In Custody- Theme of Self Alienation and Love

 Interpretations on Indian English Fiction-3 (In Custody)

Self-Alienation and love

In Custody presents a young man Deven, psychologically edgy and longing to indulge in some literary enterprise. It is a touching account of the happenings in the life of a small-town lecturer, Deven in Hindi and his dream project of interviewing his idol and how it ends up in disaster. Here in the novel Anita Desai has experimented with the theme of alienation with a new set of characters and situations. The theme of alienation is emphasized herein with great skill. It draws our attention to the mental agony and dilemma of Deven, whose extreme love of Urdu forces him into the clasp of his supposed friend Murad. Desai’s sensitive portrayal and understanding of essential human nature makes the narrative conspicuous and captivating. The ups and downs of human life, the upheavals in relationships have been deftly crafted in this novel. It is the novel of shattered emotions and scattered dreams.

 

First, there is Deven, the protagonist, a lecturer in Lala Ram Lal College, living in Mirpore with his wife, Sarla, and his son, Manu. Deven is the portrait of an ordinary, average human being. A lecturer in Hindi, he regards himself as a failure — both as a teacher and as someone who aspired to some status in life. At thirty-five, he feels old already, having spent all the "empty years" waiting for a break, waiting to do something worthwhile, something "great." Deven is a romantic and an escapist, incapable of facing crises. Unable to change his ‘circumstances,' he seeks relief in fantasy and the rich promises of Urdu poetry. Sarla, his wife, is a "plain, penny-pinching, congenitally-pessimistic" woman whom Deven's aunt selected as his bride for these very virtues. As a young girl and as a bride, she had the usual aspirations of her girlfriends to own the three F's: " 'Fan, 'phone, frigidaire!' they would shout whenever anyone mentioned a wedding, a bridegroom, a betrothal, and dissolve in hectic laughter" (6 7). But because she has married into the academic profession and lives in a small town, all her dreams have been rudely swept away.

 

Disappointment, however, has not brought them any closer. To live within a lecturer's salary can be an oppressive experience, and though Deven and Sarla have no choice but to do so, it has given their marriage a permanent quality of despair. A contrast to ‘thrifty,’ ‘domesticated’ Deven is Siddiqui, his colleague, a Muslim lecturer in Urdu, a bachelor, hedonist, and romantic who has the talent for remaking fact into more acceptable, more attractive fiction, Thus, when he discovers that he can't make ends meet or maintain the disintegrating old haveli, his ancestral home, he sells it to a Delhi businessman who wants to ‘develop’ that land and build a block of flats with shops on the ground floor, a cinema house at the back, offices on top — ‘all kinds of plans for putting this wasteland to use. Yet another contrast to Deven is Murad, his childhood friend, now in Delhi. Murad, the son of a wealthy Kashmiri carpet seller, was to Deven the rich spoilt boy with lots of money to spend on cinema and cigarettes, while Deven was a poor widow's son, who could be bribed and bought to do anything for him. Yet their friendship has lasted. Murad, the editor of an Urdu journal which he says he runs to save the glorious traditions of Urdu from being extinguished by the Hindi-wallahs, is probably not very rich now: he says that his father has disinherited him. Unlike Deven, he is resourceful and aggressive and seems to give the impression that he can get his way with most people. Even so, there is something quite pitiable about his attempts to get things out of people in order to maintain the appearances of decent living.

 

The motifs of despair, failure, and mediocrity that underline the lives of each of these people are repeated in several situations in the book: in the kind of homes, D/II type, that Deven and other low-paid employees in the same grade live in ( 71 ) ; in the alienating colonial system of education mirrored by the set-up of Lala Ram Lal College, Mirpore; in the attempts to teach the languages in a scene dominated by science studies ; in the phenomenon of "braindrain" and migration to more prosperous countries for lucrative jobs and other "goodies" What brings a dramatic change into the monotonous, purposeless existence of the protagonist, Deven and by ripple effect, into the lives of some others — is a chance visit by Murad. His visit triggers off a chain of events from which Deven finds it difficult to extricate himself. Murad asks Deven to go to Delhi and interview Nur Shahjehanabadi, the greatest living Urdu poet of Delhi although no longer very active — and to write an article for a special number on the poet that he proposes to bring out. For Deven, lover of Urdu poetry and admirer of Nur (as he is called in short), his hero since childhood, this becomes the very summons he has been waiting for all these years. In being asked to interview Nur, his idol, he feels that he has been "allotted a role in life." His first meeting with the poet is rather comic.

 

Before he could make out who had opened the door and now stood behind it, he heard an immense voice, cracked and hoarse and thorny, boom from somewhere high above their heads : 'Who is it that disturbs the sleep of the aged at this hour of the afternoon that is given to rest? It can only be a great fool. Fool, are you a fool?' And Deven, feeling some taut membrane of reservation tear apart inside him and a surging expansion of joy at hearing the voice and the words that could only belong to that superior being, the poet, sang back, 'Sir, I am! I am!' There was an interval and then some mutters of astonishment and horror at this admission. In that quiet pause, pigeons were heard to gurgle and flutter as if in warning from the wings.

 

To be a success has always been an anxiety for Deven and the contact with Nur, once a fiery symbol of Urdu literary creation, the epitome of success, represents for Deven all that Deven cannot be. In that sense, Nur is Deven's alter ego. In the interview that Deven hopes to have with Nur, he really aspires to experience the bright promises of poetry as against the grey shades of his own incomplete existence. But Nur, at the time of the meeting, is already old and has lost much of his creativity, although Deven, blinded by his own adulation of the poet and his need to experience greatness and fame through him, refuses to accept this fact. In this self deception lies much of Deven's later misery and the seeds of Nur's decision to exploit him for what Deven is going to get out of him — fame for the interview of the great poet. In fact, in the first meeting itself, Nur identifies Deven as a possible victim.

 

In a series of episodes that follow this meeting, Deven is cleverly manipulated by Nur : the promised interview and the set of new couplets are always dangled before him as bait. In the hope of getting the poems and the interview, Deven allows himself to be cheated and befooled, his sincerity mocked and held up to ridicule. In the last chapter of the book, Deven, now deserted by both Murad and Siddiqui, faces the prospect of dismissal from his college for not having been able to produce the promised interview for which Siddiqui, in order to help Deven with the expenses incurred in interviewing Nur, has persuaded the college to buy a taperecorder and pay Nur's fee for the interview, on the ground that the tapes would be a valuable accretion to the library holdings of the Urdu department.

 

There is also the matter of Deven's understanding about the relationship between art and life. Having always held poetry to be superior to reality, Deven's concepts about poetry are rudely shaken when he is allowed into the poet's home with all its private and public moments. As one trying to record Nur's life and poetry, he wants only the poet, the creator, purged of the dross of his human life. But Nur comes to him with all the sordidness of his personal life: his poverty, age, parasitical companions, vulturish family — and his poetry. Deven's perpetual dilemma is how to shift art from Nur's life. Even in the secluded room Deven rents for recording only Nur's art, Nur comes with his noisy, loutish companions. And when Nur speaks, he rambles a lot, about biryani, rum, and tales of a neighbour who once tried to rob him of two rupees — matters utterly unconnected with art, according to Deven.

 

The recording sessions, naturally, are a fiasco. Nur is temperamental and garrulous and talks of poetry but rarely. Furthermore, Deven's inefficient assistant seems to record only the irrelevant portions of Nur's discourses and somehow to miss out moments when Nur talks of poetry. Nur, suddenly tired of the sessions, which have already lasted over three weeks, abandons Deven and refuses to talk or to be recorded. Dispirited, Deven returns to Mirpore and faces the possibility of dismissal. He who has yearned for a life away from the ordinary now prays for the security of routine to return. Nur finds pretexts to send him one pathetic letter after another begging him for money: his pigeons are dying and need medicines; he needs rent for the room where the recording was done or money to go to Mecca on his last pilgrimage. Deven does not answer his letters.

 

Two important realizations come to him out of his experiences. The first realization has to do with the central vision of the book and its title, In Custody: in taking somebody into custody, one has also to surrender oneself to the other's custody. To be only custodian is to possess without being possessed and is a relationship of power. Both the epigraph and the conclusion of the novel suggest the need to recognize that every true relationship is essentially a two-way commitment, an act of continued responsibility for the other. Thus it is between true friends, between husband and wife, between artist and art, between art and critic, between a person and his country, city, monuments. One does not abandon what one has once made use of. To Deven, who has never willingly accepted responsibility, this realization iindicative of his growth as a human being. It is a realization that the novel has been moving towards from the outset. In fact, the novel's structure mirrors this movement. Un like most novels that work towards one point of intensity which reaches a resolution, there are in this novel two focal points or peaks. One occurs at the end of Chapter 3 on Deven's first visit to Nur. Nur has reached after consuming a lot of drink and is being scolded by his second wife, the flamboyant Imtiaz Begum. Thoroughly shaken by this sordid episode, Deven abandons the poet and runs out of the house.

 

In the first instance, it is Deven who abandons the poet, while in the second, it is the poet who abandons Deven, and both focal points draw even. It is in Chapter n , the last chapter, that the resolution occurs when it dawns upon Deven that having taken something from each other once, neither can abandon the other. In giving him custody of his work, Nur in turn has earned the right to become Deven's custodian. Nur can make demands on Deven, not only during his lifetime but also after his death, for his widows and his sons, and Deven will have to fulfill those demands. In vowing to commitment, Deven discovers his identity and his worth.

 

The second realization is that art is not separable from life. It is the very stuff of life with all its ordinary, meaningless, routine activities. Art is like the recordings of Nur's short recitations, interspersed with rambling accounts of his favorite foods, and the blaring of car horns from the street below. Art is both the poem and the poet's vomit (a reference to Imtiaz Begum bullying Deven into wiping the poet's vomit after he has retched: only as Deven tries to discard the soiled sheets does he realize that they could have been Nur's poems). Unlike Deven, Nur, the true poet, understands the problem of creativity very well. When Deven feels irritated at the recording sessions, unable to decide what to record and what to leave out, Nur asks him. The technique of the novel reiterates this truth as well. Throughout the novel, verse — Nur's or that of the Romantics Keats and Shelley — is subtly interspersed with descriptions of ordinary day-to-day existence, conflicts, and problems. Art, Deven realizes eventually, is a perfect bubble like the dome of the mosque in Mirpore: if one tried to break art into life's problems and their answers, as one does in the sciences, then "the bubble would be breached and burst and it would no longer be perfect." And if it were not perfect, then it would no longer be art.

 

Similarly, art cannot be split into life fit for art and life not fit for art. All of life has to go into art whether it is uncreative Mirpore or Deven's mediocre existence as husband, father, teacher. The creative exists within the routine, the derelict, the wretched. Life has to be accepted as a package — the creative tangled hopelessly with the uncreative. The novel here acquires universal tones, reverberating with meaning for the meaningless act of existence. Reality is always depressing but the answer does not lie in escapism, fantasizing about great deeds, or in migration — the fantasy of some of Deven's colleagues ( 185-86) about re-making their future in more prosperous and "creative" countries — but in facing reality headlong as it unfolds, unfettered by weak or cowardly thoughts. Deven learns this truth in the very end and is at peace with him at last.

 

The book has moments of humour, the comic and the mock heroic — as in the passage cited above — and these work to defuse and edit the gravity with which the characters are prone to take events and happenings that do not match their expectations.

 

In this respect, the novel is a bit like the novels of R. K .Narayan, where events are always reviewed from a comic perspective, often to suggest that the characters have taken their problems far more seriously than was called for. In this context, I feel that Desai's In Custody is different from her other novels. Although the pervading philosophy in the novel is dissimilar from Narayan's — his is more in the traditional, Hindu metaphysical strain while hers is for a life that has to be faced squarely, with courage, integrity, and responsibility — the novel ends on a note of hope and optimism. It evokes through creative language, structure, and technique, an image of India that belies the impression of a "dead," "stagnant" India. In Custody offers an image of India that is full of hope and that transcends the superficial irritants that many Anglo-Indian novelists have referred to — the heat and dust of India. It is a beautiful novel by a great Indian woman writer.

 

In talking on the task of a custodian, Deven must sideline his own creative output in favor of the living poetic legend. But in fulfilling his duty as a custodian he has to overcome many obstacles, some of which are foreseen and others which are not. His immediate priority is to establish contact with the poet and obtain his consent for an interview. In getting close to the poet he finds himself embroiled in the minutiae of Nur’s domestic life, an involvement which ultimately spirals out of his control. Contrary to his expectations, he finds himself at the mercy of the two wives, who appear to have charge over Nur’s life. Having had the upper hand in his own domestic life, Deven is often confounded by the differing power structures of Nur’s household and he is unable to cope with the idea of a woman as an equal, less still as an intellectual.

 

Through a series of coincidences, Deven is asked by Murad to fulfill his task by immortalizing the verse of Nur in an audio recording. Initially, Deven is dismissive of the idea, seeing it as a belittling gesture to the great poet, reducing his poetry to ‘some song for the cinema, or radio’ However, Murad criticizes his small-town sensibility and convinces him that the idea of a tape recording of Nur Shahjahanabadi is “brilliant” even though Deven has never bought or used a radio before. Sarcastically, Murad exclaims,’This is the age of electronics, haven’t you heard? Or hasn’t the news traveled to Mirpore yet?’ Murad continues to champion the forces of change and modernity in Deven’s life and Deven, despite suspecting his sincerity, submits to his friend’s oratory, only to reflect nearer the end of the novel, when things go disastrously wrong, whether their friendship too is another meaningless symbol of a lost custom.

 

Desai’s references to Siddiqui’s lifestyle disturbingly reproduce the colonial constructions of a morally decrepit Muslim aristocracy collapsing from drink, debauchery and decay. The inevitable death of this self-indulgent aristocratic Muslim culture is symbolized in the destruction of Siddiqui’s house when the “decaying” Haveli is razed to the ground by developers and is lost in the metaphorical swirling dust that absorbs Mirpore. Siddiqui has knowingly participated in the sale of his house to a Delhi businessman.

 

From a different angle, this depiction reinforces the idea that Siddiqui’s class can no longer be the custodians of Urdu as they have little power to make themselves heard at the national level. The official situation and status of their language literally makes them outsiders in their own home. Deven has the potential to release the sickened language and its people but he too is constantly reminded of his position as an outsider when he is around Nur and his cronies.

 

Deven remains on the fringes of Urdu culture because he does not come from an élite background and has chosen to teach the language that offers better employment prospects and economic growth than an Urdu education. The unexpected opportunity of interviewing Nur temporarily frees him from his caged existence but it is a freedom which is fraught with danger. This sense of danger is illustrated during Deven’s first bus journey to Delhi and is crystallized in an ominous premonition in a teashop after his arrival at the Inter-State Bus Terminal on Ring Road.

Deven’s answer to her challenge is to shred her manuscript and reject her plea as a false one. It seems that Urdu cannot sustain the modernity of a female narrative either. It can be argued that the problem in Desai’s story is that there are no variants of Urdu—she does not draw upon an Urdu lineage of the present. Her vision of Urdu is in stark contrast to the opinion of the renowned Urdu novelist Intizar Husain, who has argued that the cultural tradition of Urdu lies in its shifting regional locations. According to him this language cannot be associated with one region and one culture because it is by nature hybrid and adaptable to new regions. Desai’s Urdu is destined to wither away in the stultifying heat of summer unable to sustain the hopeful beginning of spring.

 

The central characters, Deven, Murad and Nur, are all caught in a nostalgic remembering of Urdu, wishing to restore it to its former glory. Their nostalgia is rooted in the cultural memory of a pre-modern past that rejects the values of an evolving modern present. Desai’s novel is ostensibly a narrative about the death of a language and raises uncomfortable questions about its demise. It interrogates the dominance of a centralized Hindi which is prescribed as the singular voice of modernity and sidelines traditional cultural values in its drive toward material progress.

By depicting Delhi and Nur, the author tries to contrast the ‘old days’ of Urdu and the present one. For the protagonist Deven, the language in question is a divine language that he refers to has a upper hand in comparison with his mother tongue—Hindi. He considers himself to be caught in middle between Hindi and Urdu; he also earns a ‘living by teaching’ Hindi literature to uninterested college students. The author tries to capture the ‘lyrical romance’ of Urdu poetic tradition found in Delhi which can be found in the vehement voice of Nur, “we need the roar of lions, or the boom of cannon, so that we can march upon these Hindi-wallah and make them run.” The language of Nur was once the voice of the sultanate, but it appears to be now the voice of nothing or the voice of something that doesn’t matter. He and his mother tongue have been subjected to the oppressive power struggle between regimes. The old regime deflected it and the new tries to push it to the ‘other’ ground. Deven understood the true nature of language game, the hypocrisies and the belatedness of his passion for a dying breed in his country. Deven remains the only character who struggles to protect a language. All his efforts turned to fruitlessness as all his attempts turned into farce and mocked by others. He failed to have a proper interview with the poet. He also could not get the chance to record poems either. In his role of the custodian, he failed miserably and understood how the third space of identification works a long way in religious and political struggle.

Deven has only a poor, vulnerable mother, and he obviously grows into a pathetic, indecisive human being. He is not contented with his life and as a result, he becomes a victim of melancholy and lowliness. He recalls the bitter distress of his mother and the remorseful smile of his father for his failure in measuring up to her expectations. These familial and social factors clearly produced in him a compliant tendency to remain isolated. His estrangement from his wife Sarla and his only child Manu forces him to retreat into the fantasy world that Urdu poetry offers. Deven’s sense of dullness, isolation and hostility is brought out through his approach towards his students and the surroundings of Mirpore. He is given the job of interviewing a prominent Urdu litterateur Nur Shahjehanabadi, but is unable to succeed there as well. He feels completely helpless. Deven’s venture in the field of poetry may be examined as a quest for meaningful existence. The real tragedy of alienation lies in his failure and frustration in reaching his noble ambition. Deven feels lonely. He feels that he is not being helped by Mr. Siddiqui, Murad, Nur and his wife. He is being victimized by these people to have their ends meet. Nobody seems to offer him any relief or support at this critical moment of his life. In fact, no one was going to come forward with assistance. He would have to mend matters himself or be thrown out of college for false display of emotions, misappropriation of funds, fraud, cheating and lack of ability. Deven received this alienation from his own roots and culture.

 

The estrangement is not complete but Deven feels alienated from his own job, his own family, and his own environment. His vision of life and art drawn from Westernized system of education is in disagreement with the day to day life. Anita Desai describe very beautifully the inner conflict of Deven who eventually finds the truth that life is not a bed of roses but consists of harsh reality of thorns as well. Deven’s alienation is an outcome of opposing tendencies like Western education and cultural roots. He feels alienated because he is hassled by growing consumerism where money is everything. As a result he becomes utterly miserable and desperate. The sense of isolation and self-exile often clutches Deven’s psyche. He feels alienated not only from his immediate environment but also within himself. Life becomes a burden for him.

 

Deven’s sense of isolation has two noteworthy undertones. He wants to break the custody by interviewing the great Urdu poet, Nur. He wants to break away from his marginality. At the same time, he feels ill equipped and incapable of adjusting himself to the emerging intricacies of life and society. He is dissatisfied and longs for what is not. He feels ensnared in its toughness and obstinacy. He now seeks to assess his existence and its problems. Through the estranged figure of Deven, Anita Desai presents before us in the novel ‘In Custody’ the pragmatic picture of the changing socio economic Indian scene and its impact on educated Indians who feel lonely, disinterested, and alienated owing to materialism, consumerism and industrialism. Like other protagonists of Anita Desai, Deven Sharma, is brought up to be hesitant, docile and quiet against exploitation. However he is highly sensitive and is desperate to find an outlet to his twinges. Ultimately, he finds solace after discovering his identity and work in this alliance. In contrast to Desai’s earlier novels, this novel has a positive ending.

 

The idea of love, in one form or another, nourishes the definition and development of almost every human culture in the history of the world–past and present, east and west, primitive and complex. Love has been a motivational force in shaping the culture both the theological and behavioural dimensions of life and a substantive theme in the byproducts of almost every form of human activity:” in religion, arts, literature, music, dance, drama, philosophy and psychology”1 It is, therefore, wise to admit that the idea of love has left a wider and more indelible imprint upon the development of human culture in all its aspects than any other single notion.  Tile hard in his The Phenomenon of Man says2, “Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves.” Love has been the binding power that has provided the various types of human groupings (family, clan, tribe, state and nation) that form the basis for social coherence, familial ties and collective experience. Love in general means attachment between lovers, attachment between parents and children, attachment husband and wife, attachment between friends and also between strangers or even unknown persons. The term ‘love’ also connotes physical, sexual, emotional, intellectual and also spiritual affinity. The synonyms for the term ‘love’ in English are: affection, liking, fondness, passion, attachment and devotion. “When viewed in its quintessence, love may be even identified as the invisible power behind the green fuse that drives the flower, the ‘vital impulse’ or ‘the within of things… the internal propensity to unite’ the under grids and nourish the entire biosphere”.

 

Love is, no doubt, the central force behind life, for it brings together man and women not only through affection and marital relationship but also through sexual attachment. New generations come into being because of love and sex. So ‘love’ in this sense is ‘a welcome passion’. Normally love springs up without any expectation, without any condition. It goes beyond worldly desires, for it is beyond greed, jealousy and ambition. It is simply a tender emotion because it purifies the being and also brings in joy and fulfillment in terms of sexual, marital and even life experiences. As it is the primal force of marriage and life, it sounds as an important theme in literature.

 

Love has always been the dominant theme for writers of literature. It has always been considered a general theme in word literature and creative artists have always pondered over the idea or portraying love in their literary works. Defining love, Betrand Russel remarks: “love, when the world is properly used, does not denote any and every relation between the sexes but only one involving considerable emotion, and a relation which is psychological as well as physical”.

 

 Love has two important meanings ie., love the pure (spiritual) and the simple and sexual love coupled with loving kindness. Plato distinguished them with exactness by ascribing the exaltation, the sense of power and the feeling of heightened vitality. Which accompany sexual love to other love which we prefer to call loving–kindness and by doing so, infected it with the ineradicable vice if earthly love: love passes and dies. The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that men cease to love. Love comes before marriage and also comes after marriage: Sex plays a pivotal role in mutual, emotional and physical love experiences felt and experience both before and after marriage. It is generally held that there should not be any literature without the theme of love, for “the passion of love between the sexes is the most universal and normal of all passion…”5 So love is nothing but an itching of the heart that cannot be easily scratched. This definition invariably conveys the message that love is an experience with various reactions for who are in love. Marriage is also deeply rooted in the basic need of the family. Marriage seems to be a bridge for husband and wife. Sex is also not less important in life. No doubt, love, sex and marriage are contemporary to each other and without sex, married life is not supposed to be ‘a happy one’. Thus, marriage is a social recognition of sex between two persons.

 

Love before marriage is totally different from love after marriage because before marriage, there is only love in terms of mere emotional attachment but after marriage, duties, responsibilities, ego, family ties, social commitments – all become part and parcel of human life and love gets step and step changed into anger, irritation, hatred etc., leading to marital disharmony, personal enmity and emotional displeasure. Every society has its own problems of love, sex and marriage. Anita Desai’s novels do obviously deal with the problems of love, sex and marriage which can be even considered as the chief theme of her novels. Through the excellent portrayal of Indian Characters, Mrs. Desai presents her powerful themes by pointing to the relationship of love, sex and marriage between husband and wife.  What sounds significant is that Anita Desai has dwelt upon the problem of love, marriage and sex in her own way. She is of the opinion that marriage alone does not provide solution to life’s tension and chaos. ‘Mental Satisfaction and happy married life’ means better understanding and mutual love between husband and wife. For a healthy marital relationship, one needs the help of the other and a sense of co-operation is needed at all levels possible in life. Psychological adjustment coupled with emotional attachment and sexual relationship is a key to healthy compromise in a married life. From the very ancient times, marriage has got rooted in the basic need of the family and at the same time it is considered an essential element for the effective maintaining of a family.

 

According to the Hindu tradition, marriage is regarded as a ‘Samskara’ which initially transformed everyman into a ‘husband’ and every woman into a ‘wife’, thus giving each a social role and finally uniting them into an eternal bond of love, procreation and self – realization. Marriage has been shown in all works of art and literature as a bridge between husband and wife. Both love and marriage seek the aid of ‘sex’ for a meaning in life. The very common notion is that marriage is always viewed as something more serious than the pleasure and enjoyment of two persons in each other’s company. Love leads one to many directions, to nobler deeds and occasionally even heinous crimes. Many problems are found to be created by both husband and wife and their dear and near ones in marriage and married life. Generally speaking, love – marriages are neither accepted nor approved by the Indian Society which takes them as nothing but ‘crimes’. That is why such dangerous steps as suicide, divorce and murder are taken by men and women either before marriage or after marriage and sometimes they are forced to do so. Sometimes disappointment in love makes some men and women remain unmarried throughout their life and some people are found going to the extent of taking as ascetic life because of ‘love–failure’. Even the great painters, philosophers, great conquerors, great writers and even great actors generally get disappointed in their love affair before and after marriage. The commonly accepted and best way to be happy in married life lies in the words that follow as Don’t be too exacting, don’t expect too much and take life as it comes’.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

In the words of one modern critic Vinay Dubey, Love is an experience with various reactions on those who are in love. It plays role of mediator between mother and son, lover and beloved, husband and wife. It should be under any circumstances without any complexities. Love has two aspects – Subjective and Objective. Subjective love is something conscious and imaginative depending on individual point of view, but the objective love is the essence of love which is unconscious and spontaneous. In Indian civilization and society, love is found to be a closer inter – dependence of man and woman in terms of relationships and mutual ties, projecting itself as the supreme confirmation of the universality, immortality and infinitude of the self. Every society has its own problem of love and marriage. Being natural and the most powerful and unifying force in men, love has made human existence possible and meaningful.

 

Marriage, being a social institution, is some sort of partnership between husband and wife the necessity of which is for the building of the structure of the society. Being the social recognition of the relation between man and woman, economic relationship, mutual understanding and love are the foundation of the institution of marriage; love and sex are very often combined. But after marriage, love should take the primary place so that the partnership shall remain intact. As love is the foundation on which human existence rests, almost all the great writers have dealt with the theme of love and its harmonizing power, for love is the basic need of human life without which human existence becomes soulless, dry and even mechanical. The fictional world of Anita Desai is “a world where the central harmony is aspired to but not arrived at and the desire to love and live clashes at times violently with the desire to withdraw and achieve harmony. In her novels, there is a striving, there is a need to beloved: Maya, Monisha, Sita almost all of them – desire this above all else, but they also resist, surrender and involvement.” In her novels, the problem of involvement versus detachment, of surrender versus freedom is variously interpreted. Ultimately, it becomes obvious that love and marriage are the fundamental problems of human existence.

 

Marriage, the oldest institution in the world, has been one of the major expressions of human career. “It is based on biological instinct in man and nature’s urge for production. It begins with earliest man and woman”. Basically everything about marriage and above all romantic – marriage will continue to fascinate every mind for times to come.” Marriage is often controlled by tradition and custom. It is universally acknowledged that marriages in every country are ceremonized through religious authority, sometimes by social reformers and legislators. But India remains disunited in marriage customs and rites. This aspect of the Indian life helps one to study the marriage and marriage customs through the ages. There is no denying the fact that most vital factors in marriage are love and beauty, nearness, contact and mutual admiration and contact. It may be said that in Hindu marriage, fortunately the sastric ideals are not universally observed and mutual admiration and reciprocal sentiments have not become extinct in India.

 

Anita Desai, one of the most distinguished among the younger set of Indo – English writers, does not like to separate art from life and always them as a part of one pattern drawing upon each other for their existence. In every circumstance, and in each and every walk of life, she is known for presenting powerful characters with full enthusiasm and encouragement. Sensitiveness is considered the main characteristic in all her famous novels. Anita Desai, as excels in depicting the pathetic pictures of a lovely married Indian woman who aspires to triumph over the chaos and suffering of her rater unusual existence. She writes that the life of women in India is slow and empty but on the other hand, in the West it is hurried, busy and crowded. Hence in her sense, both types of lives in the East and West cannot give full satisfaction to the heart of woman. The idea of marriage differs in every country and every society, because it is conditioned by time and place. Now - a - days marriage is defined as “social behavior patterns between individuals. In her novels, Anita Desai skillfully depicts the inner imaginative awareness of various deeper forces at work and profound understanding of feminine sensibility as well as psychology.

 

In the novel, In Custody, Anita Desai presents the thematic problem of love and marriage in a very exquisite manner by analyzing the problem of Deven Sharma, an impoverished college lecturer. In this world of ‘sick, hurry and divided aims’ he has to face the common problems others do. After his marriage with a sullen and dull wife, Deven Sharma finds a way to escape from the meanness and helplessness of his daily life. In spite of being a temporary lecturer in a private college, he is lost in the dreamy world of fantastic fame and name that one day or other he will rise to the pinnacle of his glory by means of his devotion to art and Urdu poetry. His extreme devotion to art and poetry leads him to the indifference to his wife and makes him develop some aversion towards married life. In this machine – driven age, Deven has cultivated an aversion to and dislike for his wife. Like Zola, he lets his wife feel widowed. Here the novelist deals with a purely marital problem of this materialistic world of glittering civilization in a pent – up city like Delhi where people have little time to stand and stare. It so happens that in a metropolitan city like Delhi the relationship between husband and wife is always under strain because of the undue indulgence of the husband in extracurricular activities and his attachment with other women. It is generally held that a husband, who is indifferent to his wife, shows much more concern to other women.

 

Deven Sharma too becomes perturbed to hear the illness of Imtiaz Begum. Nur, for her treatment, wishes to admit her in a hospital but she refuses her hospitalization due to illness because she feels that she will be deprived of the affectionate nursing from her husband. Knowing all these feeling from her heart, Nur like a gentle conscience murmurs to himself very patiently, it seems that such a feeling symbolizes his depth of love for his wife Begum. In the meanwhile Deven comes and stands speechless. He fails to narrate the story of his owing to the illness of Nur’s wife. Suddenly Imtiaz Begum studies the situation and knowing the unfathomable love flowing in her husband’s heart; she begins to weep and wets her cheek. At such a moving sight and pitiable condition of his wife, Nur’s heart breaks into emotional excitement. He tries to calm down the overflowing emotions of her heart and consoles her.

 

As contrasted with this enormous attachment of a husband to his wife, Deven Sharma’s infatuation is shallow and inspired by under Urdu poetry. In this mental agony, he looks before and after and pines for what is not. He wanders in search of money only. As her husband plans an Utopian scheme living through pinched lips: You have no imagination, only going to Delhi to enjoy yourself there is money. Such a self–centered life is led by a number of husbands who think of others, love others, have affectionate ties with them but they maintain a distance from their wife and children. Mrs. Desai deals with such common problem of post – marital life in this novel In Custody. It is true that in cities like Delhi, Deven Sharma leads a very cultured life of a college lecturer grooming under the crushing agonies of poverty. He often feels as if his marriage has stood behind his imagination like a heavy weight. He also knows that marriage has clogged his progress in life. It has placed him in a cage from where it is impossible to escape. There is no way to get rid of it.

 

As it is a common thinking of the impoverished husband, he feels dejected in life. But he finds consolation in the warm welcome of Mr. Siddiqui, when Siddiqui meets him with an open arm and gives a cordial welcome with these words of appreciation, what an honor, what a pleasure, what an occasion, please come up, come up. These consolatory words make Deven think about Siddiqui and his family. But Alas! There was none except cloth, his servant and his companion. Her it is reasonable to think that Deven’s heart is moved to pity at the pitiable condition of Siddiqui’s family and he is also attached with Nur’s wife and moved and moved by her illness. Being devoted to art and poetry, he is possessed by his poetic vision and he follows the religion of Urdu poetry. It is also relevant to think that because of his constant reading of Urdu poetry and Islam, Deven’s mind is inclined to marry more than one wife, ever and above he keeps himself aloof from his wife Sarala. If he had shown his love and affection towards his own family, his wife and son, he would have led a happy and contended life full of satisfaction and peace. As a matter of fact, the husband of his heart is never true to his wife in the real sense of the term. In his relation with his wife, there is something wanting. It may be said that it is the lack of harmony, adjustment and concurrence. A wife needs love and affection and nothing else, even from her husband and money can never quench her love–thirsty heart. She needs only sympathy, consolation, appreciation of her work, sharing of pains and pleasures and healthy mutual love and understanding.

 

In this modern lunatic world what is generally missing is the real feelings of love and affection in the married life physical love and lusty relation or healthy sexual relationship do not satisfy a woman till she discovers the depth of spiritual love in the heart of her husband. Nowadays, in the machine packed age of ‘weariness, fever and fret’, the healthy marital relation between husband and his wife. This problem of love and marriage is dealt with in detail by Anita Desai in her novel In Custody. Marriage is a means to combine two souls. It is a ceremonious bond to the two bodies into spiritual harmony. But this truth does not seem to be true in the novels of Mrs. Desai. Under the complicate situation, Deven’s married life does not yield better and sweeter results. In her company, Deven feels suffocation and is pained to notice the bad aspect of his married life. Complicated problems of married life settle upon him like a grey monster. He feels aged and haunted. He does not understand his wife and her motives and intentions. But he thinks that she does not care for him and his feelings. Both fell humiliated and insulted living in one room.

 

Only at the end of the novel, Deven admits that his wife’s untidiness, her shabbiness and sullen expression were all the results of his own misdoing and that ‘it was all a part of his own humiliation’. All her aspirations were neglected. Everyday neglects her company. That is why she feels embittered. Deven understands her disappointment “because like her, he had been defeated too: like her, he was a victim of circumstances” (CUS 68).

 

Deven here in this novel In Custody is pictured as one seeking to reach out into the wider world in the hope of self – fulfillment. He undergoes experiences of various shades and complexities and eventually emerges as a wiser man with a more complete knowledge of being in this world. During the period of undergoing shades of various experiences, he suffers from the problem of marital dissonance. Deven’s wife Sarla’s dreams about marriage are dashed after the marriage with a low salaried lecturer. Like Deven, Sarla also becomes victim in her married life, for her high expectations about married life are dashed after the marriage:

 

Sarla dreamt the magazine dream of marriage, herself, stopping out of a car with a plastic shopping bag full of groceries and filling them into the gleaming refrigerator, then rushing to the telephone placed on a lace oily upon a three legged table and excitedly ringing up her friends to invite them to see a picture show with her and her husband who was beaming at her from behind a flowered curtain.

 

Deven feels inferior owing to his diffused sense of failure. Overtly, his irritability with Sarla appears to be the outcome of his hurt male – ego. Deep down, his rage is, in a way, an externalization of self – hate, born out of an unconscious self – accusation. He reproaches himself for his inadequacy to make his distinction in life- all he could measure up to was this-this shabby house, its dirty corners, its wretchedness and livelessness. Deven leads the life of a victim, a victim of the ordinary married life. Whenever he sees Sarla, he is reminded of a victim figure. Tired of pursuing such a life of victimization, Deven lies low and remains invisible. He exists in an invisible cell on the margin of life. For Deven, the country – side between Mirpore and Delhi turned into no man’s land that lies around a prison, threatening in its desolation. Real life is lost to Deven, for he leads a life of defeat and failure and his aspirations remain unfulfilled.

 

While Maya in Cry, the Peacock, Monisha in Voices in the City, Sita in Where Shall We Go this Summer? and Nanda Kaul in Fire on the Mountain suffer on account of marital dissonance in a man – dominated word, Sarla of In Custody, finds her satisfaction under the care and guidance of her husband, Deven. But Deven is himself a helpless person. He understands the problems of his wife but h cannot sort out them due to his own inadequacies in terms of tact and worldly wisdom. Sarla is a victim of her husband’s weakness and helplessness. Their marital life is disturbed and married by indifference and impassivity due to Deven’s stupidity. The first and foremost is that Deven is not financially sound and he fails to provide basic requirements to the family and things needed by his wife and son. Secondly, as he is brought up in a systematic environment, he wants to adhere to principles and morals. His love of Urdu poetry and his obsession with name and fame neglect his wife.

 

At least Deven had his poetry, she had nothing and so there was an added accusation and bitterness in her look (CUS )

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WORKS CITED

Dubey, Vinay, A Study of Love, Sex and Marriage in Anita Desai’s Novels. Bareilly:Vardan Press, 2010.

Bhatnagar. P, “The Theme of Man-Woman Relationship in the Novels of Anita Desai”, Indian Women Novelist, set-1, vol- ii, (Ed)R.K. Davan. NewDelhi: Prestige Books,1991