Essentials of Anita Desai’s Lifetime (ANITA DESAİ'NİN HAYATI )

Essentials of Anita Desai’s Lifetime

         Anita Desai was born in Mussoorie, India, 24th June, 1937. Her mother was German and her father  Indian and she obtained a degree in English Literature from the University of Delhi. Anita Desai is  a famous Indian writer. She is in her seventies. she is creative, imaginative, quick-witted, sensitive and  big-hearted. She always tries to express what she considers the truth.

         She is married  and she has 4 children. She  lives in the United States, where she is Professor of Writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She enjoys travelling, reading and working in her garden.  When she travels she goes to Mexico, Europe and occasionally to India. She says that having lived independently for 15 years in the West, she found she could not return to a dependent life in India except on visits.

        Desai published her first novel, Cry The Peacock, in 1963. She considers Clear Light of Day (1980) her most autobiographical work as it is set during her coming of age and also in the same neighbourhood in which she grew up. In 1984 she published In Custody – about an Urdu poet in his declining days – which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 1993 she became a creative writing teacher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her novel, The Zigzag Way, set in 20th-century Mexico, appeared in 2004 and her latest collection of short stories, The Artist of Disappearance was published in 2011.

       

        Desai has taught at Mount Holyoke College, Baruch College and Smith College. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and of Girton College, Cambridge (to which she dedicated Baumgartner's Bombay). In addition, she writes for the New York Review of Books. As a writer she has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times; she received a Sahitya Academy Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the Mountain, from the Sahitya Academy, India's National Academy of Letters; she won the British Guardian Prize for The Village by the Sea.

          Desai entered the scholarly world in a position as the Helen Cam Visiting Fellow at Girton College in Cambridge University, England from 1986 to 1987. She came to the United States in 1987 and served as an Elizabeth Drew Professor at Smith College from 1987 to 1988 and a Purington Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College from 1988 to 1993. In 1988 she wrote another novel, Baumgartner's Bombay, and by 1989 her status as a significant postcolonial novelist had been cemented in literary circles. Fame, however, appeared far off due to the post–1947 prejudice against Anglophone literature, particularly that written by female authors. In 1993 Desai took as post as Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has remained there ever since.

         In 1992, Desai's children's book The Village by the Sea was adapted and filmed as a six–part miniseries by the BBC, and in 1993 she co–authored an adaptation of her novel In Custody that was filmed by Merchant–Ivory and released in 1994. Desai wrote two more novels—Journey to Ithaca (1995) and Fasting, Feasting (1999)—and one more short story collection, Diamond Dust (2000).

WRITING STYLE

She believes her feministic style of writing comes from the changing times when she was growing up "The feminist movement in India is very new and a younger generation of readers in India tends to be rather impatient with my books and to think of them as books about completely helpless women, hopeless women. "(Desai)

The unique writing style of Desai is one of the novel’s most noteworthy features. She writes carefully, calculatedly, correctly. Desai’s writing style is strikingly precise and effective. Her detached, unobtrusive third person narrative requires readers to take a voyeuristic stance throughout the text, an aspect potentially enjoyable for some readers yet problematic for others. However, one of the few flaws of the novel is its over-precise technique which has the potential to patronize readers.

At times Desai’s extensive vocabulary manifests itself with the sense that Desai only writes with a thesaurus in hand. Ultimately however, the precision of the style merges flawlessly with the unwavering views and domestic edicts of the family ways to generate the narrow, passionless essence of the novel, illustrating a world where individual emotional needs and desires are disregarded or invalidated. Desai also successfully employs subtle hints of satirical humor and dark comedy which increase the enjoyment of the text.

As the protagonist, Uma’s struggle for self-definition is stifled by her extreme devotion to her parent and the theoretical leash she is bound to. Without beauty she is unable to find a husband, and without a husband she is unable to experience permanent freedom from her tyrannical parents. She is chastised for going out with Ramu and having fun, “Quiet, you hussy! Not another word from you, you idiot child!’ Mama’s face glints like a knife in the dark, growing narrower and fiercer as it comes closer. ?You, you disgrace to the family?” (pg. 53).

Uma’s defied access to education and excellence is evinced when she is denied access to an ophthalmologist when her eye sight begins to deteriorate. Similarly, when Uma is offered a job, representative of a career, she submits to her parents’ disapproval. Uma is not void of all progress, however, as she begins to realize that happiness means acquiring a reality separate from the one which her parents dictate. She finds solace in the attention of Mira-masi, who provides her with the ability to contemplate her own existence and understand the structure of her culture

CRITICS ABOUT ANITA DESAI AND REVIEWS ABOUT DESAI

Reviews for “Fasting, Feasting”

"What a pleasure! She is really one of the most accomplished novelists writing today-- the book flows like water, it comes like a gift to the parched. Heart-rending, yes of course, being about how rescue never comes, but so alive in its appreciation of life's consolations as to be quite magical." -- Fay Weldon.

"Fasting, Feasting posits food as a metaphoer for emotional sustenance. Everything centers around food. Desai, who teaches writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, tells the story with lapidary prose, creating intimate scenes as detailed as Indian miniature paintings. An accumulation of small details as steady and fine as drops of small rain create and eventual flood that drowns the happiness and the hopes of both Arun and Uma." The Seattle Times

"Desai is more than smart; she's an undeniable genius." The Washington Post

Reviews for “ fire on the mountain”.

"Anita Desai's lyrical yet pointed prose powerfully draws the portrait of a woman who can never blossom into her own in such an arid social landscape."  World Literature Today

"Short-listed for the 1999 Booker Prize, Desai's stunning new novel...looks gently but without sentimentality at an Indian family...she has much to say in this graceful, supple novel about the inability of the families in either culture to nurture their children." Publishers Weekly, Starred.

"The Indian-born novelist and MIT writing instructor (Desai) deftly conveys the comic horror of escaping the constraints of family and navigating an alien culture, in this case, ours." Boston Magazine.

Anita Desai's new book is her best since Fasting, Feasting and shares the apocalyptic vision of her extraordinary Fire on the Mountain. India's greatest living writer has always hidden devastating criticisms of the status quo just beneath the jewelled seduction of her surfaces. Her new volume, a trio of linked novellas about the art world, is also a sequence of underground detonations, culminating in a physical explosion that tears apart a mountain – and at a stroke demolishes the 21st-century's corrupt linkage between art and celebrity.

These stories about art are also stories about ourselves. The characters, sketched in with Desai's usual blend of irony and tender sympathy, are people who look at pictures and read books: the rich who collect and neglect art, the civil servants who fail to support it, the adapters and critics and publishers who cluster round the edges, their restless jostling muddying and blurring its outlines. Last of all, but most beautifully, in her final story Desai writes about the secret part of all human beings that can create no matter how wretched our circumstances, a precious gift she suggests must at all costs flee the roaring, vacuous maw of 21st-century media.

All three novellas feature different forms of disappearance. The first, "The Museum of Final Journeys", is narrated by a failed writer and junior Indian administrative officer, the privately educated inheritor of British imperial traditions: irritable, hierarchical and bored. When an ancient man totters to see him with tales of a secret museum belonging to the once-great family in whose service he has grown old, the civil servant travels into the remote countryside to investigate. He learns that the family's last son and heir, repelled by rural India, has spent his mother's money travelling the world and sending back boxes of boot. Maggie Gee's My Animal Life is published by Telegram.

CONDITION OF WOMEN

           Anita Desai frequently deals with the condition of women in her some books such as ‘’Fire on the Mountain’’  and ‘’Fasting, Feasting’’ .Uma is a  frustrated woman who lives in a traditional structure. For the girls, the  future is marriage and to have children.

         The arranged marriages produce their own painful comedy when Uma proves difficult to pair off: "Mama worked hard at trying to dispose of Uma, sent her photograph around to everyone who advertised ... but it was always returned with the comment 'We are looking for someone taller/fairer/more educated… Twice the family is duped into continuing a dowery as part of an unsuccessful engagement -- a shame that affects Uma forever after, though she is blameless in both situations. However, Aruna's marriage is a eyeful boast, taking her off to a new metropolitan life in Bombay.

     

         ‘’One could be forgiven for thinking Papa’s chosen role was scowling, Mama’s scolding. Since every adult had to have a role, and these were their parents’, the children did not question their choices. At least, not during their childhoods.’’  in page 9, ‘’Fasting, Feasting’’. In this quote, Desai tried to depict that a women in this culture didn’t have right of choosen about their life because in her culture, women could just get married and Women, got married have everything which she could have.

        

          Desai has examined the predicament of women in wilderness by placing these three characters Nanda Kaul, Raka and Ila Das , a place surrounded by hills and valleys, for removed from civilisation. She has consciously done it to examine the predicament and psyche of women in isolation. By placing her female protagonists with nature herself as the backdrop, Anita Desai has endowed a symbolic and universal significance to the plight of her protagonists.

         … but no matter what she had said, it would have made them bellow - that was the way her voice acted upon everyone… In page 108, ‘’Fire on the Mountain’’, in this quote, Desai tried to describe no matter what women did, there is a destiny that is written for her life.

TRADITION/ INDIA AND MODERNITY/ WEST

          Throughout the novel, we see conflict between old ways, or ‘tradition’ running against new ways, or ‘modernity’. Most frequently, tradition is associated with India/Rural/Home/Extended Family/ Poverty/Fasting and modernity is associated with Western/Urban/Individuality/Commercialism/Feasting.

          Yet, the ‘Old/India’ and the ‘New/Western’ paradigms are constantly shifting. Mira-masi dedicates her life to traditional Hindu Gods and Goddesses, yet to MamaPapa there is something very dangerous and progressive about Mira-Masi’s free-roaming, unmarried life. Arun’s desire to be a vegetarian appears so old-fashioned to MamaPapa that it is almost defiant.

           MamaPapa, from rural, humble roots, hold fast to traditional values, placing less value on daughters’ educations and more value on daughters’ obedience and preparation for marriage. The nuns at the convent and the Christian missionaries represent a western perspective in India that challenges MamaPapa’s traditionalism. Uma’s parents see no need for Uma to go into the city with Ramu or to visit Aruna in Bombay, as they also see the urban settings as threatening.

         While western ideas may seem more liberating, its people more liberated, western society and the urban setting do not offer freedom from gender roles or social expectations. Aruna feels so pressured by the ideals of the wealthy urban India that she becomes anxious and obsessed with perfection. Through commercialism, wealth and image have become the new constraint.

         American society places high expectations on women: while Melanie is not being pressured by her parents to marry as Uma and Aruna were, she is pressured by American ideals of beauty to achieve unhealthy thinness—at whatever cost. Mrs. Patton, trying to be the picture of motherhood, feels she cannot pursue vegetarianism because her husband won’t approve. For the old-fashioned Mr. Patton, vegetarianism represents a threat to the American way.

ALIENATION AND ISOLATION THEMES

Alienation is present in school, work, and other settings in life, and is experienced by many people around the world. It is defined as the state of being an outsider or the feeling of being isolated from society. In most of the novels of Anita Desai the pearl of the character of alienation do exists in almost all the jewels of the novel. The special glow for this pearl of alienation is given by the author in the novel than all the other gems of the characters in the novel. She highlights the inner realities of personalities exhibiting alienation.

Fire on the Mountain falls into three sections, each further divided into several short chapters of unequal length. The first section titled “Nanda Kaul at Carignano” runs into ten chapters. This section deals with Nanda Kaul, the main protagonist’s lonely life in Kasauli.

She feels happy to live in company with silence and nature. She enjoys the moments of the gentle breeze embracing her. She knits her thoughts with loneliness and silence. It is right to express that the thoughts merge with isolation and silence to make these magical moments memorable. The author focuses on the nature and psychology of the protagonist through the description of the landscape. The landscape is used to reflect symbolically the mindscape of Nanda Kaul. This reveals that the author has used the effective technique of using nature to represent symbolism and imagery of characters. She is determined to be lonely and she gets irritated if her isolation gets disturbed by the arrival of the postman or the maid.

Anita Desai strongly believes that childhood impressions shape the personality and attitude of the individual, but through this novel she has carefully knit the plot to state that “even adult life contains many traumatic experiences”. The inordinate desire for isolation and oneness with silence is due to the unhappy and unhealthy relationship between her and husband. The news of the arrival of Raka reminds of her unhappy waves in her past sea of life where she was very busy like the waves in the sea where she was forced by her husband and children.

If Nanda Kaul symbolizes a particular aspect of existentialism, Raka epitomizes another aspect of the existential predicament: the influence of her parents on her life.

Anita Desai makes Raka both young temperamentally and solitude-loving. When the characteristics of Raka is said to be different in the way that she never likes to have a glimpse at the bunch of the flowers or play with the companions of her age, the readers read the mind and psyche o her that there is something bizarre about her. Through several interior monologues enacted in Raka’s subconscious mind, the reason for the abnormality in her is unfolded. The daughter of an ill-matched couple, Raka has been subjected to the brutality and futility of human existence. She is haunted by the recollections of the nightmarish nights that have made her almost a child-stoic.

During the narration of her past story we feel pity for her unhappy childhood and our hearts melt imagining the sufferings and pains which she could have undergone as a child in silence. The author has portrayed the psyche of many children who live under these circumstances in the world through this character in the novel. When they live in these circumstances, their mind, attitude and approach undergoes a strange change which is reflected not for a particular period in their life but throughout their life.

Compared to the boys generally the girls are affected a lot where the boys’ pain and sufferings get diluted when they go out and play out and they are exposed to the outer world for a long period of time than the girls. The jackals are symbols of the mystery of life and Raka’s walk to the Monkey Point is symbolic of her search for something unknown, yet inevitable and indispensable. Not all children would dare to brave the rough terrains of the ravines and impending menace of the jackals.

Ila Das is the third female protagonist of the novel. Unlike Nanda Kaul and Raka who are central to the story, her role is only marginal. Nonetheless, Anita Desai has projected yet another aspect of the existentialist philosophy through her character. There is another depiction of human being in this world who is at the peak of miser and meaningless existence.

Ila Das, Nanda Kaul’s childhood friend visits Carignano to meet Raka.

A onetime lecture in the Punjab University, Ila Das had lost her job subsequent to Mr. Kaul’s retirement. She has been appointed as an officer in the social welfare department. She fights against child marriage by enlightening the local people about the evils of this practice.  Alienation and Isolation in the Novel, ‘Fire on the Mountain’ by Anita Desai 5 Impact Factor(JCC): 1.3648 - This article can be downloaded from impactjournals.us cite.
This invites the wrath of many of the villagers of whom Preet Singh is one. His attempts to barter his little daughter for a tiny piece of land and a few goats have been successfully thwarted by Ila Das. He is lying in wait to settle his score with her.




 One evening, when Ila Das returns late from Carignano to her humble house in the valleys, he waylays her, rapes and murders her. When the news of Ila Das’s death is conveyed to Nand Kaul over the phone, she is rudely shocked and falls dead. Raka unaware of her great grandmother’s death rushes into the house proclaiming wildly that she has set the forest of fire.

Anita Desai has added a new dimension by writing a novel like ‘Fire on the mountain’ to the Indian fiction in English probing deep into the fathomless pit of human psyche, she brings the hidden contours into much sharper focus. The charm of her art lies in her characters, independent, agonized frustrated and combating with angry defense. She has carved an important place for herself in Indo-English fiction writings by making the readers visualize the exact thoughts flowing in the minds of protagonists.

She vividly focuses the inner world that exists in each person which reflects the essence of sheer, unpolluted, unadulterated reality. Her camera of the eyes captures the mental state of the protagonists where the accurate visions, thoughts, plans that go alive in the hearts and minds of the protagonists are clearly recorded in the plot. In a way she has presented the potentials of the post independent writers in English.

 It is true that Desai has her limits but she compensates her material in intensity what she lacks in variety. Desai’s unquestionable existential and psychological concerns have distinguished her from other novelists of her generation. The peculiar characteristics to be noted in the author is that the way she unravels the subconscious of her highly sensitive protagonists.

                                                                   Work Cites

Desai, Anita. Fasting, Feasting. S.l: Vintage, 2000. Print

Desai, Anita. Fire on the Mountain. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. Print..

Singh, Anita Inder. Existential Dimensions in the Novels of Anita Desai. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2007. Print.

Gopal, N. R. A Critical Study of the Novels of Anita Desai. New Delhi: Atlantic and Distributors, 1995. Print.

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