls ill, thinking that she has the right to do it. But she receives
the shock of accusing her of theft. This aggravates her sense of
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alienation and she silently reacts. She feels that she is alone little
beyond and below every one else.
“Bengali women who follow five paces behind their men”
(P.120) is a fine piece of criticism on the treatment of women in
Indian society in general. They are treated like caged birds and
wasting their life waiting on men who are self centered, indifferent,
hungry, demanding and critical. There has been continuous
bickerings between mothers - in - law and daughters - in - law
notably in Indian society. Disobedience in any from leads to
problems in life. The society in which Monisha lives is in no way
different from this unwritten code. Even husbands in most cases
want their wives to be cooperative to their family members. Jiban
unmindful of her feelings advises her to be little friendly to them.
Monisha in Voices in The City who is far more intelligent and
unfortunately circumstanced is even more unhappy on account of
the denial of freedom to her. Her relations with her husband are
without love and joy. She longs for love and her brother’s
sympathetic company. Her father, her husband, his “impossible
family” and more particularly the aggressive mother-in-low, all are
hostile to her individuality. She possesses a rare intellectual
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propensity, but in due course her conscience has withered and
died away. She is so sensitive to the taxing domestic environment.
She feels different from all. As Usha Bande observes: “The refrain I
am different from them all reverberating through Cry, the Peacock
also echoes throughout Monisha’s diary. It spells disaster for both”
(The Novels of Anita Desai.P.60).
There
is
a
lack
of
emotional
involvement
and
little
communication exists between husband and wife. This is mainly
due to the influence of the conventional society which expects a
wife to engage
herself
always
in
household
duties. “The
diametrically opposed cultural background of the couple also
comes
in
the way
of
mutual
understanding
and
mental
affinity”(Human Bonds and Bondages.P.26). Jiban is a product of
and stands for conventional cultural. He becomes a party to the
family member’s collective allegations when Monisha is accused
of theft.
The institution of marriage is to be blamed for the
unhappiness of Monisha. They in a joint-family fail to get a chance
to understand each other though it is arranged one. The seemingly
benevolent institution like arranged marriage becomes
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the cause of her restlessness. As Shantha Krishnaswamy says, “her
marriage is the excruciating, destructive and negative of all social
institution that trap and torture her isolated, sensitive psyche” (The
Women in Indian Fiction in English.250). Monisha is a victim of
societal ill – treatment and placed in an unenviable and pitiable
situation she slips deeper and deeper in to the ravines of
depression never to surface at all. Being the sensitive woman that
she is unable to make any compromise or stand the onslaught of
such an oppressive and uncaring society.
Commenting on Monisha’s “absurd” existence her brother
Nirode remarks: “All this fighting to carve out a destiny for oneselfit’s nothing compared to the struggle it is to give up your destiny, to
live without one of either success or sorrow” (Voices In The
City.P.191). But what people like Monisha really need is the
essential congenial environment characterized by freedom for
their development.
The tradition bound society not only drives sensitive Monisha
to the death but also shatters the hopes and aspirations of her
sister Amla. The kind of love Monisha wants is not available to her,
her husband destroys the meaning of it. She withdraws from the
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material concerns of family and advises Amla to always going the
opposite direction, it in an advice to rebel, Amla notices her
stillness and death like submission and thinks of her as a lifeless
statue. But the stillness is not steadiness or detachment, it is not
even feeling or suffering, it is death-like stillness. While watching the
dancer in the street, Monisha feels curiously untouched. She alone
stood apart, “unnaturally cool, too perfectly aloof, too inviolably
whole and alone and apart” (Voices In The City. P.238).
Monisha wedded to Jiban gets as her return only loneliness
and incommunication. A disquieting alienation, endless mental
agony and “self willed vanishing” appear to be on the card for
women like her gifted with a responsive psyche and searching
mind. In the depiction of Monisha in the perspectives of a drifting
brother Nirode and a trained determined career girl Amla, the
novelist persuades us forcefully to look steadily and wholly on the
incessant struggle going on in the mind of almost every women
turned wife in an unwelcome way to choose between meagre
sustenance and permanent release.
She like Nirode, wants to be free, but unlike him she finds it
difficult to free herself of her appurtenances and duties. She longs
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for privacy and solitude and the inviolability that these may bring,
but that is not to be, Life, follows a subdued pattern of monotonous
activity without acquiring any meaning. Jiban’s posting to
Calcutta and Monisha’s childlessness further detract from her
privacy. Looking at the women around her, she asks herself:
Why are lives such as these lived?
At their conclusion, what solution,
What truth falls into the waiting
palm of ones hand, the still pit
of one’s heart. (Voice in the City P.121).
She finds her answer in the bleeding doves who carry their
suffering with them, but her own options are limited. She like
Gautama turns to the Gita, for it does not offer a purely religious
solution. And the wisdom of Gita recommends detachment and
control, with the senses under control, free from any longing.
Meena Shirwadkar assigns her suffering to her childless state.
It is that true that traditional Indian society looks down upon a
childless woman. A woman gains status only as a mother. But in
Monisha’s case the awareness of her low profile in family and in
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society is punched into her daily so unceremoniously that it
becomes one of the reasons for her inferiority complex.
In Voices in the City, Nirode, who is the main protagonist is a
congenital failure and his search for freedom is an existential
search. He wants negation and not acceptance. He does not
want to continue, he feels insolated and cherishes this isolation; he
closes himself in his world and withdraws from the outside world.
Life, to him is meaningless and absurd.
As a practicing poet and journalist Nirode moves among the
budding poets of the city, who have poor wit and imagination. As
a boy he adored and loved his mother so intensely that her second
marriage shattered his heart and damaged his psyche. His dandy
exterior could not conceal his inner misery. He dislikes his mother for
becoming the mistress of Major Chadha.
The aberrations we notice in Nirode and Monisha have their
roots in the family disharmony, which is aggravated by the seedy
society in which they find themselves. The adverse effect of society
on Nirode is even stronger than Monisha and Amla.
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His brother Arun who had taken keen interest in studies
becomes the favourite of all the members of his family. His father
set apart a large amount of money to Arun to pursue his higher
studies in London. This partisan attitude by his father towards him
has made jealous of his bother and a victim of inferiority complex.
He explains to Amla that his rejection is not born out of
morbidity but out of desire to preserve his sanity. “… at the end of it
realized that the only thing I wanted to protect, what any sane
man needs to protect in his conscience” (Voices in The City.P.183).
His sensitive nature does not allow him to undertake any job which
is mechanical and devoid of involvement. His rebellion is
completed through Monisha’s death. The fire which burns her to
death acts like a cathartic agent where Nirode is concerned.
He like Maya, rejects both faith and the need for faith,
surviving only through doubt and questioning. He reduces his
needs to the barest minimum thus rebelling against the imposition
of any pattern on his life.
Amla is a liberated and intelligent woman. She loves
independence and wants to be individualistic. She is distressed by
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the joint - family system prevailing in the Indian society and the
marriage in such a family where the independence of woman is
totally curtailed. She does not want to be imprisoned by such an
ensnaring social institution. She wants “something greater than
pleasure alone or the security of marriage alone, something more
rare, more responsible” (Voice in The City.P.145).
She is very different from Monisha and Amla finds their silence
and withdrawal mystifying. But she too gradually finds a sense of
hollowness and futility sapping her interest and vitality and loses her
sense of camaraderie. She becomes secretive about her thoughts
and finally falls in love with Dharma, a married man much older
than her. She requires communication and reciprocation. Her
dream of love and involvement is broken down when she learns
Dharma’s inhuman power of disowned his daughter. She bids
farewell to this love.
In spite of her living in the midst of a hostile, inhuman and
materialistic society, she does not prefer to end her life as Monisha
has done. Rather she decides to fight the forces she considers evil
till the end. “she knew she would go through life with her feet primly
shod, involving herself with her drawings and safe people
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like Bose, precisely because Monisha had given her a glimpse of
what lay on the other side of this stark, uncompromising margin”
(Voices in the City.P.248).
As a young modern woman she knows pretty well that it is
quite necessary to be realistic in this fast-paced world. She is
talented, beautiful, intelligent girl known for her “exceptional sharp
sensitivity”. She loves independence and seeks a job, which
satisfies her will. She takes part in social entertainments, and many
try to court her but without any result. Optimism and pessimism, joy
and sorrow work side by side in her. Even while moving happily and
optimistically outward towards life, she feels a “giant exhaustion
growing and swelling inside her, of a feeling of sick apprehension
and despair” (Voice in the City.P.149).
Amla feels depressed on seeing the frustrated and dejected
life of her brother and sister. She is also caught in the mire of a
mindless society. Though she is young, individualistic and strong
willed, she is not able to overcome the devilish influence of the
society. She partly regains her will power after realizing the sordid
reality at the death of her sister. The agony in her mind springs from
her inability to flow with the general current of society. She
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uncompromisingly takes a strong stance and refuses to accept the
cruel dictates of society to which average commonality submit
themselves uncomplainingly.
No doubt she is yet another disappointed woman who
occupies the endless pages of Anita Desai’s fiction, but she grows
in maturity in her repeated encounter with an unaccommodative
society. She strives to escape from the boredom and insecurity
enters into the modelling profession but only in vain. Again, her
unrequited love for Dharma is no refuge either. Therefore, the
choice becomes very clear to Amla: either she loses her identity
and merges with the multitude or she braves the odds and gets
annihilated in the process like Monisha.
Usha Bande brought out Amla’s inner trauma when she says,
“Psychologically, she is a brilliant portraiture of a rebellious young
woman, eager to master life and triumph over every obstacle. Her
ambitious pursuit drags her through various psychic situations till
finally she establishes a contact with her real self and achieves
equanimity” (The Novel of Anita Desai.P.129).
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Dharma is responsible in giving a new impetus to Amla, where
as Jiban, the callous indifferent husband of Monisha, is responsible
for her despair and loneliness. He is a conventional Bengali
husband who wants his wife to be submissive to the dictates of his
family.
He
never
understands
her
feelings,
emotions
and
predicament. He believes in male domination and allows no
freedom to his wife. He wants her to be his dependent. “His formal,
stolid, unfeeling personality is the cause of his alienation from
Monisha” (Language and Theme in Anita Desai’s Fiction.P.61).
Aunt Lila in Voices in the City appears to have the attitude of
a woman who is all for women’s emancipation. But in reality her
attitude to women and their problems is not different from that of
traditional men and women. She swears to Amla by individual
freedom but her pronouncements lack sincerity. This duplicity in
behavior can also be seen in Dharma’s treatment of his wife and
daughter.
This leads us on to the related questions of male dominations.
When Aunt Lila remarked that, “our country belongs to men”. She
was speaking the truth. Fathers and husbands very often treat
women as their property, which can be owned, controlled and
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disposed of the way they like. The novelist has repeatedly drawn
our attention to the dominance of men over women in the society.
To people like Dharma, married relationships are simply, “the
matter of loyalty, habit, complicity” (Feminism and Recent Fiction
in English.P.106). But to women these relationships define their very
existence.
Monisha and Amla are in search of the missing conscience in
their own strange ways. Perhaps it is a dearer concern for women.
The futility of that pursuit saps Monisha of her very life. Even her
gruesome suicide cannot be summarily dismissed as a freakish act
of a mad woman. Desai reminds us of our society’s responsibility in
driving her on to that desperate leap. The need for feminism is
underscored in Monisha and her kind.
Voices in the City provides an intimate peep into the habits
and attitudes of traditional women. The life of these women is full of
trivialities and pettiness. The piteously helpless condition of these
women, which does not allow them even minimum freedom for
cultivation of their selves, is primarily responsible for all repressions
and tyrannies heaped upon them. There is no deeper purpose
behind the life of these unfortunate creatures. The idea of
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freedom is simply inconceivable to these women. The novel is an
exemplification of what Desai called in an interview with
Yashodhara Dalmia, “The terror of facing single handed, the
ferocious assault of existence”(Feminism and Recent Fiction in
English.P.94).
Desai’s Voices in the City presents the Indian ethos and the
Hindu culture in general and portrays a blend of the modern and
the traditional. The apparent day today living and interaction
between the characters reveals the facts of gender politics
inherent in Indian society.
Amla’s mother takes an unorthodox step to get rid of the
death trap. Her move is condemned as a manipulative act of
sexuality. Society expected her to remain faithful even though her
husband was a depraved man. Her decision is condemned by
Nirode because he is a party to gender politics. He even equates
her with Kali the goddess, the destroyer and the preserver. The
novel depicts the condition of Indian woman in urban society.
A close study of the novel reveals the dark realms of the
psyche of the protagonists in the materially dominated and
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traditionally bound society and the suffocating atmosphere of a
hostile joint family. The conventional family and society, the
dominating social values, the mores, restrictions, conventions and
customs of the joint family system act as a trap to the protagonists.
Monisha escapes into the world of death. Nirode leads a lifeless
existence and Amla, deciding to fight till the end, adapts herself to
the situation. The existing social ills are the causes of disintegration
in the family life and disillusionment in the personal lives of modern
Indian women. According to her, the remedy for the predicament
of women like Monisha and Amla is “not in individual therapy but
rather in social reconstruction” (The Woman in Indian Fiction in
English P.250).
Maya, Sita, Nanda and Imtiaz Begum are the victims of
masculine indifference. Maya prefers death and insanity, Sita
manages to come to terms with it. Nanda Kaul leads a life of
isolation, away from all associations and longs for peace and
values. If they have been treated equally by their husbands their
condition would have been different.
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