UNIT 1 ANITA DESAI: LIFE, WORKS AND

THE LANGUAGE ISSUE

Structure

1.0 Objectives
1.1 A Biographical Sketch of Anita Desai
1.2 Anita Desai's Major Works
1.3 Outliiles of Anita Desai's Novels
1.4 Desai and thc Language Issue
1.5 Let Us Sum Up
1.6 Questions

1.0 OBJECTIVES

T b s Unit will provide a biographical sketch of Anita Desai. Her major novels and
their outlines will be discussed. The Unit will also include a detailed discussion on
Desai's choice of the English language as her medium for writing.

1.1 A BIOGMPHICAE SKETCH OF ANITA DESAI

Anita Desd (1937-1

.Anita Desai was born on June 24, 1937 in Mussoorie, India. Her father, Dhiren
Mazwndar, was a Bengali and her mother, htionette Nime, was a German. The
Mazumdars left Germany two decades before the Nazi persecutions and settled in
India. Desai has inherited a multilingual background. She is familiar with Bengah.
Hindi. German and English. However, the first language that she formally learnt to
read and write was English, at Queen Mary-s Higher Secondary School, in North
Delhi. Her first piece of miting was also in English at the age of seven. She tr~ed
Cleur Light of Day her hand at short stories and made her own illustrations for them, sewing them on to
ccivers to make them appear as books. She says:

My fanlily became aware of it when they became the hapless recipients of the
little books I wrote, illustrated, stitched and bound into birthday gifts. and
rcsignCd themselves to my future by calling me 'The Wnter m the Famil! I
saw no alternative but to fill the role given me.'

These pieces wcre published in Children's magazines. It was in her twenties that
Desai started writing novels. She admits that she prefers novels to short storm
because thc form of the ilovel gives her a "good deal of thought and tlme. [to] get
round [the sqject), see it from different angles and aspects. whereas a short storq
quite different. You have the whole of it quite clear In your
it down at one throwv2

made an impact on her mind were Emily Bronte, Virginia Woolf.

James Joyce and Gerard Manley Hopkins. She read Wutherz~g
was nine years old. The novel, she says, struck her

withgale force, it set my hair on end, I vibrated to it-I have never forgottell
that experience and reality has never again seemed to me half as intense.
significant or overwhelming as the world of books.3

Desai's childhood and student life w7asspent in Delhi She graduated from Miranda
House, Delhi University with English Hoilours in 1957. She worked for a !car after
her graduation at Max Mueller Bhawan in Calcutta. In 1958, a year after she
graduated she married an executive, A s h ~ i nDesai. She has four children. Her
daughter Kiran Desai is also a writer. Her novel, 'H~~llnbaloo rn the CTn~rvnOrcnc:r.~l'
has been recently published. This work serialized m the New Yorker and has
been included in the 'Vintage Book of Indmn Wrrtrng'.

Regarding the autobiographical element in her novels Desai comments:

In countless small ways the scenes and settings certainly belong to my life
Many of the minor characters and incidents are also 6ased on real life. But
the major characters and the major events are either entirely imaginary or an
amalgamation of several characters and happenings. One can use the raw
inaterial of life only very selectively. It is common among writers to pick out
something from real life and develop their situation around it: while therc are
others who start from some r a l experience.. . you use it as a base but don't
confine yourself to it.4

Desai admits that The Village by the Sea tells a true story, "based entirely on fact."
She recalls in her dedication the "many holidays" that she had spent in Thul.

After her mother's death in mid-seventies, the language of her childhood-German-

gained a new significance. She associated it with her mother wh'o was a German. It
reminded her of the lullabies and nursery rhymes that she had learned in German as a
child. Desai began to associate German with the deepest level of her consciousness.
The hero of her novel, Baumgnrtner 's Bombay, Hugo Baumgartner, is a German
exile in India who has learnt smatterings of the local lznguage. The novel is written
in English, has long passages in German and is peppered with Hindi phrases.

Several literary awards have been given to Desai. Her novel, Fire on the Mountam
(1977), won the Royal Society of Literature's Winifred Holtby memorial Prize and
the 1978 National Academy of Letters Award. Clear Light of Day (1980) and In
Custody (1984) were shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1980 and 1984 respectivel~.
She has also had various academic honours. Desai was a visiting fellow at Girton
College where she also teaches one semester of creative writing course. She is also a .Anita Desai: Life,
member of the Advisory Board for English of the National Academy of Letters in Works and the
Delhi and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in London. Language l m e

1.2 ANITA DESAI'S MAJOR WORKS

NOVELS

Cry, the Peacock. New Delhi: Orient, 1990

Voices in the City New Delhi: Orient, 1982
Bye-Bye, Blackbird Delhi: Mind Pocket Books, 1971.
Delhi : Orient, 1985
Where shall We Go This Summer? Delhi: Vikas, 1975.
Delhi: Orient, 1991
Fire on the Mountain London: William Heinemann, 1977
Clear Light ofDay. London: William Heinemann, 1980
London: Penguin, 1980
In Custody USA: Harper and Row, 1984.
London: Heinernann, 1988
Baurngurtner S Bombay. Penguin Books, 1989
&

SHORT STORIES

. Games at Twilight London: William Heinemann, 1978

Village by the Sea: A Long Story 1982.

FOR CHILDREN

The Peacock Garden. Bombay: Indian Book House. 1974

Cat on a Houseboat. Bombay: Orient Longman, 1976.
"Circus Cat, Alley Cat," Thought, 1957.
"How Gentle is the Mist," The Illustrated Weekly of India, 1958.
'"Grand Mother," Miscellany, Calcutta: Writer's Workshop, 1960
"An Examination," Miscellany, 1960.
'To Seal a Pidure." Miscellany, 1960.
'Tea with the Maharani, " Envoy, 1959.
"Ghost House," Quest, 1961.
'-Mr. Bose's Private Bliss," Envoy, 1959.
-'Private Tuition by Mr. Rose," Indian Literature, 1970.
"Dsscent from the Rooftop," The Illustrated Weekly of Indza. 1970.
'"Surface Textures," Femzna, 1974.
'"The Accompanist," Quest, 1975.

1.3 OUTLINES OF ANITA DESAI'S NOVELS

Cry, The Peacock (1963) her first novel, deals with Maya who is trapped in a bad
marriage to Gautama who is much older. The action of the novel is set in Delhi.
Almost the entire story is "remembrance of things past" by Maya herself. It is really
her effort to tell the story to herself to understand and find meaning in her life. Her
.
husband, Gauaama, is a successful, middle aged lawyer. He does not understand the
temperament-partly spiritual-of his ywng wife. The complexities of her inner life
is effectively brought out through the landscape as is her resentment asainst her
husband for his inability to communicate with her. One day during a dust stonn
when both husband and wife go up to the roof of their house, she pushes him off from
the parapet and he dies. A few days later she too commits suicide. The peacocks are
 said to fight beforc they mate, "living they are awars of death. Dying, they are in
Clew Light o/Duj
love with life." 111 Maya's mlnd reality and myth merge into a nightmarish outcome.

Vorces in the C'lty(1965) followed Cry, The Peacock and is set in Calcuttse. the city of
Kali--Goddess of Death. Desai makes the mother of Nirode and his two sisters.
iMonis11a and Amla, also like Kali who unleashes her evil powers. Monisha kills
herself because she cannot bear the str-ainof her marriage to Jiban The greater part
of the novel is devoted to Nirode's nmve fiom failure to failure. Amla, who has not
bcen in Calcutta for long (and here. Desai clearly shows the evil associated with the
city) reslsts the city's ~nfluence,The narration is on behalf of the characters after
~vhomthe chapter is entitlzd.

Bye-Bye Blackbird (I 971j deals with Indian immigrants in Britain and the emotional
disturbances experienced by them. Adit Sen and Dev are friends. Adit is settled in
England having married Sarah, an English woman. Dev comes to England for higher
studies and finds the racism there very unpalatable. Gradually Dev adjusts to the
country but Adit begins to get disillusioned with it. Adit decides to return to
India with his pregnant wife. Desai captures the psychological and emotional
disrurbances in Sarah brought upon by Adit's decision. The novel is divided into
three parts: a) Amvai b) Discovery c) Recognition and Departure. Through the
main characters Dev, Adit and S d , Desai portrays the psychological conflicts of
immigr,mts who feel rootless and alienated fiom both the country of their origin and
the coui~tryto which they have migrated.

Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975) Sita is trapped in a joyless marriage to

Raman. She goes to a forsakcn pplaci. Manori, an island in Marve. to escape the
mundande reality of her husband and her four children. She also wants to avoid
giving birth to her fifth child. She feels it is inhuman to bring another life into thls
a ,=1 world. The Island brings back her childhood memories of her time spent uith
her selfish father. She realizes that the island is no place for her problems. Peace
eludes her there and she feels alienated. Finally, she concludes that it is better to get
back to reality. So she returns to her f,unily,

Ere on the h~fottntain (1977) Nan& Kaul is the heroine of this aovel. In order to
break with her past, she retires to a haunted house "Carignano" in Kasauli However.
bath the past and the present impinge on her existence depriving her of any peace.
The past intrudes through the memory of her husband's infidelity. The present
appears in the forni s f her great-granddaughter, Raka, who disturbs her cherished
isolation. Tlungs get complicated further with the presence of her classmate and
friend, Ila Das who is now a welfare officer. Although she dislikes Ila, she pitles her
and decides to mvltr: her over to stay with her. But she does not execute her plan
One day a police oEcer phones Nan& and informs her that Ila has been raped ?nd
murdered. She finds it difficult to accept the news and finally succumbs to the shock
Raka is the sole survivor. Ironically, Nanda Kaul who longed for stillness and calm
attains it in a very strange way.

Ir! Custody (1984) deals with Deven Sharma wl:o loves IJrdu but teaches Hindi to
support his family. His friend, Murd, asks him to interview Nur, an old Urdu poet
for a magazine that he edits. This simpie project becomes very complicated as the
novel progresses and instead of one i~teiview, Deven takes on t!e responsibility of
writing an entire biography of Nur. Vi1liie implementing this project, Deven kces a
series of disasters. He almost loses his job and gets used by the poet and his
sychophants. But he learns from his experiences all about human limitations and
gains a better understanding of life. Finally, through a series of events he becomes
the custodian of Nur and his poetry.

Baumgnrtner 's Bombay (1988) Worid Wzr I1 is the backdrop against which thc stop:
unfolds itself, Hugo Baumgartner is the central character He is a German rcfiigee
who comes to India before World War two ic escape persccdtioil. VJhile in IcSlia,
Ba~mgartner.gradually falls into a routine life. He has no family. During his fifty Anita D& Life,
vears of stay in India, he barely lii~ksup with anyone. He eventually meets a young Works and the
German at a cafe. Baumgm~er.nurh~rest&is stranger and extends korpitality to !aim Language Issrua,
The central irony of the novel !les in the f-nct the Baumgmer, L V ~ Dfled Gerrnm~$5
escape persecution, is killed by this German stranger, who is a dmg a~dict.

- ---- ------
1.4 DESAI AND THE LANGUAGE ISSUE

Corneating on the writing of her nove'ls Desai says, "it is not an act of delikcratisrl,
reason =d choice. It is a matter cf instinct, ~ilence.~"

Anita Desai grew up with Germm, Bengali, Hindi and Engiish. She says' 'We srfiice
Geman at home, it was the language in which I learned mrsery r5ymcs and fkiz-y
tales !Ye spoke Hindi to all our friends d neighbours. I Ismed Englisir w h ~ i4
u7er,ttc szhool-* Given her multiiingual background Desai could h3vc chosen m y
cne ~f the h n r languages in which to mite. But, she says, sfle found Eng!isli most
su~tablefor laer works:

My lmguage (of the novels) is English and I find it answers zll my needs. It
1s nch and flexible, supple a i d adaptable, varicd and vitd I think it is even
capable of reflecting the Indian character and s~tuation.~

circ~amstancesalso played a role, she says, in her choice of the lang~age:

Of co~~i.se.

What were these circumstances, in my case? Li'l so many other Indians, I

had been sent to a mission school, in my case Queen May's School in O!d
Delh which was run by a Church of England sisterhood called the Grey
Sisters. Although I had grown ug speaking three languages zt home-again,
as moat Indians do-English was the first languzge I[ Icamt :a read and nrpita.
and this fact affected my living and writing ever after. As smn as I l e m t -31.7
English alphabet and saw how it cculd be transformed into fairy tales and
verse, I looked cjn it as the key to ehe worlds of books, a h world of the
imagination, and I decided instantly that was the wudd ill which I wanted to
live, to which I belongedg

Desai is quick to point out that there are problems for her as arm Indim writer in
choosing English as the medium for her works. v i s is part!? ta do with the fact that
since E~giish"is at best an inmigrant iz I~diz,"ZDO :hex 1s likt.tla:%%ition to M l
back on S k notss:

It was only when 1 had \'crittetl about half-a-dozen nsvel3 that I became, aware
here was a problem involved ir, Pke writing of &em-I mean other than the
irnrnediate problems I worked OIII daily on a shed of paper When I began to
meet other writers and hear them speak at confsrerrces. I saw bow much
tli011ghtthey had given the matter ef tnnslatkg Jnd;an thought, modes of
expression and experiences kitto a foreign langtage thzt ofieit did not have ha
ie
omabulary for them. I realized I had not really been solvi5g these problems
ezsiiy and unconscio3sly, I had been evading then, 54-sticking my h a d ,
ostnch-hhion, into the sands of what critics cdled the psychological novel,
the subjective novel, which seemingly could be nritten ir? any language and
did not call for the creation of redistic characiers or dialope '
Desai comments about this "language of the interior" in her works. She says:

By -writing nove!s that have bee11 catalogued by critics as psychological, and

that are purely subjective, I bave been left free to en~ploy,simply, tile
 particular type of language-the language of their thoughts of their interior
Clear Light ofDay
selves-which has nothing to do with geography and can be written in any
--
language . l o

Desai states that while she was writing these subjective novels, Ruth ~habvalawas
"reproducing Indian speech rhythms in English," in her novels. But it is to Saln~an
Rushdie.that she gives credit for bringing "the spoken language off the streets onto
the printed page".11

In CustGdy, she says, that she finally experimented with letting "Indian accent and
tone enter her speech" It was like a bilingual experiment:

'Sit down, Deven-bhai,' [MuradJ said, with a curt gesture of his betel-stained
fingers. 'I have already talked this over with Jain Sahib. He knows exactly
what your needs are. His nephew is bringing us the best model, secondhand.
in prime condition, Jain s'ays. Sit down till he comes, why don't you?

'What?' stuttered Deven, turning cold at the thought of this newkst deception
of Murad's. 'YOU have already fixed it up with Mr. Jain? Where is this
model coming from? Why secondhand? I will not buy second-hand goods,
it will only break down, it will give troilble-'

'Sahib, you are saying you want best model. I am getting you best model, at
cheap rate. How can it be firsthand also? Again the dealer and Murad
exchanged looks, not quite winking.'
(In Custody, London: Harper and Row, 1984, p. 107.)

~ a t e rduring
, a lecture at Yale University in 1989, Desai talked about her trilingual
experiment in Baumgartner 's Bombay. She says that she wrote the book with a sense
of release in using the language of her childhood, Gekman. She says,

It was a book I had to write if I were to clear away a pile of debris: or unload
a heavy piece of baggage from my back, so that I could continue on mv
way. 12
t

About her trilingual narrative experiment in the novel, she says:

For years, while I wrote away in English and talked away in Hindi, I was
,, searching for a subject that would allow me to use that part of my tongue that
I had to silence for all my writing years because I could not find the key to

1.5 LET US SUM UP

This unit has given you insight into the peculiar circumstances of Anita Desai's life
and background to make you understand her multilingual origin and choice of the
English Language as her medium for writing. Her persona comes out sharply in her
self-reflective interviews. The background study of Anita Desai and her works wi!l
help you to appreciate the text under study better.

References
' ~ n i t aDesai. Common Wealth ofletters Vo1.2 No.1 June 1990.p.4
2
Shyam A. Asnani. Critical Responses to Indian English Fiction. Delhi: Mittal,
1985. p.155
 t a Interview.by Yashodhara Dalrnia." The Times of India, April 29,1979.
4 L ' ~ Desai.

"The Indian Writers Problems" in Rarnesh K. Srivastava. Ed. Perspecrives on Anita .

Desai Ghaziabad: Yimal Prakashan, 1984, p. 3

errel ell Sarah. "A Banquet of Languages" Review of Baumgartner 's Bombaj~N1"
Times Book Review April 9, 1989, p.3.

'"Anita Desai. An Interview" by Yashodhara Dalrnia. The Times of Irzdin. April

29,1979.
8
Anita Desai. "On the English Language in India", Common Weaith of Letters Vo1.2
No. 1 June 1990, p.3.
9
lbid; p.4

'O~arneshK. Srivastava. Ed. Perspectives on Anita Desai. Ghaziabad: Vimal

Prakashan, 1984, p.3.

"Anita Desai. Dendnlus Fall 1989, p.212.

" ~ n i t aDesai. Common Wealth of Letters Vo1.2 No. 1, Jme1990, p.9.

131bid;pp 8-9.

1.6 QUESTIONS

1. Briefly e o m e n t on Desai's choice of English as her inediunl of tmting.

2. What are the titles of Desai's novels? Do you notice any pattern in them?
UNIT 2 CLEAR LIGHT O F DAY :THEMES,
TECHNIQUES, TIME -

Structure

Objectives
Structure of Clear Light of Day
Detailed Storyline of Part I
Anita Desai's Techniques
B i f l a r a Relationship
Treatment of Time

2.0 OBJECTIVES

This Unit will outline the structure of the novel, Clear Light of Day. It will then
outline the storyline of Part I of the novel. The techniques Anita Desai employs will
be discussed nex* so that you can familiarize yourself with her style. The Bim/Tan
relationship which is pivotal to the story will also be discussed keeping in mind the
central issues of the novel. The unit will conclude with a set of questions which will
further sensitize you to critical aspects of the novel.

2.1 STRUCTURE OF CLEAR LIGHT OF DAY

Desai's Clear Light of Day deals with the Das family chronicle. The narrative is
divided into four untitled parts: Part I is set in the present; Part I1 goes back to the
summer of 1947; Part 111 is set in an even earlier period of the Das children's
childhood, and Part IV returns to the present with a futuristic perspective. Each part
also deals with an important phase in the life of the main characters. In an interview,
Desai stated that Clear Light of Day was an attempt to write "a four dimensional
piece on how a family's life moves backwards and forwards in a period of time" ' The
fourth dimension, Desai states, is 'time.' In fact, the four parts of the novel parallel the
Four Quartets of T.S.Eliot whom she admired greatly. As in the 'Four Quartets'. m
Clear Light of Day too, time is the destroyer and the preserver. The very theme of the
novel is to do with the paradox of change and continuity. Time is used as a structural
device by Desai in her novel. The action delineates itself at:

--
"three time levels the past, the present and the vision of the timeless in
which past, present and future fuse into a homogeneous entity. About the
time-structure of the novel, Briraj Singh states: The past is not at all in one
lump and the present in another; the two are so interfused that we keep going
back at different times in the present to the same event of the past.. . ..but
always with the knowledge thar the intervening description of the present has
given.'72

The four dimensional structure of the novel allows Desai to present reality from
different angles. There is no linearity to the events in the novel. Desai uses the stream
of consciousness technique in her narrative which linksup events imagistically rather
than rationally. She is the omniscient observer. Through her third person narrative