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.