Games at Twilight

by Anita Desai

Study Guide

Anita Desai is one of the first women writers who has established a name for

Indian Writing in English. Anita Desai is of mixed parentage. Her mother being

german- and her father a Bengali businessman She has lived in India, Europe and

is currently Professor of Creative writing at the MIT. She was born Anita

Mazumdar in June 1937.

She is a successful novelist and short story writer, who has been countless times

nominated for the very prestigious Booker Prize, which her daughter Kiran Desai,

incredibly went off to win with her second novel The Inheritance of Loss in 2006.

Anita Desai has won many awards:

1978 - National Academy of Letters Award - Fire on the Mountain

1978 - Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize - Fire on the Mountain

1980 - Shortlisted, Booker Prize for Fiction - Clear Light of Day

1983 - Guardian Children's Fiction Prize - The Village By The Sea

1984 - Shortlisted, Booker Prize for Fiction - In Custody

1993 - Neil Gunn Prize

1999 - Shortlisted, Booker Prize for Fiction: Fasting, Feasting

2000 -Alberto Moravia Prize for Literature (Italy)

She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the American Academy of Arts

and Letters, Girton College, Cambridge and Clare Hall, Cambridge

Anita Desai lives in the United States, where she is the John E. Burchard Professor

of Writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.

The corpus of Anita Desai’s work is quite impressive.

The great poignancy of her style derives from the relentlessness with which she

has always attempted to uncover the unspoken layers of human experience,

beyond the visible commonplace. Her writing oscillates on the verge of the

subconscious experience of the complexity of human relationship. She has a keen

sensitive, sharp insight of the fragmentation of human experience, which she

captures with incomparable style, through a mixture of imagery, style, setting,

psychological understatement and a tragic awareness of the dividing line between

expected social roles and the deep demands of the individual psyche.

This guide focuses on only one of her collection of short stories- Games at

Twilight- which was published in 1978. It was only her first collection of short

stories, though her third publication after Cry The Peacock (1963 ) and Fire on the

Mountain (1977)

In this collection, from the early phase of her career ( It is important to stress this

for her writing has considerably evolved over time, though deepening the

introspective themes of the early years) Anita Desai paints various quaint little

vignettes of facets of life in mid twentieth century India. Her frame of references

range from the affluent urban middle class to the marginals who live on the

periphery of mainstream society. Interestingly her secular portrayal of indian

society gives wide coverage to customs, manners, way of life and the day to day

business of living as young and old struggle to cope with the demands and

constraints of their various existence. One theme which predominates in most of

the stories is the imbrication of individual lives within social networks with the

structure of demands and responsibilities which this implies. This is what Haresh

escapes from as he becomes a fake swami in Surface Textures, this is what drives

Sonu crazy as he descends into the schizophrenia of his dual mental life between

the demands of his exam routine and the unexplainable concern and sociability of

his family who is unable to understand that their too great concern is at odds with

the expectations they have for the exam candidate.

Altogether characters in this collection seem to evolve either on the periphery of

what is usually considered to be normal society or they live self-enclosed lives

with circular routines which allows them little time for larger social realities. This

is the case of the young an in The Accompanist, who has lost all sense of the

boundaries of his individual self as he becomes the shadow of his master musician,

his very life dissolves into non-being but encountering 'normal' existence through

his friends who taunt him with the oddity of his life disrupts his sense of

normality temporarily until he returns to his contented inner world of devotion and

music. In other stories Desai shows various instances of the indian middle class

caught in the exigencies of life's demands, such as the couple in The Farewell

Party, or Mr Bose's private tuition to make both ends meet at the end of the month.

Her interest with the marginals also encompasses the impoverished Christians

(The Pineapple Cake), retired people ( Pigeons at Daybreak, A Devoted Son),the

incongruousness of the artistic imagination producing beauty from the midst of

industrial squalor, or the complexities of the transcultural experience between the

West and the East, India as the land of backpackers in search of the either the

anthropologically authentic or the spiritually fulfilling, all of which comes together

in the last story of the collection Scholar and Gypsy.

In this guide we shall proceed to give a brief overview of each story, highlighting

its major themes and proposing study questions.

Let us first start with preliminaries:

Anita Desai's Bibliography

Cry, The Peacock   Peter Owen, 1963

Voices in the City   Peter Owen, 1965

Where Shall We Go This Summer?   Vikas (New Delhi), 1975

Fire on the Mountain   Heinemann, 1977

Games at Twilight and Other Stories   Heinemann, 1978

The Peacock Garden   (illustrated by Jeroo Roy)   Heinemann, 1979

Clear Light of Day   Heinemann, 1980

The Village By the Sea   Heinemann, 1982

In Custody   Heinemann, 1984

Baumgartner's Bombay   Heinemann, 1987

Journey to Ithaca   Heinemann, 1995

Fasting, Feasting   Chatto & Windus, 1999

Diamond Dust and Other Stories   Chatto & Windus, 2000

The Zig Zag Way   Chatto & Windus, 2004

1. Games at Twilight:

This is the eponymous story which gives its title to the whole collection.

Although this story deals with children's games it is far from dealing with

childhood innocence. Rather, echoing some of the Blakeian overtones of Songs of

Experience it captures some of the unconscious cruelties of childhood as well as

the metaphysical experience of nihilism which can be the consequence of

marginalisation and difference on sensitive souls.

The story opens on the evocation of the oppressive nature of the Indian Summer.

This is an issue which gives its focus to many other stories in this collection.

Adults have one way of dealing with the oppressive heat. The mother in this story

for instance, stays indoors, takes lots of showers, wears fresh saris and uses lots of

talcum powder. But the wild energies of the children cannot be contained by such

strategies.

Once given the permission to play outside they burst out violently, the energy of

the motion captured in a single image which conveys a sense of pent up energies:

"They burst out like seeds from a crackling overripe pod onto the verandah, with

such loud maniacal yells,.."

This sentence is actually built on two contrasting images- the first derived from

the bosom of nature to mark the arrival of the season of plenty, turning to excess

with the reference to the 'maniacal yells.'

After this brief introduction as to the circumstances in which the game takes place

the actual afternoon game starts. Again focus is on the heat and the discomfort of

the afternoon which is too hot and too bright. Many images from nature are

evoked to create a sense of the cruel pervasiveness of the heat to which most of

the children seem impervious:

"The white walls of the verandah glared stridently in the sun."

"The bougainvillea hung about in purple and magenta, in livid balloons.

"The garden outside was like a tray made of beaten brass, flattened out on the red

gravel and the stony soil in all shades of metal, aluminium, tin, copper and

brass."

The whole paragraph shows how nature is beaten down flat by the oppressive heat.

This also affects animals-even the dog is in deep despair:

"The outdoor dog lay stretched as if dead on the verandah mat."

But impervious to the despair and blinding heat around them the children play on.

The contrast is already suggesting the cruel imperviousness of the animal energies

of the unconscious, carefree children.

However, unknown to themselves they are also part of the great cycle of life

energies as they respond unconsciously to the falling of the parrots and begin

organising themselves to play hide and seek.

The game starts. It is Raghu who is the seeker.

Just as he is about to be captured by Raghu Ravi escapes Raghu only to double

bolt into the dark shed and into his own consciousness as he waits to be found by

the seeker.

It is a long wait indeed.

Initially marked by his fear of darkness and of the squishing insect life which

surrounds him, Ravi's fear soon turns to curiosity as he recognises carcasses of

furniture from his house:

" By now he could see enough in the dark to make out the large solid shape of

wardrobes, broken buckets and bedseats piled on top of each other around him.

He recognised an old bathtub- patches of enamel glimmered at him."

This recognition of signs of domestic familiarity allows Ravi to overcome his fear

of the darkness and the unknown it contains.

For a moment he imagines the comforting routine activities marking the end of

the summer day in the garden:

"The parents would sit out on the lawns on cane basket chairs and watch them as

they tore around the garden or gathered knots to share a loot of mulburries or

black tooth-splitting jamuns.... the gardener would fix the hosepipe to the water

tap and water would fall lavishly from the air to the ground,..."

But Ravi is not discovered in his hiding place. He stays there all afternoon,

hearing the sounds of the garden change, watching the changing colours of light in

the dark shed: " It grew darker in the shed as the light at the door grew softer,

fuzzier, turned to a kind of crumbling yellow fur, blue fur. Evening, twilight."

How long he stays in the shed in his hiding place Ravi does not know . But he stay

long enough to unconsciously effect a journey in the darker metaphysical layers

of his childhood consciousness as yet unaware of the articulation of metaphysical

preoccupations. The intensity of his participation in the game is in strong contrast

to the unconcern of his playmates who look up in surprise when he finally returns

to the verandah shouting : "Den! Den ! Den!. " Only to discover that he has been

forgotten by one and all, playmates and parents alike..

With a crushing sense of premature nihilism, the young child realises the sense of

nothingness and nonbeing. With nerves already frayed out by his long stay in the

dark he lies down on the grass silenced by a terrible sense of his own

insignificance.

The story gives a picture of childhood which is very different from the usual

idyllic picture of children's story books. It deals with the darker energies of

human nature and shows children as mini adults with all the character cruelties,

insouciance and fragility of adult society.

It is interesting that the lack of concern of the children for their absent playmate is

matched by an equal degree of unconcern of their parents for the absent child.

The idyllic pastoral scene is darkened not by the shed or the heat or the fear of

the unknown that darkness promises, but by the uncanny lack of concern for an

absent child.

This total absence of concern, coming hard on the heels of his long double solitude

within the dark shed and the inner recesses of his mind lead Ravi to an early

experience of metaphysical nothingness.

Main Themes:

- Human nature and the flux of animal energies

- The unconscious cruelties of childhood

- Nihilism

Study Questions:

1. What is the role of the adults in the story?

2. Trace the parallels between childhood energies and the energies of nature.

3. What is the significance of the shed in the story?

4. Compare and contrast the differing natures of Raghu and Ravi.

5. Find out what is Nihilism. Comment upon Ravi's experience in relation

to what you find.

2. Private Tuition by Mr Bose:

This is the story of poor Mr Bose, a sanskrit teacher who gives private tuition on

the balcony of his cramped flat while his wife cooks the evening meal and looks

after their baby son.

In the course of the story he has two students, one Pritam, son of a pundit , who is

sent to him to study the scriptures on a regular basis . The second student is an

attractive young woman, Upneet, who likes the proverbial serpent, comes to

disrupt the domestic harmony of Mr Bose's small household.

Throughout this story Mr Bose's place on the balcony gives him access to two

worlds. As the story starts he is aware of the contrast between the domestic

harmony of his cramped flat , embodied in the fascination he feels for his wife's

hair, swift wrist movement and soft cooing voice as she rolls the chapati and talks

to the baby. All of this symbolises a comfortable routine and domestic

contentment. Despite the suggestions of the cramped space inside the flat which

forces Bose and his students on the balcony, the poise of the interior is contrasted

with the mayhem and disorganisation outside in the signs of overabundant

cramped urban quarters. This is captured in a few images which stand out in the

first paragraph.

"The River Hooghly ( famous river in Calcutta) would send it ( the balcony) a

wavering breeze or two to drift over the rooftops through the washing.. the air

hung about them like a damp towel, gagging him..."

In his subsequent dealings with his two students Mr Bose will have to cope with

the in betweenness of his position even further. With the students he has to

maintain the stern attitude of a teacher. But in both cases , though in differing

circumstances, he is brought up short as he slips into his 'other' role as husband

and father in the presence of the pupils. This sets up similar reactions in the two

pupils Pritam and Upneet- as they both see behind the facade of the stern teacher

Mr Bose tries to put up.

With Pritam Mr Bose is already impatient. He sees in the young boy's stumbling

fingers and shuffling feet signs that 'betrayed his secret life, its scruffiness, its

gutters and drains full of resentment and destruction.'

To Mr Bose Pritam represents in his ungainly adolescence the very opposite of the

poise and balance he seeks to achieve in his own life, marked by an old fashioned

sense of decorum. When all the activities and disturbances of the evening are over

this is how he perceives the return of harmony in his household:

"But gradually, the grammar re-arranged itself according to rule, corrected itself.

The composition into quiet made quite clear the exhaustion of the child, asleep or

near so." (p.19)

To his teacherlike mind , endowed with a sense of beauty in the sonorousness of

the sanskrit verses he intones, which he feels should have been roared out on a

hilltop at sunrise, " Pritam represents an anomaly.

As the son of a well known priest, who tutors him in the morning only to turn

him over to Mr Bose in the evening for additional coaching in the scriptures,

Pritam shows very little propensity in his studies.

So firmly entrenched is Mr Bose's belief of the rightness of his attitude and views

that he fails to see in Pritam;s body language signs of his adolescent struggles

against authority. He fails to see how a routine of days devoted to studying the

Mahabharata in the morning and the Vedas in the afternoon can ill withstand the

suppressed, angry energies of a growing nature. In fact the story shows an adult

world of tuitions, represented by Mr Bose and the priest father- who marginalise

adolescence, even as they seek to impress upon them their own rules and force

control over the material of youth.

However, Pritam shows his rebelliousness to this enforced routine by showing

disinterest and apathy in his studies. When asked by Mr Bose about the sacrifical

horse he answers:

"I didn't know sir, it doesn't say."

Pritam's apathy is followed by a look of malice when given an explanation about

the role of the Asvamedha, the sacrifical horse which ill tallies with the demands

of modern governance.

But Mr Bose forces him to read in his halting tongue the sanskrit shlokas. It is at

this point that his attention is turned to the scene of domestic harmony playing

itself out behind the curtain in the kitchen area. He allows his attention to be

drawn to his wife.

In a camera-like movement his gaze follows the passage to the kitchen and zooms

into his wife's face. He notices that her head is bowed and other details which

betray his deep affection : "Some of her hair had freed itself of the long steel pins

he hated so much and hung about her pale, narrow, face." ( p.12)

As he watches further her motion the unspoken harmony between the mother and

the child . Unconscious to him he is slipping out of his stern pubic role as

sanskrit tutor. He longs to be part of the cosy domestic scene he witnesses. This

unconsciously shows in his facial expression. ' ..(his) lips were wavering into a

smile beneath the ragged moustache. " (p.13)

Unaware that Pritam has noticed his change of mood and has stopped reciting in

order to observe him, Mr Bose shares a moment of communion with his wife

through an exchange of smiles.

"Mr Bose' moustache lifted up like a pair of wings and beneath them his smile

lifted up and out with almost a laugh of tenderness and delight. (p.13)

The wife responds with mock seriousness trying to recall him to the path of duty,.

However, this exchange of unspoken tenderness is interrupted by the malicious

theatrical coughing of the student Pritam.

The shift in Mr Bose' mood is very abrupt- he wants to pounce on the boy and he

sees his impertinence as desecrating the balcony space , which to him is marked by

his wife's tender care of the holy 'tulsi' plant she nurtures with care and prayers

everyday.

But help comes from outside, as one of the neighbours in this cramped area of

Calcutta turns on a radio and sends music onto the balcony as a new variable in

the suppressed conflict between Pritam and Mr Bose.

Reconciling his two world or his inability to do so , stirs up depths of violence in

the apparently conventionally calm Mr Bose: he thinks of 'smashing the radio and

hurling the Brahmin's son down the stairs.” so as to be able to listen to the soft

cooing sounds coming from his wife's kitchen.

Mr Bose is himself shocked and ashamed by the excess of his violent emotions.

But he comes to the conclusion that the two halves of his world, irreconcilable as

they are, have to continue in their opposition, for the tuition allows him to meet

the additional expenses of his domestic life.

Pritam leaves, giving Mr Bose a brief respite in which he can give his full

emotional attention to his wife and child.

His great love for his wife is shown in his consciousness of the hand movement as

she rolls out the purees and in his longing to touch her hair. The wife laughingly

pretends discontent and urges him to attend to the next pupil.

But things are about to change. Paradise is about to get bitter. As much as Pritam's

scaby impatience reinforced Mr Bose' sense of pride in his own domestic life,

Upneet's presence will have the reverse effect and upset his whole balance.

Upneet, his second student, is an attractive, smartly dressed young girl who comes

to him for coaching in Bengali live poetry. Mr Bose is puzzled as to why she

should do so. But he quells his questions as he needs the additional income.

From the beginning Mr Bose feels destabilised by Upneet.

“Under Upneet's gaze such ordinary functions of a tutor's life as sitting down at a

table, sharpening a pencil and opening a book to the correct page became a

matter of farce, disaster and hilarity.” (p.15)

He is upset by the strong sense of feminity that she exudes, in strong contrast with

his demure, shy wife.

“He did not know where to look- everywhere were Upneet's flowers, Upneet's

giggles.”

He also noted the pointed tips of her sandals moving to the rhythm of the poetry

he reads, until the rhythm of the sandal takes over and the poetry reading stops.

It is at this point that the hitherto cooing soft sounds coming from the kitchen

becomes vigorously ugly and turn into 'bangs and rattle”

The anger and unspoken jealousy of his wife at his obvious fascination with the

reeling feminity of Upneet is clear. The situation is rendered even more

intolerable when he has to read love poetry to her in Bengali.

He can only express his sense of bewilderment at the sudden change of mood in

the household by referring to grammar:

“He could not understand how these two halves of the difficult world that he had

been holding so carefully together, sealing them with reams of poetry, reams of

sanskrit, had split apart into dissonance.”

(p.17)

To the earlier malice of Pritam now succeeds the ' creamy , feline, satirical' face of

Upneet. He sees “that lift of the eybrows and that twist of a smile that disjointed

him, rattled him.” Rather than be put off she sees amused at the situation, as the

veil parts and she is given insight into the temporary disharmony Bose's

domestic condition.

Mr Bose tries to overcome the unease of the moment but instead he is overcome

withs elf-pity, “he could hear her voice no more than the snake could the pipe.- It

was drowned out by the baby's wails, swelling into roars of self-pity and

indignation in this suddenly hard-edged world.” ( p.17)

Embarrassed, he tries to distract Upneet's attention from the observation of his

domestic life. But his despair is further heightened by his sense of futility in his

role as tutor there: Upneet seems to have very little mastery of Bengali grammar:'

Three months of Bengali to end in this! She was as triumphant as he was

horrified.” (p.19)

She leaves. Mr Bose stays out on the balcony trying to patch both halves of his

disjointed world until peace gradually returns and the normal sounds of evening

return.

He goes back to his wife in the kitchen, playing up to the role of the contrite

husband: “ he turned to go with his shoulders beaten, sagging, an attitude repeated

by his moustache,...”

Falling into the expected gender roles saves the couple from the discomfort of

long explanations over the unexpected storm stirred by Upneet's presence. The

wife fusses over his food as he comjplains he is being fed too much. Around this

role play they are reconciled and their gentle flirtation soon starts again. Harminy

is restored.

Study Questions:

1. Describe the character of Mr Bose.

2. Compare and contrast Upneet and Mr Bose's wife.

3. Pick up images which show cramped spaces and comment on them.

3.Studies in The Park:

This is the story of a young man who feels cramped between the twin prisons of family

life and parental expectations about his forthcoming exams. Driven crazy by a constant

family attention which fails to give him the physical and emotional space to study

properly for his exams, Sonu is driven to study in the park. There he meets countless

other young students like him who seek privacy away from the claustrophobia of

teeming family life.

When the story starts Sonu seems to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. By

adopting a stream of consciousness style which reproduces the movement of his

consciousness Desai shows the young boy gradually sinking into a kind of folly. He is

irritated by his father's radio, by the sounds of his mother cleaning and cooking. The

first paragraph uses repetition and expletives to show his despair at the noise from his

father's room. This despair turns violent in his head:

“Turn it off before I smash it into his head, flying it out of the window.”

The second paragraph sees the frustrated exasperation transferred to his mother. “ She

cuts and fries, cuts and fries.” And to the earlier violence succeeds a kind of madness:

“What all does she find to fry and feed us on?...finally she'll slice me and feed me to my

brothers and sisters ( p.20)

This streak of exasperation is repeated with the arrival of the milkman and his

brothers and sisters from school.

Until his father's unnecessarily stern admonition about the need to do well in

exams, rather than show him sympathy with the strain he is living through. This

forces him out of the house.

After circumbulating the area for a while he is recommended the park by the gram

vendor. Once in the park he feels release from the pent up pressure of his domestic

scene and he gradually learns to unwind and evolve his own study routine even as

he discovers the animal and human fauna of the park. He realises that a lot of the

inhabitants of the park were ' students who had escaped from their city flats and

families life him to come ans study here.” ( p.24)

He gradually moves beyond merely identifying those in similar plight s him. He

notices the yoga classes, the old men who come to discuss philosophy, athletics,

etc,...

By being privy to these multiple windows onto the life of the city Sonu calms

down and he learns to forget his own cramped world and learns to empathise with

the multiple strategies of escaping the claustrophobia of family togetherness in

crowded urban homes.

However, the earlier pressure makes itself felt when Sonu breaks down with fever

at the approach of the exams. The doctor recommends that he does not take his

exam in his state of nervosu fragility. His disappointed parenst have to obey.

By this time Sonu's mental balance has already slipped and to him the exam

becomes the seal od death and the students in the park he sees as being in the

anteroom of death ( p.29)

Nevertheless, he returns to the park in a moment of great fragility, as the only

natural place for him to continue his 'exam-less' existence. By this time the

rhythm of his past life has become one upon which he depends, which forms his

immediate identity, as there he has a sense of place and belonging in the temporary

intimacy of colliding multiple identities.

And it is at this point that he has a moment of epiphany.

An Epiphany is here understood as a sudeen, near spiritual insight, a moment in

which the onlooker, here Sonu, has a momentary insight in some higher truth,

brought about by a commonplace reality, a scene which is in itself far from

remarkable to the objective onlooker.

He sees a scene which to him represents domestic beauty in the park. He sees a

family scene: a very beautiful but sickly young woman in a black burqua,

apparently dying in the lap of her very old husband, while their chidlren play

around them in the park. The couple seems self-absorbed in each other,

impervious to the world. Sonu watches this, to him, idyllic tableau of family

harmony. He hides to observe the intense tenderness between the improbable

couple and to him this becomes a moment of absolute truth which seals the

picture as being the stamp of the living as opposed to the dead people studying for

their exams

To him this becomes a moment of insight into an alternative reality.

The uncanny, unspoken beauty he sees in this scene becomes a moment of

revelation where he feels he has access to some higher truth.

His known world fades into comparison and his peregrinations in the park

henceforth acquire another dimension. He forgets the original reason as to why he

is there .By this stage his mind has veered totally into a state of alternative reality.

If not exactly madness it is a state close to it.

Henceforth Sonu's walks in the park acquire the hue of a quest to seek the

intangible absoluteness of the beauty of the improbable family scene. The

pathways of the park become so many layers of a mystical quest. He becomes a

seeker of the 'absolute'.

This interpretation of his state of mental fatigue is counterbalanced by the obvious

distress of his family who despair of having him ever sit for his exams (p.32)

To his mind his state changes, he becomes the perpetual student.

Study Questions:

1. Comment upon the style of the first 5 paragraphs , showing their

effectiveness as an introduction to the story.

2. In what way does the park become a welcome relief from family life?

3. Contrast the symbolic spaces of park and home.

4. Describe Sonu's epiphany.

5. What is the significance of the epiphany to him?

6. Contrast this to the objective reality of what happens to him.

4.Surface Textures

This is yet another short story which explores the unexpected veerings of the

unconscious into near madness within the cultural context of indian setting.

In brief it is the story of a man who leaves his family to become a hermit, but not

in the usual manner. He becomes a hermit by default, when he allows himself to

drop away from the normal functions of mainstream existence, as an employee,

bread winner, a father, all because of a melon. In overall intent this story can be

read as an ironic exploration of india's obsession of sadhu culture.

When Haresh becomes a hermit because he loses his job, home, family and lives

by the road side, he allows his hair to grow and acquires the unkempt, smelly look,

ragged look of beggars and/ or hermits, he is very soon taken to be a hermit by the

local people who had initially come to beat him up for frightening their children:

Their mothers came with stones and some with canes at the ready but when they

saw Harish, his skin parched to a violet shade, sitting on the bank and gazing at

the transparent stem of the lotus, they fell back crying, 'Wah!' gatherd closeer

together, advanced, dropped their canes and stones and held their children still

by their hair and shoulders, and came to bow to him . ' ( p.39)

Thus begins the process of honouring the 'swami' with fruits, milk, flowers.

Harish consciously or unconsciously plays the game, enters his role, and keeps his

silence and become part of the local landscape, as the local swami.

The theme of the propensity for worshipping and creating Fake swami's has been

ironically treated by many other indian writers: Rushdie in Midnight's Children

has a side story about how one of the friends of his main protahonist- Saleem Sinai

is turned into a fake swami. Naipaul in Half a Life makes his character become a

swami by default just because of a stubborn wish for silence.

However the conscious reason here given for Haresh giving up on his well

established domestic comfort is because of a water melon which his wife brings

from the market for after dinner dessert after wavering between mangoes, litchees

and the melon.

Funnily the melon on the table marks the beginning of some kind of awareness for

Harish:

As he observes the the surface of the melon, its veins and colour, etc,... it is as

though he is being plunged into some kind of inner mystical experience.

Like Sonu in the previous story Haresh does not behave according to type,

according to expected conventions and expectations. Far from being a society

which allows space for expression of difference, Anita Desai's novels always

portray societies, communities which are unable to cope with the complex

unconscious demands of fragmented souls who are not given either the

vocabulary of the social space for the acknowledgement of their difference from

the mainstream culture in which they evolve.

Sonu almost experienced an epiphany when he saw the delicate, fragile face of the

dying woman in the park, almost as though he had opened the door to a mystical

experience.

Uncannily, the melon which to the wife and children of Haresh seems boring,

seems to mark some similar kind of mystical experience for Harish.

Whether it is a plunge into the interiority of the self or of creation, we, the

readers, like his family, remain mere witnesses to his unexplained transformation

which can only be lived from the outside for reader and onlookers alike. For try as

she might his wife never obtains either information or reaction from him, through

all their travails: when he loses his job, they starve and they lose the house and

become split up as a family.

Desai's eye for sharp details is ever to be commended. We have to note the

attention which marks the precision of her style:

The description of Harish's walking style once he abondons his family and is in

turn abandoned by them to become a roadside hermit:

His slow silent walk gave him the appearance of sliding rather than walking over

the surface of the roads and fields , rather like a snail except that this movement

was not as smooth as a snail's but stumbling as if he had only recently become

one and was still unused to the pace. Not only his eyes and his hands but even his

bare feet seemed to be feeling the earth carefully in search of an interesting

surface. Once he found it he would pause, his whole body would gently collapse

across it and hours- perhaps days- would be devoted to its investigation and

worship.'

Questions:

1.Why does Harish become a hermit?

2.What does the melon symbolise?

3.Why does this happen to Harish?

4.How are we to read this story, as a serious or an ironic story which unveils the

unspoken problems and constructed hyprocrisies of a section of indian society?

5.Critically analyse this story as a commentary on materialism.

6.Contrast Haresh' detachment with the experience of the woman in Scholar

and Gypsy

5.Sale:

The figure of artists is usually imbued with Romantic hues in most western

fiction. Even in stories which deal with the madness and frenzy of artists, western

artistic history is full of stories of unhappy artists like Toulouse Lautrec or Vincent

Van Gogh, who have achieved immovable iconic status in Western as well as

Global sensibility and awareness that the usual figure of the talented but poor

artistic genius seems to empower all contemporary artists in their higher projection

of themselves beyond the demands of daily reality and its material needs.

However, not all artists live in such glorious romantic poverty. The present story

skirts the dichotomy between the inherited idea of the artist and the reality of the

squalid conditions in which the artist live within his immediate surroundings.

The plot follows a simple line: An artist welcomes prospective buyers to his

workshop in the very living room of his cramped house, hoping they will buy and

give him an advance for the much needed money to keep his household going. The

visitors: three men and one woman admire and extol upon his work. But in the

end they leave him running and begging for them to buy his work as they leave

with changing demands and promises for the future.

The visitors come with middle class expectations. They crowd around the artist

and admire his creative frenzy. They admire his art work- the creative imagination

which can paint birds even when he cannot see birds. They admire his stroke of

colour, the special palette of mixed hues which he obtains by a special mixture.

They admire his sudden burst of enthusiasm as he remembers a moment of his

childhood, unconsciously brought to the surface, prompted by his

visitors/prospective buyers obvious admiration of his work, his talent , his

imagination. It s more than clear that these middle class visitors have a romantic

picture of the frenzied inspired and talented artist . They crowd around him and

admire his work.

They probably see his squalid living environment as part of his romantic aura- he

shows them the window unfurling the dark fumes which constitute his only vision

onto th e world. They admire the flowers he paints for his son, when he cannot

bring a garden of flowers to him.

However, They also have a romantic sense of themselves as romantic, artistically

oriented middle class. In the end they refuse to buy any paintings- saying they

were looking for figurines and landscapes, arguing they are looking for a special

something which will bring life to their living room.

They slough away in distaste when the man behind the artist run after their car

begging for cash advance, begging that he needs money for his family.

The romantic, artistically inclined buyers fail to see the human reality behind

what they are so happy to accept as the romantic vision of a latter day Van Gogh,

talented but poor.

They fail to respond to the obvious cramped living conditions of the artist in

human terms, or even in social terms . They fail to see the real misery which lies

behind the littered paintings, the anxious wife ate the door and the ultimate letting

down of dignity when the man runs after their car and begs for one of his paintings

to be bought.

They leave, the woman slouching at the far end of the car, one of the ,men jovially

and lightheartedly showing his empty pockets and making promises in the air

about advances they will give if he paints a tableau for them in the near future.

When their romantic vision of the poor artist comes too close to a material reality

then social distance takes over and class realities become more omnipresent than

romantic imaginings. They leave, wealthy, powerful middle class, refusing to

empathise with the obvious distress of the lower middle class man behind the

artist.

Although while the blurb lasted within the overcrowded living room which serves

as the artist's studio, while the illusion of romantic detachment lasted they had

invited him to come and have dinner with them at their house only to retreat and

run away now when material and social reality become too powerful.

Study Questions;

1.Comment of the contrasting attitude of the woman visitor with that of the wife

of the artist.One shows interest and enthusiasm, the other shows anger and

anxiety.

2.Trace the changing moods of the artist from the moment the knocking starts at

the door to the moment the visitors leave in their car.

3.Show how two contrasting worlds and their attendant contrasting visions collide

in this short story.

6.Pineapple Cake:

The present story is one of those typical stories which captures Anita Desai’ sense

of pathos for the broken realities of life, of people living in conditions of misery

while attempting to maintain their self-respect. Her sympathy goes beyond the

deboir of any self-enclosed community. In the present story it is the life of a

widowed and impoverished young Catholic mother realising the extent of her fall

from social grace that becomes her preoccupation as she attends a wedding.

In one of those moments of deep insight and sympathy Anita Desai tells the story

of Mrs Fernandez and her son Victor who are to attend the wedding of a wealthy

relative. Mrs Fernandes dresses Victor in his best clothes and takes him to

the church ceremony while regretting that she does not have a pretty girl to wear

dresses and carry followers and be proud of at the wedding. When comes the time

for her to find a car to attend the wedding reception her ego is mortified todiscover

that she is among the least important guests both for car service and for seating

place at the wedding reception hall.

She observes and eats, while discoursing with her table neighbours while keeping

Victor happy with the prospect of eating a nice pineapple cake as crowning glory

to a sad day of social mortification.

However, an unexpected happening occurs: one of the wedding guest dies when at

table and casts a gloomy pall over the wedding proceedings. He has to be brought

out . The little Victor wants to leave the banquet hall as soon as he can. But he is

forced back tp his seat by his mother who shows him the dessert plate arriving.

He refuses to eat the infamous pineapple cake, seeing the goriness of the recent

death in it spongy texture. But the piece of cake is gulped down by his mother, in a

swift single gesture . She is then ready to leave.

Some interesting strokes in this story exist in the depiction of the way of life,

beliefs and social heirarchies existing among the Indian Christians in Bombay.

We should also note the psyche of the mother , living squashed between a dream

of grandeur and the reality of her social place within her community.

Themes:

The life of the impoverished middle class Christian

Exp-loration of the psyche of oppressed young mother.

The way of life, customs and social decorum of the Indian Christians in Bombay.

Study Questions:

In what way if the death of th old man important in the continuation of the

story?

What is the significance of the pineapple cake in the relationship between

the mother and the boy?

What ultimate meaning does it have in the mother’s final comical gesture.

In what way does the eating of the pineapple cake help unlock a whole

lifetime of deprivation and impoverished desires?

Who is most to be pitied between the mother and the child?

Discuss in what way this story stands as representative of a whole way of

life?

7.The Accompanist

Among all the depressing stories in this collection this must be the most

depressing of them all. Anita Desai gives us the story of a man who has become a

ghost, not to some passion, either through love or hate. He has become a ghost to

his own life out of devotion to a a man, a famous music maestro, who seems

unaware of his very existence.

The story is told in the first person singular as the tanpura player remembers how

he has come to be part of the travelling troupe of his famous music maestro, the

sitar player.

He first comes to him as a yound , timid adolescent who comes to deliver a

tanpura from his father for the musician's troupe. His father's fame as a maker of

musical instruments opens his way immediately as he is taken on to replace the

late tanpura player. From then on his silence and timidity allows the music

maestro to decide for him. He beomes one of the silent musicians which grace his

troupe as he travels nationally and internationally. The paper thin existence of a

musician's accompanist is drawn out to extremes as this unnamed young man

abandons family, home and hearth to follow his master.

He had friends, hobbies, likes and dislikes, desires, as a normal young man.

'But all fell away from me, all disappeared in the shadows, on the side, when I met

my Ustad and began to play for him. He took the place of my mother's sweet

halwa, the cinema heroines, the street beauties, marbles and stolen money, all the

pleasures and riches I had so far contrived to extract from the hard stones of

existence in my father's house in the music lane “ ( p.62)”

He marries but leaves his wife with his mother to tour in the wake of his Ustad.

He grows used to the routine and the invisibility, he finds fulfillment in the

unequal guru chela relationship. Read differently the treatment the maestro metes

out to him could be qualified as indifference. As the story starts he is wishing that

he were told what the maestro had planned to play that night. Is it a degree of the

maestro's supreme trust or his supreme indifference which makes him fail to tell

his tanpura player what he will play while all the other musicians know their part.

As his adolescent friends reminds him when he comes back to his town one day,

the tanpura is probably the most boring of instruments-

“What sort of instrument is the tanpura?..Not even an accompaniment. It is

nothing. Anyone could play it. Just three notes, over and over again.”(p.65)

The perspective of his friends represent the objective perspective of the onlooker

about the monastic style existence of people involved within the classical music

scene.

But the irreverence of his friends further confirm to the narrator that his chosen

pathway of devotion and selflessness, invisibility and transparence in the wake of

his guru is his chosen destiny. He is so involved with his role that he fails to see

the relativity of instruments, and even within the variety of players at the concert

his perspective narrows down to the one instrument he plays to the exclusion of

everything else, apart from his Ustad's.

In this tragic story of loss, the narrator finds fulfillment and meaning. As his inner

world becomes more stretched out into its paper thin existence, the reclusive inner

life takes over and the disappearing individuality becomes a cause for quiet

celebration for the narrator.

Study Questions:

1. Comment on the life of musicians as portrayed in the story.

2. Comment on the attitude of the Ustad towards the narrator.

3. Discuss the narrator's charcater. Do you find him (a) believable, (b)

sympathetic as a charcater.

4. Find out what kind of instrument the tanpura is and its relevance in classical

Indian music.

5. Can you see similarities between the tanpura and its player, as portrayed in

this story?

.

8.A Devoted Son

This is a story which deals with the cultural complexities of the Indian family set

up with its complicated demands and allegiances within the family set up which so

complicatedly conditions social identities.

The story is that of a son so devoted keeping up with the traditional expectations

of his parents about his behaviour that he seems unbelievable in his perseverant

devoiion. From the moment his results are announced in the morning papers

Rakesh's 'career' as a devoted son starts playing up to the expectations of his

parents. He is first a brilliant student but a grateful son, then through the

scholarship won he is for a while a student abroad but with none of the cultural

betrayals of migration. He remains a loyal Indian who comes back to marry in his

village and settle down in his private practice so as to be the pride of his ageing

parents who never tarry of boasting of his any virtues as well as his great

professional success.

However this idyllic family relationship does suffer from the demands of practical

reality as well as inevitably contrasting understanding of what constitute filial

devotion. The aged parents have one conception of filial obedience to which their

son lives up to almost to the point of suffocation in the earlier part of the story. To

the extent that the reader wonders whether Rakesh has any individuality despite

his brilliant medals. However, in his father’s old age, his sense of duty as a doctor

nursing his ageing father comes into conflict with these very family expectations

which have turned him into the caricatural figure he is.

As a conscientious doctor Rakesh monitors his father’s diet, refuses him sweets

and oily food and prescribes only boiled food. This tasteless diet is not to the

liking of the old man who sees in this a plan to kill him. The many years of

absolute devotion are forgotten as the father becomes increasingly irascible and

complains that his son is out to starve him to death. This complaint forms a

wonderful subject of debate to be shared with his visiting old neighbours.

By subtle strokes Desai shows that behind the idyllic picture are less wonderful,

more subtle human emotions, maybe closer to a known reality. For instance when

Rakesh first refuses to allow his father to eat oily food, the old man notices his

daughter in law smiling to herself. Repeatedly he notices this unobtrusive gesture

on the part of his daughter in law which shows that behind the façade of family

duties, the thinking brain behind the woman has also found uncomfortable the

unstinting filial devotion of her husband.

Not allowed to say anything she is duty bound to comnform but rejoices at the

signs of discord in the household.

The irascible old man’s vengeful mood never relents but rather grows more and

more peevish with every passing day until he at last refuses medication and asks

to be allowed to go to his maker in peace and lies down. Finally his act of

immobility is not taken as comic or petulant, finally a serious adult emotion play

sitself out and makes the old man a credible character in relation to his son.

Rakesh remains a two dimensional character whose progress and action becomes

important only in relation t his parents' interpretation of that reaction. The soruce

of condlict comes in the latter part of this idyllic family story, and turns the old

father into a subject of interest. In his old age petulance and irascibility he is comic

and tragic and the very embodiment of the passage of time and the inevitability of

changing cultural tastes, (re: in relation to food).The narrator also suggests by deft

strokes a changing world view throuh suggestions of deeper dimensions to the

younger couple- Rakesh and his wife- which remain invisible in the public reading

the parents make of them throughout their existence.

Study Questions:

1. Discuss the tragi-comedy of the old father's behaviour in this story.

2. In what way does this story embody the reality of the passage of time.

3. Discuss the figure of Rakesh. How credible is he?

4. Discuss what the two minor characters Veena, the daughter in law, and

Bhatia, the old man's daily visitor.

9.The Farewell Party

This is one of the short stories in which we see Anita Desai talent at its best as she

weaves personal stories with intimate awareness of the complexities of the fabric

of urban social life. Around the story of Bina and Raman throwing a farewell party

as they are about to leave the town for Mumbai, she paints a tableau of society

both specific and representative of a way of life, so that her characters and their

supporting cast of guests become embodiments of larger social realities in a

changing world.

The story plays on two levels. On the one hand the couple welcome their guests

and suffer then through . We can identify three waves of socialization in the story.

In the first place the unease of both Bina and Raman among the town’s socialites

and well-to-do yuppies and their expansive socialite spouses. Bina and Raman are

conscious of both being part of their world and not quite belonging. This for two

reasons, on the one hand because Raman works only for an Indian company rather

than a foreign one, on the other because of their spastic child around which has

been woven their activities during their stay in the unnamed town. These occupy

the scene when the story opens, causing the sense of unease of Raman and Bina.

Then the neighbours arrive and create greater intimacy (as opposed to the work

relations) as they are people with whom conversation can move to the realms of

immediate domestic preoccupations rather than the enforced pretense of work

space camaraderie.

And finally the third wave of the party, where the couple feels greater warmth and

sense of belonging, comes when the hospital doctors where their spastic child has

been nursed and where the mother has spent countless hours in the company of her

child. The doctors and their wives show their open concern about the child whom

Bina feels free to go up and fetch without fear of offending the sensibilities of her

guests..

Bina is described as a young woman of 35, grown bony with worry and suffering.

The neighbours think her frigid and friendless. Her devotion to her spastic child

amounts almost to despair and she is said to have no life outside her

preoccupation with her family concerns.

The imminence of their departure creates a sense of warmth between Bina and the

various inhabitants of the town. Such as Mrs Ray, the Commisioner’s wife, then

the smooth talking flirtation of the Bengali employee of the local museum; Mr

Bose.

.

The great internal hypocrisy of the upper middle class is ripped apart by one who

lives her life too intensely for the superficialities of the sophisticated urbanites.

The formidable society women are described by Bina as ‘wives of men who

represented various mercantile companies in the town- Imperial Tobacco, Brooke

Bond, Esso and so on- and although theyt might seem exactly alike to one who did

not belong to this circle, inside it were subtle gradations of importance according

to the partiucular company for which each one’s husband worked and of these

only themselves were initiates.'

In contrast to these women, the school. Teacher, Mrs D’Souza’s arrival is a

welcome change, for her honesty and straightforwardness.

Bina’s husband Raman on the other hand has to entertain with the prosperous,

successful husbands of the formidable society women. He is relieved at having to

struggle with the drinks rather than have to converse with his guests.

The sense of the party atmosphere to the harassed Raman in just a blur:

Submerged in grass,in glass, in night in chatter teeth on biscuit, teeth on teeth.

Enamel and gold. Crumbs and drugs. All awash, all soaked in night. Watery sound

of speech, liquid sound of drink. Water and ice and night.(p.89)

This curious passage shows Raman's sense of helplessness in it sjumble of

awareness, as though he is simultaneously part of the plant world and the human

world.

He is so ill at ease among his guests that he considers fleetingly staying with the

waiters given that everyone seems to have forgotten the host. His unease stems

from the subtle gradations in class status among the urban middle class, and the

sense of not quite belonging by virtue of his 'Indian' company and because of his

family’s lifestyle which revolves around their sick child, rather than golf, bridge,

etc,… Within this society Mr Raman’s harmless-hermit like and artistic hobby of

going for long walks and picking up pieces of wood for sculpture is perceived as

eccentric and not in keeping with the social smart pretenses of the town

inhabitants.

To Raman as to his wife Bina, the society with whom they currently socialize, is

altogether perceived as being a monolithic block . There is no better way of

illustrating this than when Raman is falsely congratulated for his move to

Mumbai- the text reads: “One of them- was he Polson’s Coffee of Brooke Bond

Tea?- claspe Raman about the shoiulders as proper men do on meeting, and

hearty voices rose together, congratulating him on his promotion….One- was he

Voltas or Ciba?- talked of golf matches ….as though he had opften played there

with Raman.”

Later we are told Esso and Caltex left together, arms about each other…”

As they did with his wife, the privileged society of golf clubs, charity lunches and

other social functions parts to admit him as an intimate because he is about to

leave the town , therefore his eccentricities and his family’s disturbing failure to

conform to mainstream acceptable behavior can be temporarily forgotten, as they

all enact the pretence of deep friendship . “ Amazed and grateful as a schoolboy

admitted to a closed society, Raman nodded and put in a few cautious words, put

away his cigarettes,…

The difference in the atmosphere can be felt when the neighbours come. The

author emphasizes this difference by saying : Their talk had a vivid intimacy that

went straight to the heart.

Indeed rather than parties and clubs the neighbours talk about their children, their

garden,their pets,..

But the real intimacy comes when unexpectedly the hospital doctors come out of

the shadows. The overwrought parents are moved by the attention that their sick

child gets from the hospital doctors and their wives. They share sorrow, drinks and

the langorous sweetness of Tagore’s Bengali songs stamp the appropriate note of

sweet sadness which marks passage of time and the imminence of departure.

The tableau is complete, peace has descended on the farewell party.

We have been made the complex social position of the Raman's and through them

a whole tapestry of urban living has been presented and sastirised.

Study Questions:

1. To what extent does this story present and interesting portrayal of social

types?

2. Discuss the reasons for Bina and Raman's unease at their own farewell

party, in their own garden.

3. Trace the three successive waves of change in relation to the three sets of

guests in the story.

10. Pigeons at Daybreak

There are some customs so typical to Indian life that it is difficult for us to imagine

a world which reproduces these habits. Such as the one of sleeping out in the

open, or on rooftops in the company of neighbours during summer months.

In this story the old couple whose life is the focus of the narrative engage in this

long lost habit when the electricity goes off in their area of Darya Ganj in Delhi,

forcing them to resort to habits they had long grown unused to. They decide to

spend the night on the rooftops. This brings out memories of their past

However,the man is uncomfortable throughout and makes his wife run up and

down the stairs to minister to his comfort, until daybreak, when he asks to be left

alone, rather than go back to the now cooler flat ( the electricity having returned)

to watch a flight of pigeons on the horizon.

As the story opens the old man is grumbling as he waits for his wife to finish the

morning chores before she comes to read to him from the morning papers. His

grouchiness is emphasized by his inability to appreciate the multi tasking to which

she resorts to deal with household cleaning, cooking as well as her ailing husband.

The character of both is suggested in their physical features which further sharpens

the psychological knowledge we are given of each .

Mr Basu stressed and dissatisfied mind is irritated by everything his wife does,

her lack of organisation, her repeated loss of her glasses about the house.

The inactivity of waiting Mr Bose is contrasted to that of his uncomplaining wife:

“When she had finally come to the end of that round of activity, moving from stove

to bucket, shelf to table, cupboard to kitchen, she came out on the balcony again,

triumphantly carrying with her the newspaper as well as the spectacles.”

Impervious to her husband’s ironies and imprecations Mrs Basu is described as a

picture of unconcern: “ like a large soft cushion of white cotton.’ However later

on in the story after having been overused and over fatigued by looking after her

hypochondriac husband all day Mrs Basu is described “ like a bundle of damp

washing slowly falling.”

Even as she bustles about her husband after having read in the morning papers that

the electricity is going to be switched off, Mrs Basu comes across as a selfless

woman, all given over to her duties. However, Mr Basu thinks of nothing but his

own comfort.

Not only is he unable to appreciate all the effort put in by his wife to read to him.

He also fails to see that all day and all afternoon his wife does nothing buy tend to

his needs.

It is the second story to feature old people in the present collection.

Typical of Anita Desai's sharp, uncompromising insight into the complexity of

lived relationship , the story subtly shows the daily routine of the couple through

one day and night. It is a story of devotion and selfishness facing each other, both

taking for granted each other's behaviour. Never wondering whether their

constructed gender roles within their couple could have been different, even in old

age.

Study Questions:

1.Who do you sympathise with- Mr Basu pr Mrs Basu? Give reasons for

your answer.

2. Discuss the relevance of the title to the story.

11.Scholar and Gypsy

This is the last story of the collection. All of Anita Desai's novels or short story

anthologies usually portray at least one perspective of her world seen from the

other side of the cultural barrier.

In this story an Anerican couple has come to India. David is an anthropology

student, a city boy, who has come to colect material for a Ohd thesis. He is

accompanied by Pat, his high-school educated wife from Vermont. As the story

starts the coupe is in Bombay/Mumbai. While David enjoys himself immensely

Pat feels nauseous by the overpowering of her senses through noise, smell, colour,

and the vibrant vitality of public and private spaces alike.At one point she says that

her extreme reaction to people and places, her sense of wilting, nausea and

fainting, are caused by a cultural shock at encountering a culture so different. All

this amplified due to her not attending university like her husband David. The

differing reactions of the two to the people they meet are quite interesting. To

David the people he meets are very urbanised and he believes “ these people

would be at home in any New York party (p.110)

But to Pat, they seem primitive.

As they move to Delhi her sense of despair grows worse as they leave behind

affluence to come to the life of devoted social workers, living out their middle

class existence amidst the squalor of their job.

Pat's despair grows even more. By this time the estrangement between husband

and wife has become stronger. David seems to be enjoying himself while Pat

wilts.

It is at this stage that David suggests a visit to the hills of Manali, to escape the

heat of the plains and to bring some life back to his wife.

As they move to the Kulu Manali valley a curious circular transformation takes

place. David becomes more apathetic and Pat seems to revive and find comfort in

the coolness of the place, the solitude of forests and temples, as well as the

company of the European pilgrims who are living heir live as impoverished

gypsies in the valleys of Manali.

The story of Western incursion into India in search of gypsy Nirvana is a story

which is decades long. It started in the 1970's with the rebellious Flower Power

generation who sought to oppose war and American materialism through a

rediscovery of non-violence. Initially a political movement , initiated through

Gandhi, moving to America by way of its influence on Martin Luther King,

Flower Power soon became less politicised and emphasized simple living and a

return to roots. Many of the practitioners of Flower Power came to India and

reinvented communal ways of living, and pushed hedonism to the extreme through

consumption of drugs. They can still be seen as a feature of Indian society in the

Northern hills.

In one of the scenes in the story David is ashamed that his compatriots, together

with his wife,have become a tourist attraction to Indian tourists who “had made an

outer circ le around this central core of seekers of nirvana and bliss-through-bang,

as if this were one of the sights of the kulu Valley that they had paid to see.

( p.132)

Gradually Pat's fascination with the forests, landscapes and deserted temples of the

Kulu valley draw her to her gypsy compatriots who have, like her, come to

connect with nature. David watches with increasing distaste as his wife turns into a

hippy. He at first notices a streak of fanaticism in her as she defends the people of

the valley from David's sarcasm. Gradually this fanaticism makes itself seen as she

becomes a visiting member of a community of gypsies and partakes their food and

beliefs about the need to return to nature.

In this section David's distaste with his surroundings grows by the day. He

abandons his research , and even any pretcence of it. The teeming multitudes of

India's cities having been left behind, David finds no interest in the hill people of

their gypsy guests.

He comes to realise how different they are as Pat sets into her mysterious ways.

This is suggested through deft strokes as David notices changes in her body

movement : “As she grew browner from the outdoor life and her limbs sturdier

from the exercise, it seemed to him she was losing the fragility, the gentleness that

he had loved in her, that she was growing into some tough, sharp countrywoman

who might very well carry loads, chop wood, haul water and harvest, but was

scarcely fit to be his wife...her movements were marked by rough angles that

jarred on him, her voice, ...was brusque and abrupt.' ( p.130)

David becomes increasingly conscious of his American background, of his

identity as “The charming, socially graceful yound David of Long Island

upbringing.” ( p. 130) even as his wife's personality seems to be fading into the

life of the valley.

As david tries to buy ticket to get out of what has become to him a cultural as well

as a domestic trap , he is caught in as bus engine explosion, suffers from minor

injury and is tended to by an American doctor. It is interesting to note his relief

when , with his hands over his eyes he hears the voice of the doctor giving him

instructions: “ a blessedly American voice spoke.” He opens his eyes ans gazes

upon the American doctor ' as a vision of St Michael at the golden gates.” ( p.135)

This representative of America, of his land, of his people, this American who

gives him a sense of comfort and companionship in what has become to him a

land of aliens, David, the erstwhile anthropology student come to study the people

of India, whom he used to find fascinating in the varied realities, sees as a'

gorgeous man, solid and middle-age and wondrously square,”

This strange enthusiam of David is to be explained by his relief at seeing what to

hin is a 'normal' American after the bony , crass Americna gypsies who have been

taking away all the known parameters of his life and his identity.

He fells reassured, comforted by the doctor's strong mainstream American

presense, his booming voice, his easy gossip about his work, in ' his heavy voice

from the Middle West.

David's sense of relief at being taken care of goes beyond the immediate injury he

has suffered. “ He sat back, as helpless as a baby, and felt those large dry hands

with their strong growth of ginger hair gently dab at his face, bringing peace,

blessing in thei wake.” ( p.135)

David experiences this meeting as a return to the bosom of his culture, as a

protective blanket which he returns to him his dissolving American identity, and

the boundaries of his culotural references.

After this climax, Pat and David make their choices. Pat goes to live with the

gypsies, David returns back to Delhi and to civilisation.

The great interest of this story lies in the balance of opposite experiences felt by

David and Pat throughout.

As an anthropology student one would have imagined that David would have felt

at ease with the variegated cultures and customs he has come to study. However,

Gypsy culture and hill people do not fall within the realm of his academic interest

and knowledge. To him, that experience in the hills is one of loss because he loses

his bearing as a researcher, an academic, and an american husband. Despite all his

seeming openness to other cultures, David is shown in his rejection of the harsh

angle Pat has become, to be very copnscious of his identity as a middle class

American. It is from this position that he sets out to study India,, secure in his

cultural parameters. When these dissolve the interest of India lessens. Pat by

contrast, apologises for her ignorance which does not allow her to appreciate theis

social life in Bombay and Delhi. However, once in Manali she is shown to have an

intuitive connection with the spirit of the place. In one of the rare conversation

with her husband in Manali, she reproaches him for being too intellectual, for

being unable to empathise with the world around him.

David, the scholar, who had come to India on a research trip, abandons his mission

as he watches his wife gradually grow into a gypsy and join the legions of

converts to the natural life.

He returns to Delhi, wifeless.

In the final ironic conclusion to the story, Desai says, starting with the ponderous

tones of an eighteenth century novelistic voice:

“If truth were to be told, he felt graeter regret at having to arrive in Delhi with a

face painted like a baboon's than to arrive without his wife.”

Study Questions:

1. Discuss the relevance of the title to the story.

2. Discuss the charcater of Pat and David as a study in contrasts.

3. Discuss the various aspects of cultural collusion in this story.

4. Who do you find more sympathetic, David or Pat or none of them.

Essay Questions:1. Discuss the themes of loss in this story.

2. Pick up two charcaters you sympathise with and comment upon them.

3. Do the same for two characters you fell little sympathy for.

4. Compare and contrast the two boys in Games at Twilight and Pineapple

cake. Do you see similarities between them?

5. In what way is Haresh's hermit like existence in Surface Textures different

from that of Pat in Scholar and Gypsy?

6. “Bina and Raman, in The Farewell Party, seem to be the only characters

who are close to mainstream identities, in the whole collection.” Comment

upon this statement

7. In what way does this anthology show Anita Desai's fascination with

marginal characters?

8. Compare Mr Basu, in Pigeons at Day Break, and the old father in A

Devoted Son. In what way are they similar?

9. Compare the three depictions of gradual descent into madness or

marginality in Studies in the Park, Surface Textures and Scholar abd

Gypsy.

10. How tragic is the life of the artist in Sale?

11. Do these stories overall give a realistic or idealistic portrayal of life in

Indian society?

12. Comment on the tragi-comedy of the two situations depicted in Private

Tuition by Mr Bose and Pineapple Cake.