Chapter-V

Psychological Conflict in Bye-Bye Blackbird, Clear Light of Day and Fire on the Mountain

The main forte of Desai's fiction is the exploration of the

main currents and undercurrents of human psyche. She is

more concerned with the portrayal of inner reality than the

outer life. According to Usha Rani:

She peels off, layer after layer, the hidden impressions and experiences of

the conscious as well as the sub-conscious self.1

Her sharp awareness of the inner reality and the massing of

details is expressed in a manner that the interior self of the

characters is revealed in all its prominent shades. Her

protagonists are not average. In this chapter I have

described such sensitive souls as, sweet Sarah in Bye-Bye

Blackbird, unfortunate Ila in Fire on the Mountain and

optimistic Bim in Clear Light of Day. All the protagonists in

Desai's novels were undergoing mental conflict of varying

intensity. Some of them are lost during the struggle, while

others come out successfully with new realization and

hope.

The different states of mind produce different

[ 166 ]

reactions in different situations. In the world of Desai's

character there is an amalgamation of all types of human

psyche. Various factor gives rise to mental tension of

varying intensity. Most prominent among the causes of

these mental conflicts is the clash is between the inner

reality of the protagonist and the external situation of

their life.

The protagonists of Desai suffer from these mental

agonies at various levels. They often come in clash with the

outside life, with others at individual level, or with the

society at-large. The changes brought in their mental

perspective with the time and experience also produce a

psychic strain. Mostly the female protagonists are usually

more sensitive than their counterparts but sometimes as in

the case of Raman in Where Shall We Go This Summer? we

find that men can be sensitive too.

In this chapter there is a detailed analysis of the

three selected novels Bye-Bye Blackbird, Clear Light of Day

and Fire on the Mountain. These novels are replete with

instances of psychological conflict.

Bye-Bye Blackbird, published in 1971. In this novel

Desai widens her canvas to deal with a group of Indian

immigrants in London and in her sensitive manner traces

[ 167 ]

their complex emotional relationship. It is different from the

other novels by Desai in an important aspect that is while

the other novels have an Indian setting, but Bye-Bye

Blackbird is set in an English background. But whatever

the setting, a constant theme in Desai's novels is the

problem of adjustment, both personal and social. At the

personal level, the problem is more complex. The struggle of

the characters, especially women, to maintain their identity

and to emerge as individuals in their own right leads to

maladjustment with those who are related to them. Desai's

women characters are, who are sensitive can try as best to

cope with their situation in ways that are sometimes

damaging to themselves and sometimes to others, because

they are often guided by impulse rather than reason.

Desai's heroines live in a tightly enclosed world and

inevitably their repression breaks out is violence in Cry, the

Peacock, Maya murders her husband and becomes insane,

Monisha in Voices in the City commits suicide and Raka in

Fire on the Mountain sets the forests ablaze.

Bye-Bye Blackbird though written in digression

from the track, on which the earlier novels of Mrs. Desai

move successfully on the theme of existential isolation and

lack of adjustment encountered by Indian immigrants in

England. This novel deals with the treatment of the psychic

[ 168 ]

tumult of her self-afflicted characters. The treatment of the

characters is quite different from her earlier novels. In this

novel Mrs. Desai presents the topical problem of

adjustment faced by black immigrants in England. She

analyses this critical problem by portraying the three major

characters, Adit, Sarah and Dev and exploring the effect of

racial malice and hatred on their sensibility. These three

characters face the dilemma of finding their identity

because their background is rooted in the different classes

of society divided by birth, and from a definite sense of

social placement they find themselves in an alien

atmosphere where it is not easy for an individual to adjust.

Anita Desai herself confesses in an article:

Their (immigrants) Schizophrenia amused me while I was with them and continued to tease me when I returned to India. I wrote it in an effort to understand the split psychology, the double loyalties of the immigrants.2

Anita Desai is not quite satisfied with this novel, as it

presents the plight of Indian immigrants in an alien land

too realistically. As Atma Ram has remarked:

Bye-Bye Blackbird is the closest of all my books to actuality and practically, everything in it is drawn directly from my experience of living with Indian immigrants in London.3

[ 169 ]

In this novel, Mrs. Desai highlights the commendable

success, the confusions and conflicts of another set of

isolated characters. Dev feels isolated in London from both

Indians and Englishmen because the former have become

used to the condescending attitudes and motives which he

cannot follow, and the latter consider him an outsider. At

the beginning Adit is happy but later on he feels isolated

and his attitude towards an England undergoes a major

change. Dr. G.D. Barke has rightly said:

Adit though lives and admires England, loves everything that is English appreciates her history and poetry, feels the thrill about Nelson's battles,

waterloo, about Churchillall, and yet all this break like a soap bubble at the first touch of reality. He must have not loves England less but then he loved

India more.4

His initial Anglophobia is ultimately supplanted totally by

his new experienced Anglophobia. He considers himself to

be a stranger a misfit in England. He moves about London

in a kind of morbid search for belonging. Sarah Adit's wife,

though not deeply involved in the main motif of the novel,

she is also an existentialist character suffering from the

feeling of isolation and loss of identity. She also feels upset

because by marrying an Indian she feels alienated in her

own country.

[ 170 ]

The novel opens with the arrival of Dev in England.

He is a young student, with some intellectual pretensions,

from Bengal, desirous of taking admission in the

prestigious London school of Economics. He finds himself

totally a misfit in England because he is an unable to

reconcile with the English norms and conventions and

finds it difficult to adjust in an alien land. The novelist

powerfully and effectively narrates the various experiences

that Dev undergoes and the culture shocks that he receives

in a foreign country. He remains one of those, " . . . eternal

immigrants who can never accept their new home and

continue to walk the streets like strangers in enemy

territory, frozen, listless, but dutifully trying to be busy, an

unobtrusive and, however superficially to belong . . ."5 as he

has read a long about it in books. The self-consciousness

that leads him to a self-crisis around which the whole novel

revolves, the crisis is not peculiarly Dev's own. It seems to

have a much larger dimension; it seems to overpower all

those who are placed in similar situations. If it engulfs Dev,

it also engulfs Adit, and his English wife, Sarah. Dev

cannot get accustomed to the quietness and an emptiness

of London city. He experiences a lack of sympathy and

geniality among Britishers who cannot recognize even their

neighbours and live like strangers to one another. The

[ 171 ]

social atmosphere of India is quite different where people

are joined with bonds of mutual cooperation and genuine

relationships, but in London the things are quite different.

The silence and emptiness of the houses and streets in

London make him uneasy.

He yearns for green Indian parks and other

beautiful places where people are seen sitting in harmony

with each other. The discovery of artificiality in manners,

lack of ethics and morality in Britishers preys upon his

mind constantly. Though now and then, he enjoys the

idyllic countryside but on the whole he does not feel as

home with this new local and resides there like an

unwanted, isolated and insulted creature. The humiliating

treatment accorded to immigrants in England, hunts him.

While travelling in a bus, he feels humiliated while buying

his ticket for seats a glint of scorn in the conductor's eye,

the abrupt way in which he hands him his ticket and then

keeps him waiting for his change. Even the old lady sitting

next to him clutches her handbag and leans away from him

as if she finds him repulsive.

The novel revolves around the crisis of identity that

the characters have to face. The external landscape

becomes the internal climate of these characters enmeshed

[ 172 ]

in an existential despair. But Dev's response to the city of

London has nothing of the emotional involvement that

Nirode or Monisha face. He feels offended by the silence

and emptiness of the town and reacts in an unemotional

and confused manner. There is a gap between his real self

and imagined self that increases his existential agony in an

alien country. A proper perspective of the novel emerges

when Dev's dilemmas are seen emanating from his

instinctive responses to the London scene. His isolation and

spiritual anguish is reflected through his hellish experience

in the London tube.

The inner conflict, in Dev's mind between

acceptance and rejection, renders him emotionally and

intellectually tortured person. London makes him aware of

his otherness, that he does not belong to the world that he

takes to be the source of his conscious existences. His

suffering emanates from this conflict between experience

and mental perception. Similarly, Adit becomes aware of his

otherness after his visit to his in-laws and leaves England

as a patriotic Indian. Dev suffers because he keeps on

oscillating between his choices. For him, England is the

golden world, the price which is too high from him to pay.

Anita Desai alludes to this symbolically, when Dev wants to

find out the price of a gold icon from Russia and is told that

[ 173 ]

he does not even deserve to be told the price.

Living in uncertainty, denied and rejected, Dev

develops a schizophrenic attitude towards England.

However, in the final section of the novel we observe that

Dev loses his self control and in slowly drawn into London

life. The English countryside stirs his inner self, lets him

open his soul and fills it with that healing touch which

nature along can give and Dev as he responds to the scenic

beauty of English countryside rediscovers the magic that he

had lost in London.

Thus, Dev who feels depressed in the early stages

of his stay in London because of the insults hurled at the

black by the callous and arrogant Britishers, gradually

finds the life of an alien enthrallingly rich and highly

enterprising. Adit's situation is just the opposite of Dev's. In

the beginning he is Anglophilliac, marries an English girl

Sarah and settles in England with no desire to return to

India. He is often ridiculed by Dev, as a "spineless

imperialist lover," but unlike Dev he is happy there because

he understands the reconciliation between the two different

cultures the Eastern and the Western the meeting of

discordant natures and backgrounds. A vein of sarcasm

and irony underlines the analytical thoughts of Adit, but he

[ 174 ]

manages to solve his dilemma of the Indian mind's

fascination for the western culture.

Adit settles down in England because he fails to

find a decent job in India in spite of having a degree from a

British University. With a little difficulty he finds a job as a

travel agent and is generally content with life. Like his

fellow immigrants, he quietly tolerates racial insults and

humiliations to which he is continually subjected. Fed on

English Literature in school and exposed directly to English

life and manners for years, he now feels a sense of cultural

affinity. This closeness, however, does not obliterate the

sense of his cultural identity. He secretly longs for Indian

food, music and friends. This longing suddenly grows

intense during one of his visits to Sarah's parents. Adit,

from then onwards, feels stifled and starved in the alien

land. He makes up his mind to leave for India to lead a real

life clear of all pretences.

We are informed with the help of a few flashbacks

how the marriage between Sarah and Adit is materialized.

To Sarah, Adit seemed a complete contract to her. She had

been brought up in a strict and drab atmosphere which

was in sharp contrast to Adit whose life seemed colourful

drab in contrast:

[ 175 ]

I should thick ninety out of every hundred people here live exactly alike. Every evening they watch the same

programmes on the telly, every Friday night they go to the local pub for a drink, every Sunday have roast beef for lunch, every Whitsun and bank holiday stream down to the see . . . like lemmings . . . .6

Adit is impressed by Sarah's shyness and reticence. He

feels that she is like a reserved, quiet, Bengali girl, in fact,

prettier than the rest. Beyond these affectionate words, the

novel hardly presents any scene of love or intimacy to

indicate that their initial fascination for each other lasts

long. They soon settle down to a dull, drab routine of

cooking, washing dishes and keeping the house. Adit

sometimes behaves in an intemperate way as is disclosed in

his conversation with his friend Dev. As, Alvin Toffler has

pointed out:

These English wives are quite manageable really, you know. Not as fierce as they look . . . very quiet and hard working as long as you treat them right and roar at them regularly once or

twice a week.7

The novel deals, at great length, with the numerous

adjustments which a married couple is compelled to make

or fails to do so. Adit cannot stand British broth and stews

[ 176 ]

and, therefore, he makes Sarah to cook Indian food

immediately after marriage. Since she is not able to cook

Indian food to the entire satisfaction of her husband most

of the time, Adit is found in the kitchen which irritates his

mother. Sarah and Adit have difficulty in adjusting to each

other's concept of cleanliness also. Sarah takes no

precaution to protect the food from the cat sniffing at it and

Adit's appetite is killed when he thinks of eating the

unclean food. Adit's Bengali music has no impact on Sarah.

She cannot join him and his Indian friends in their

conversation, jokes and laughter, and thus remains a

foreigner in their world. She does not find it easy to wear a

sari and Indian jewellery. The rituals and beliefs of one

mean nothing to the other, which upsets both of them at

the lack of regard shown by the other, for what each holds

dear. A major part of the book is devoted to husband - wife

isolation. After marriage Sarah's reticence turns into

aloofness, she loses her zeal to participate in living and

becomes apathetic. She feels that her life is an empty and

ineffectual one and therefore is left with stark loneliness.

Her bewilderment and frustration is the consequence of

'cultural shock'. Her immersion in a strange culture causes

a breakdown in communication, a misreading of reality and

inability to cope. Sarah feels depressed because she cannot

[ 177 ]

fully involve her, self in her husband's culture nor can she

adapt herself to his society. As Meenakshi Mukerjee has

aptly said:

Sarah is the most typical of

Mrs. Desai's characters, complex, hypersensitive and intelligent.8

The novelist displays commendable skill in delving deep

into her psyche and highlighting her social and

psychological isolation. Sarah, like Maya and Monisha, is

an introvert, but there is hardly any other kinship between

them. She does not suffer from inner vacuity like them

though she is temporarily isolated. Mrs. Desai's depiction of

Sarah's personality, full of dualities and uncertainties,

presents a vivid image of the struggles of an alienated self.

Fear, insecurity and the resultant withdrawal are the three

major motifs in the novel. The novel incorporates the

impact of an East-West marriage on the psyche of Sarah.

As the likings and tastes of husband-wife are different, a

disharmony prevails in Sarah's family life and it seems to

threaten her marriage. One gets the impression that Sarah

and Adit have adjusted to each other despite their

differences. His romantic love for England is matched with

the romanticism of her imagination about India. They

maintain their cultural identities yet experience a close

[ 178 ]

affinity with each other's culture. But Sarah has a dread of

being labelled an Indian and there in lies the crux of her

difficulty. Her sense of shame and nervousness is so

obvious that some readers tend to agree with her colleague.

Julia, who bluntly says that if being an Indian was so

adherent to her, she should not have married, Sarah's

irrational fear is not an out come of her social Adit in the

first place alienation only. We can analyze her motives in

the light of her anxiety behind her psychological upheaval.

Dr. G.D. Barke has concluded that:

Sarah was to say good-bye to her,

English self, Dev must be saying good bye to his Indian self or it can be prayer for rest and light for him and a good bye to his bloomy self.9

As, we know Sarah had been brought up in an

atmosphere of regimentation and she has learnt, to project

herself as an ideal, obedient, loving daughter who had

accedes to all their demands. As long as she was able to

identify with her image that there was no conflict but her

marriage, her only act of non-confined made her vaguely

uneasy. Existentialists are of the view those same springs

out of our awareness of us on contemplation. The

recognition of her failure to measure up to her expectations

produced, in Sarah, a feeling of guilty or self-reproach. This

[ 179 ]

self reproach does not interfere with her married life but is

damaging for her mental health.

Although, we are not told about her parent's

reaction to the marriage, we learn about their resentment

by fathers' displeasure and mother's unconcealed

bitterness toward Indians. Sarah's father changes into a

reticent old man from an exuberant physician and the

process of his alienation is triggered off not so much by the

country life, as by the jolt to his perfectionist standards.

Sarah is an intelligent enough to understand this change

she also comprehends her mothers hostility. As Dushyant

B. Manawat has said:

Adit told Sarah not to be romantic about Indian life and warned her that life in India was not a luxury. She would have to face noisiness, and unpunctuality in India is place of tidiness and punctuality in England.10

In order to save herself, Sarah takes recourse to

withdrawal over the years. In her own social circle in the

school, she finds it easier to let others talk of themselves

rather than discuss her life. This is the way she adopts to

mitigate her sufferings caused to her by conflicts. When

this privacy is eroded and orden and are made on her, she

recoils as in the case of phillippa Grodge. She buys a

[ 180 ]

chocolate for the girl, but the moment she is questioned

about Indian postage stamps, she withholds her gifts,

consciously.

In fact she wishes to guard her secret not so much

from other as from herself that she is making an effort to

know India and become Indian. To have anyone try upon

them, break in upon the shadowed intimacy of her

relationship with them, was violent, shaking terrible. The

strategy of withdrawal is characterized by emotional

distance. Sarah feels isolated and suffers from anguish

loneliness. She does not even i.e. cognize her owns self and

knows her identity in precise terms.

Who was she, Mrs. Sen, who had been married in a

red and gold Banarasi brocade sari one burning, bronzed

day in September or Mrs. Sen the Head Secretary, who sent

out the bills and took in the cheques kept order in the

school and was known for her efficiency? Both these

creatures were frauds, each had a large shadowed element

of charade about them. When she briskly dealt with letters

and bills in her room under the stairs, she felt like an

imposter. She was playing a part when she tapped her

fingers to the sitar music on Adit's records or ground spices

for a curry which she did not care to eat. She had so little

[ 181 ]

command over these two charades and she played each

day, one in the morning at school and one in the evening at

home, that she could not even tell with how much sincerity

she played one role or the other. They were roles and when

she was not playing them she was nobody. Her face was

only a mask, her body only a costume. Where was the real

Sarah? Staring out of the window at the chimney pots and

the clouds she wondered if Sarah had any existence at all,

and then she wondered with great sadness, if she would

ever be allowed to step off the stage, leave the theater and

enter the real world, whether English or Indian, she did not

care, she wanted only its sincerity, its truth.

Sarah realizes that both these images are false

reduces the intensity of her isolation. Her awareness of the

quality of her situation leads her to self-questioning, which

enables one to take the first step towards action. It makes

one conscious of one's inner life and outward behavior and

one does not remain a passive victim of circumstances.

Peter Jones talks of two terms "Actio", and "Passio" to

denote these emotional states: Actio, he says "is essential

not only for self-respect but ultimately for sanity".11 Sarah

feels trapped between these two selves and being aware of

her two roles like Sita, wishes to get out of them. The

freedom essential for self-identity is not fully recognized

[ 182 ]

because she is only acting her roles and is a non-entity

when she is not dramatizing her parts. She cannot even

separate her two selves as they are intermingled. Sarah

wishes that if only she was allowed to keep her one role

apart from the other, she would not feel so, cut and slashed

into living in bleeding pieces.

The discovery that she has been deceiving people

and even that herself she has been parading, like an

imposter, to make claims to a life in a positive step towards

establishing a contact with the self. Sarah's spontaneity,

which was blocked by the impasse created by these two

roles she was acting out, is released. She wishes to discard

the masks and be a true and sincere self; she does not

mind which identity she adopts - British or Indian so long

as it is genuine. At the end of the novel we find that Adit

suddenly decides to leave England and Sarah is downed

again in the ocean of uncertainties, she is haunted by

suspicion and doubt whether Adit would be able to give her

emotional support. Like Maya and Sita, Sarah also needs

somebody's support to emerge out of the rut into which her

life pattern has fallen. The struggle caused inside her by

the contradictory feelings of assurance and faith and the

sharpness of fear torments her and creates considerable

tension in her mind. Disintegrating forces keep disturbing

[ 183 ]

her. These thoughts however, are not neurotic for

ultimately. Sarah realizes that she will have to establish her

cultural identity in order to adopt a new culture and

undergo an utterly novel experience. There is a hope that

she would be able to have a altogether new and different

personality in India. That is why she accepts Adit's decision

with the characteristic acquiescence of an Indian wife for

she felt that even the smallest contradiction might make

Adit beat his chest and complain of being misunderstood,

start shouting and hurling accusations against her or shut

himself up in a room and weep.

She might anything was possible in his highly

strung and dramatic condition. She dreaded such a

reaction and was ready to sacrifice anything at all, in order

to maintain, however, superficially, a semblance of order

and discipline in her house, in her relationship with him.

It's doubtful if Sarah will get success in self recovery in an

alien atmosphere. Meenakshi Mukherjee is of the view that:

She is displaced in her own country and

her identity crisis will never be solved even if she goes back to England.12

It is true that Sarah's social and cultural identity will be

hard to regain, but her crisis is not beyond redemption; it is

certainly reducible if she is able to maintain constructive

[ 184 ]

thoughts and if they are not followed by any percussions of

self-annihilation, she may reconstruct and retain her

personality and become a much stronger person. If she

strives towards a clearer and deeper experiences of her

feelings, beliefs and wishes (out growing; narrow, neurotic,

egocentric) and if she manages to relate herself to others,

she will slowly but surely gain inner certainty one can

achieves by developing a sense of belonging and through

active participation in life.

At last we can say that Bye-Bye Blackbird deals

with the theme of psychological conflict with encountered

by the Indian immigrants in England on account of their

inability to adjust with the atmosphere and situations alien

to them.

The novelist analysis this existential predicament

by delineating realistically the situations of three major

characters Dev, Adit and Sarah, who fails to come under

the terms of reality and consequently feel rootless and

utterly cut off from the people around them and also from

their own selves.

The novel Fire on the Mountain (1977) reveals that

the three divisions of the book can have three facets of the

inner consciousness as reflected through Nanda Kaul, Ila

[ 185 ]

Das and Raka. Nanda Kaul the major protagonist of the

novel is the linking tie with Ila Das as well as with Raka,

not only at the level of conscious self but also at the

meeting point of infinite time-the part spent, the living

present and the coming future.

The whole novel reverberates with the agonized cry

of Nanda Kaul and Ila Das. Nanda's life has been just like a

barren mountain, devoid of all human love and faith. All

the three characters have one thing is common. They are

lone individuals trying to guard their privacy in their own

Shells, in their own distinct manner. They are mentally very

close to one another, yet at the same time they are quite

distanced from one another in age as well as in their

attitude towards the outside reality of life.

The seclusion and alienation from society leave

different impressions on all the three souls, who are highly

sensitive and emotional. There is a vast difference between

their inner desires, dreams and the hard outside facts of

life. As, Usha Rani has remarked:

Nanda Kaul grows more and more introvert and finally, she withdraws from the outside world completely. For her the seclusion is a kind of protective shell under the weight of which she groans miserably.13

[ 186 ]

In her solitary life, she mentally weaves around her a

fantasy world of her own, in which she pretends to live a

happy life, full of satisfaction. But that is not the real truth

of her existence.

In an article entitled Flight of Forms, Anita Desai

tells us that she formed the character of all these three

women on the basis of women she had come across in real

life. The writer had gone to Kasauli when she was eight, a

sickly child, living in solitude. Raka one of the central

character is a projection of her own childhood, sick and

lonely. The Pasteur Institute, the dry pine needles, the dry

forest fire, all are childhood memories changed into fiction.

Ila Das is the replica of a spinster lady whom Anita Desai,

as child, disliked. She too, was poor and was brutally

assaulted and murdered by a villager. The character of

Nanda Kaul is drawn on the basis of the character of

certain gray haired and melancholic lady whom Anita Desai

had seen playing on the piano, taking solitary walks and

had ultimately died a sad solitary death. According to P.D.

Dubey:

Fire on the Mountain is suggestive of the

revolt of the new generation of women against a world dominated by harsh and cruel men.14

[ 187 ]

The first part of the novel, entitled 'Nanda Kaul at

Carignano', provides the setting and introduces us to

Nanda Kaul, an old woman, who has chosen to live a life of

voluntary seclusion away from her children, grand children

and great grand children. Leading a solitary life at a house

called 'Carignano' in Kasauli, this part also depicts how

resentful Nanda is, when her great grand child Raka, comes

to stay with her. The second part of the novel deals with

Raka's arrival to Carignano and her subsequent

experiences there. Her relationship with her great

grandmother, Nanda Kaul is not a cordial one but we

cannot fail to note, in spite of the great disparity of age that

these two characters display a remarkably similar tendency

to be aloof and reserved.

'Ila Das leaves Carignano' is the title of the third

and last part of the novel. As Alka Saxena has rightly said:

Carignano the key words are desperation, desolation, agitation, nervousness, agony, alienation, solitude and above all emptiness.15

Ila Das is a childhood friend of Nanda Kaul. Nature has not

blessed her either with beauty or riches. Her struggle for

existence, her constant optimism and the way she tries to

cope with repeated setbacks in life make her not only an

[ 188 ]

admirable but almost a heroic woman. She stands out in

sharp contract to the other women of Desai's fiction

because while they face inner conflict tension and agony,

Illa Das is ready to face the world around her.

The fact that the three parts deal with three

different women does not mean that the novel is made up of

three different and independent stories. The setting is the

same throughout the novel and the women, Nanda Kaul,

Raka, and Ila Das are all related to each other is some way

or the other. Of the three women, Nanda and Raka have

withdrawn from society into a state of self-imposed

loneliness, though for different reasons. The third, Ila Das

is friendly and wishes to eradicate certain social evils

which, however, result in her tragic end. One similarity

between this novel and the other novels by Anita Desai is

that the women are first deprived of certain emotional and

personal needs in life, and it is this deprivation, which

results in their withdrawal and alienation from family and

society. And this change brought in their mental

perspective with the time and experience and produces a

psychic strain. Desai also tries to focus attention upon the

fact that though a woman is made to spend her life taking

care of others, she too, requires love and respect in return.

[ 189 ]

The theme of Fire on the Mountain is similar to

those of the earlier novels by Desai. So once again we are

presented with a deeply sensitive woman engaged in a

painful search for identity and undergo psychic tension.

Desai's maturity as a writer is evident in the greater

sensitivity as well as restraint shown here than in Cry, the

Peacock and Where Shall We Go This Summer? In the

present novel, Nanda Kaul wants to do away with personal

and social relationships in order to live a life of her own,

without any bondage. Her life so far, has been full on the

surface but empty inside. After marriage she had to care for

others without being cared for. This lack of attention over

the years gradually built up in her an attitude of hostility

towards people which finally leads to her self-imposed

isolation. Thus her neurosis induced her to withdraw into a

state of seclusion. It would be worthwhile to examine

Nanda Kaul's conduct on the basis of Karen Horney's views

on neurosis and neurotic behavior:

Neurotics employ several strategies in

dealing with others and in solving problems that seem to be weighing heavily upon their minds.16

First they move towards people in a state of helplessness,

lack of attention or sympathy, which leads to hostility and

[ 190 ]

their resultant withdrawal. Finally, they resort to complete

isolation and withdraw themselves from society. This

scheme serves as a structural model of neurotic character

formation which is of special value in identifying, Nanda

Kaul's pattern of behaviour and thought in Fire on the

Mountain.

At the beginning of the novel, we come to know that

Nanda Kaul's fervent desire is to be left to herself in an

isolated house in Kasauli anyone's presence would be an

unwelcome intrusion and distraction. In the initial chapters

of Fire on the Mountain we find that she has different

reasons for living in seclusion away from all her relative.

Her apparent state of contentment is quite deceptive as we

discover later. Her desire is not so much to settle into an

old age, or even death, but to escape the burden of the

past.

She has chosen to live a secluded life at Carignano

in search of peace, both outer and inner. The problems and

tensions of her past life seem to have drained her

emotionally as well as physically. The dual strain caused by

the infidelities of her husband and the running of house

full of servants, guests and children has left her completely

exhausted.

[ 191 ]

Nanda's husband was the main cause of her agony

and misery for instead, of loving and cherishing her. He

had been in love throughout his life with another lady, Miss

David. Nanda, who knew about her husband's extra-marital

relationship, suffered endless agony and heartache. J.P.

Tripathi feels that:

Here is love - impoverished heart or rather a heart burning with feminine jealousy.17

The presence of a second woman in her husband's life,

made her feel a complete stranger, an unwanted person in

the house which she felt could never be her. Indeed she felt

doubly alienated from her husband on the one hand and

from her children on the other. Whom she could neither

understand nor love, life in a house which she could never

honestly, call her own could hardly have been a

comfortable one. Yet she was not able to free herself from

the bondage of her unchanging conventional life which she

found highly demanding and extremely unbearable. She

could not give vent to her feelings and could suffer only in

silence.

This tendency to repress her sorrow is suggestive of

a deep rooted pride that prevents her from expressing her

pain. She fights shy of being made to appear weak and

[ 192 ]

small not only in the eyes of others but also in her own. No

one could ever make out her true feelings for she never let

them show on her face. This apparently stoic stand had

helped her to tide over that bleak phase of her life which

was lacking in composition and harmony. But intense

feelings cannot long remain suppressed they are bound to

erupt when the heart can bear the strain no longer. Nanda

began to feel the strain of her dual existence in which there

was a vast difference between what she actually felt and

what she was required to put on before others. It weighed

heavily upon her mind, for she could never find an

opportunity to give vent to her pain and get it out of her

system. For a long time she had suppressed her emotions

and this accumulated misery, made her long for a desire to

be her true self, to lead the type of life she had wanted and

prepared for all her life.

Widowhood brings to her a promise of freedom for

it enables her to lead a life of sufficient privacy, to be her

true self and escape the bondage of relationships and

associations that had stifled her. Here Stephen Wall has

rightly commented:

She moves to Carignano for a life of privacy, seclusion and isolation, in a desperate search for her selfhood

[ 193 ]

and away from familiar restraints.18

In her self-sacrifice, hostility and final isolation

Nanda Kaul serves as an excellent model of a neurotic. But

at the same time it is equally significant to note that her

seclusion is important for her because it means the

restoration of selfhood and identity. Carignano, with its

scenic beauty helps her to pick up the threads of her life

and be at peace with herself. She begins to experience the

bell and calm after the storm. Now she feels that no one

can betray her or back-slab her because she has built a

wall of seclusion and security around her.

Nanda Kaul can't be accused of escapism in her

decision to live a secluded life at Carignano for she had

gone there only after fulfilling all her duties. She had stood

by her husband inspite of his infidelity, had never let him

down before his guest and had brought up her children to

be busy and responsible. Now that they no longer needed

her, she was free to enjoy her well earned seclusion in

peace. In this respect Nanda Kaul is different from the

other women characters of Anita Desai, especially Sita in

Where Shall We Go This Summer? Sita had come to the

island of Manori, away from her children and husband who

was reasonable and sensible. She had escaped from her

[ 194 ]

duties and responsibilities. On the other hand, Nanda

Kaul's arrival at Carignano does not harm anyone else it

was beneficial for herself. Nanda Kaul is the only great-

grandmother created by the novelist. She has suffered the

agony of being a neglected house her husband loved

another woman. As P.D. Dubey has remarked:

Her husband did not love her as a wife. He treated her as some decorative yet useful mechanical appliance needed for the efficient running of his

household.19

Nanda's agony is suppressed, but only in silence, as

compared to Maya and Sita who are demonstrative and

tend to be melodramatic every now and then.

Carignano helps Nanda Kaul tide over her misery.

She has only the minimum necessities and finds solace in

the soothing and paregoric company of the open sky, stars

and the Himalayan air and brooks. She wanted no one and

nothing else because the fullness of life, riches, children

husband, and guests had failed to provide her with

happiness. She had suffered in that fullness and variety,

surging clamoring about her. What pleased her there at

Carignano was its barrenness and emptiness and her

radiantly single life helped her to attain a state of elegant

[ 195 ]

perfection.

In this idyllic solitude, her great grand daughter

Raka's arrival comes to her as an unpleasant intrusion,

since it violates Nanda self imposed isolation. Besides, the

old lady seems instinctively aware of her advancing age and

knows that she will soon have to depart and this knowledge

has makes her excessively possessive about every precious

moment at this place that has become so dear to her. The

arrival of an outsider meant deprivation of what she wished

to preserve so desperately - her privacy; she could not give

vent to her feelings, with the young intruder around. She is

unwilling to accept traditional maternal responsibility once

again because she is fed up with every thing connected with

her past, and wishes to avoid every link with those

memories and these results is willful rejection of the child.

But Nanda Kaul need not have worried; Raka's desire to

preserve her own secrecy and solitude is nearly as strong

as, if not stronger than her great grandmother. As R.S.

Sharma has said:

It is almost metaphysical.20

Nanda finds this tendency in the child inexplicable. She

was expecting her to be a normal, curious and interfering

child but Raka's love for solitude rouses the material

[ 196 ]

instinct which she had been trying to suppress though not

without setting up an internal tension. For while she

consciously refused to accept her great grand child's

responsibility, she couldn't instinctively, help caring. A

conflict ensues between her assumed attitude and her real

concern. But now she experiences a situation which is

oddly parallel to the earlier one. It was the indifference of

her husband and children that had hurt her in the past;

and what hurts her now is Raka's indifference and self-

sufficiency earlier her family had needed her and used her

without caring of her but Raka on the contrary, neither

needed nor cared for her. Her suppressed desire for being

wanted erupts once again, breaks the self protective shield

of her seclusion and makes her pathetically vulnerable in

her old age. Her attempts at creating an imaginary dream

world out of her unhappy past are, for herself and Raka,

merely tranquillizers that have but a temporary potential to

have a soothing effect. In her last days, Nanda comes to

realise that she had failed to attain the happiness she had

so desperately been in search of throughout her long life.

Her death gains in poignancy as she faces that the only

certainty in her life had been the certainty of failure.

Raka's childhood had driven her into a hard core of

solitude and self-sufficiency, rarely to be found in a child of

[ 197 ]

so tender an age. She had been transformed into what she

is partly by her weak physical health and partly by a

similar set of circumstances in early childhood that seem to

afflict the heroines of Anita Desai. Like her grandmother,

Nanda Kaul in Fire on the Mountain, Sita in Where Shall We

Go This Summer? and Maya in Cry, the Peacock, Raka's

young life has also its sordid side crammed into her

memory. Her childhood memories are devoid of fun and

games, the romance of adventure, or any other happy

associations we find no mention of friends or sisters or

brothers with whom she played or shared secrets. The

tension filled life of her parents has a disastrous effect upon

her tender mind. The bed rooms of her infancy were packed

with illness, sadness, drink, medication, milk and tension.

Her withdrawal from society was an expression of her revolt

against the sort of life had led.

Her intense desire for solitude and secrecy becomes

necessary part of herself. So she learns to lead an

independent existence as the young of animals do. She

arrives at Carignano at a time when she has completely

mastered the art of existing without aid sympathy from

anyone else. Nanda Kaul's obvious rejection therefore does

not hurt her.

[ 198 ]

Raka displays involuntary bouts of sentiment and

concern in spite of her defiant utterance - 'I don't care - I

don't care - I don't care for anything'. This utterance is

mere self consolation since it is meant only for her. Her

concern about her mother, though she does not appear to

be very concerned and her pleading with Ram Lal not to hit

the mother and brief flashes into her dark closed self.

Raka's bitterness makes her feel strongly drawn towards

scenes of devastation. Hard acts not pleasant things or

sights, appeal to her. Jackals, snakes, thorny bushes and

insects fascinate her. It is not without reason that the

people at Kasauli finds her behavior absurd and think that

she is eccentric. It is possible that she has turned into what

she is because her own mother suffered from frequent

bouts of nervous breakdowns and may have passed on

some of her disease genetically to her daughter. Whatever

the reason Raka evolves as a pyre-maniac because

whatever is illegitimate, uncompromising and lawless

fascinates her. It appealed to her so much that in a mood

she sets fire to the forest on the mountain. As, P.D. Dubey

rightly says:

Raka's act of setting fire to the forest is symbolic of her revolt against the cruelty and violence rampant our society.21

[ 199 ]

This act of her however comes as a surprise to the

reader. There does not seem enough motivation for Raka to

take this sudden bold step at that particular juncture in

the novel. Moreover, it appears to be a well-planned, and

not an impulsive action of a neurotic child. However, since

the step has been taken, one could justify it as Raka's

giving vent to the fire of her inner anger and frustration by

setting the forest on fire. As Alka Saxena has rightly

commented:

It was the first forest fire Raka had seen. Shivers ran through her zigzag, leaving streams of sweat in their wake. The fire had broken out far away across the valley and they could neither 'smell the burning pine trees nor 'hear' the crackling and hissing. It was like a fire in a dream-silent swift and threatening.22

What is ironical is that neither Raka nor Nanda have been

happy by being unnatural or by behaving abnormally. The

experiences of both have been different but each loss

suffered deprivation and lacks a sense of belonging. What

makes them alike is that each one runs away from the

place and situation which caused her anguish; but the

curious thing about it is that each knows what she is

running away from, but there is no assurance that she will

[ 200 ]

find what she wants at the place she is running to. In this

novel, the difference that Desai makes between the two

characters, Nanda and Raka, is subtle and persuasive. The

lack of communication between the two is an outcome of a

wounded psyche in each case. Nanda's unhappy domestic

experience and the traumatic childhood experience of Raka

have made them both loners. Each tries to hide and conceal

what she needs most i.e. a feeling of security and

fulfillment of love. Nanda's growing concern and

attachment with Raka is suggestive of this need. While

Nanda nurses her illusion and guards her quite life

jealously, Raka is not under the illusion of having achieved

what she wanted, she has only run away from others but

not form her frustrations. In a way both Raka and Nanda

are escapists but the irony lies in the fact that while the

situation has been left behind, the old identity remains.

Nanda's seclusion from society is her sacrifice but since

Raka has nothing that she can sacrifice as she is not

mature enough to sublimate her negative emotions, she

seeks to obtain some relief from the fire within through the

objective correlative of the burning forest, undoubtly a

violent expression of her frustrations.

The question that haunts the reader at the end of

the novel as to whether there is any symbolism behind the

[ 201 ]

Fire on the Mountain has been answered by Desai herself.

Accordingly to her, everyone in the book is living, a life of

illusion and in order to get rid of them, a fire had to be lit

and only the child was pure enough to light it everything

had to be burnt away in order to reduce it to ash and reveal

the truth. It is true that each of the three characters is

living under an illusion. Nanda Kaul's illusion is that she

can do without human company. She is happy here at

Carignano and has ultimately found the peace and calm

she desired throughout her life:

In the last days of her life, self realization and honesty forced the bitter truth upon them, a fire had to be lit and only the child was pure enough to light it. Everything had to be burnt away in order to reduce it to ash and reveal the truth.23

The truth had dawned upon Nanda Kaul much before the

fire but Ila Das remains ignorant because she was brutally

murdered, much before the forest was set on fire. Both

these women are dead when Raka comes out with her

confusion. The question of the truth being revealed

therefore does not arise. There is a great discrepancy

between the author's intension and the real situation -

what she set out to do, what she has done and what she

thinks she has done. Desai herself seems to feel the same

[ 202 ]

way and it appears to be Desai's own illusion finally.

The third part of the novel, entitled 'Ila Das' deals

almost exclusively with Ila Das life. She is an object of

admiration as well as pity for even though she has to face

are disaster after another, it does not weaken her will out of

all the women created by Anita Desai, she is the only one

who possesses the right attitude towards life, that is, to

enjoy life as it comes and bravely, meet it face to face.

Nature had not endowed her with any of those

qualities which a woman normally desires. Her voice for one

was hardly feminine lit alone melodious. Throughout her

life Ila had felt humiliated in society because of this

drawback. She reminds us of Dorin Kilman in Virgina

Woolf's. Mrs. Dalloway for like Dorin Kalman, Ila Das's over

appearance is such that she becomes an object of ridicule.

The taunts and the awareness of her immense short

comings however, cannot break her and she never wallows

in self-pity and is always brimming with excitement. Ila

Das's may even be considered as paradigms reflecting the

problems and conditions of Indian women in general.

Malashree Lal feels that:

Through Ila Das, Anita Desai has encapsulated the history of a recognizable feminist position.24

[ 203 ]

The author exposes the tendency of partiality towards male

children as against the female ones, an unworthy son is

considered more precious than a worthy daughter in the

Indian society. Ila Das is a victim of the same gender bias.

In her family the sons were sent to foreign universities

where all they learnt was to drink them ill, to find the

nearest race course and squander their allowance on

horses that never won. The three sons inherited the family

income often their father's death whereas the daughter's

who were hardworking got nothing'. Ila Das and her sister,

though born in a rich family and accustomed to gracious

and luxurious living, are required to toil for their own

livelihood. Along with this issue, Anita Desai also shows her

awareness of the lack of proper education among women.

Ila had not been given proper education and it was Nanda's

husband who had given her the job of a home-science

teacher.

Desai has also deal with the issue of child marriage

and the existence of male domination, especially in villages

in this novel. Ila Das's tragedy indicates how deep rooted

these evils are in the country and how difficult it is to

uproot them. Her fight for the cause of women proved fatal

to her for her protest against the bartering of a seven year

[ 204 ]

old girl provoked the father of the girl to such a fury that he

raped Ila and killed her. Ironically, Ila Das, who wanted to

save other woman, could not save her own self.

It would be wrong however, to assume that Ila Das

has been created by Desai only in order to focus attention

upon the plight of Indian women. Her emotions have also

been discussed but Ila has no one to blame for it is indeed

difficult for an old woman to make both ends meet all by

herself, especially with little money in hand. Even old age

fails to pierce through her iron will power. She does not

become irritable bad tempered for she has a marvellous

capacity for not only hiding that she has something to hide.

She appears so pathetic and frail that Nanda feels

protective towards her and is almost on the verge of inviting

her to come and stay with her at Carignano.

The end of Ila Das is undoubtedly tragic, but it is

certainly a blessing in disguise, in so for as it frees her from

the suffering which she would have had to endure, she

lived and grown older and had to struggle for existence.

Malashree Lal's views that:

The novel is a fictional rendering of feminist attitude in India.25

It is not entirely correct. Both Nanda Kaul and Ila Das

[ 205 ]

represent the older generation of women who, though

conscious of their social constraints, lack assertiveness.

Nanda Kaul calmly accepts the role set by society for a

woman to play, first as a daughter, then as a wife and

mother. She can never break through the shackles of

conventions and passes the major part of her life living for

others. In her case, autonomy is desired, but never

achieved till the dusk of life and then too, without

fulfillment. There is not any mention of her desire to step

out of her home and assert her individuality in the world.

In the first place, Nanda Kaul can not be a called for

feminist. She does not protest against her husband when

she is deprived of her basic rights as his wife. Her protest is

very mild and it only comes after her husband's death, so it

can hardly be called a protest. She cannot be called a

feminist because despite her desire for autonomy, she does

not try to achieve it and lives through out like any other

tradition-on-bound woman. Again to call Raka a feminist

would be misreading the novel altogether. But Raka is a

sickly child, frustrated and bewildered, and there is no

assertion of self-hood or identity. She protests, not for the

feminist cause, but for her own. Ila Das is the only one who

can be called a feminist to some extent: She speaks up for

the cause of a woman and she lives in an illusion of

[ 206 ]

happiness, an illusion that keeps her alive; but once she

realizes the reality, she is broken up and dies soon after.

Raka lives in an illusion that she needs no human company

but her own, and can live life as animals do without any

bonds of affection and concern. But she too, is vulnerable

and runs to Nanda Kaul, whom she had so far ignored and

treated as non-existent, in the hope of gaining appreciation

from her for setting the forest on fire for she somehow feels

that what she has done might meet with Nanda's approval

and she needs comfort, for she is scared her coming home

and addressing Nanda as 'Nani' and confessing her deed to

her. Betrays her need for comfort and love; precisely the

things that Nanda has needed in her life. What makes the

story tragic is the fact that Nanda Kaul dies at a juncture

when both have had their illusions broken, both realize

how great their need for comfort and love is, and with this

realization, might have henceforth led a happy existence in

each others company; Ila Das was under the illusion that

she could transform society and purge it of its evils, but she

is the one who dies before she gets disillusioned.

There is, however, a discrepancy in the second half

of Desai's statement when she protests against child

marriage, dowry etc. and feels that a woman can be

economically independent and live without the support of a

[ 207 ]

male. But she too lacks assertiveness. It is ironical that she

should stand up for the cause of others but not for herself,

for though she tries to defend herself from the cruelties of

society. Fire on the Mountain is, therefore, not a referring of

feminist attitudes in India but the way in which three

women look at life and deal with its problem, each in her

own way.

Clear Light Of Day (1980) begins with the following

quotation from T.S. Eliot and sums up the hidden message

of the narrative:

See, now they vanish,

The faces and places, with the self which as it could, loved them,

To become renewed, transfigured,

in another pattern.26

The clear bright light of the cosmic day pierces

through the darkness of doubt, misunderstanding,

psychological concerns and apprehensions, and finally

leads to the inner brightness of mind and soul. The central

theme of the novel unfolds a constant struggle between the

inner reality of the dominant self and the outer reality of

hard facts and failures. But in the end, the protagonist

realizes the togetherness not isolation: love, understanding,

acceptance, not bitterness and hatred; sublime faith and

[ 208 ]

eternal hope for a better morrow, not despair and

withdrawal; are the truly charitable human values. The

smoothing balm of time heals all the wounds of dejection

and failure howsoever deep the scars may be. The timely

purgation of emotions leads only to the happy cheerful faith

in the wholeness and perfection of love.

In this novel, the central conflict has been

portrayed through the major protagonist of the novel Bim

(Bimla). The outside influence of the harmony of sweet

musical notes in the beginning of the novel through

cuckoo's call, and finally that of the old guru's recital

further help in surging out the seraphic love of Bim's

affections and attachments with which she embraces all

her brothers and sister together.

The novel is a study of feminine psyche and it

illustrates the emotional reactions of the two main

characters, Bim and her younger Sister Tara. Bim is the

central character of the novel. As Ramesh Kumar Gupta

has remarked:

Clear Light of Day is chosen to evince and examine the wide space that divides the two types of women hailing from the

same family the women who do not act but surrender and so keep the tradition alive and next, the women who

[ 209 ]

choose not to surrender and be weak but break the convention to face their situation and take up a new road where

no one can dictate to them.27

Clear Light of Day, the novel by Anita Desai, has

been her most successful novel with the public. Sunil Sethi

finds in it:

The quantity of Bergman movie or a Tantric rite interpreted in terms of everyday life.28

This novel envisages a change in Desai's psychological

mood evident in her earlier novels. For the first time, the

novelist dwells upon an existentialist theme of time in

relation to eternity, hitherto unexplored in Indo-Anglian

fiction. Meenakshi Mukherjee points out that"

The change is towards a widening out of human concerns and a willingness to integrate concrete historical and specific cultural dimensions in the creation of interior landscapes.29

In an interview with Yashodhara Dalmia the novelist

remarked:

One's preoccupation can only be a

perpetual search for meaning for value, for truth. I think of the world as an iceberg . . . the one-tenth visible above the surface of the water is what we call

[ 210 ]

reality, but the nineteenths that is submerged makes up the truth, and that is what one is trying to explore.

Writing is an effort to discover and then to underline, and finally to convey the true significance of things.30

In this novel, Mrs. Desai tries to discover the true

significance of things in life. In her earlier novels she

had deal with different existentialist themes like

quest, estrangement, isolation, rootlessness, lack of

communication and helplessness etc. Her chief concern

had been existentialism that basically considers the

enduring human condition in relation to the unchanging

human destiny. She has given an admirable treatment of

time as a fourth dimension, depicting emotional turmoil in

the main protagonist. Explaining the theme of the novel,

Anita Desai states:

My novel is set in old Delhi and records the tremendous changes that a Hindu family goes through since 1947.

Basically my pre-occupation was with recording the passage of time. I was trying to write a four dimensional piece on how a family moves backwards and forwards in a period of time. My novel

is about time as a destroyer, as a preserver and about what the bondage of time does to people. I have tried to tunnel under the mundane surface of domesticity.31

[ 211 ]

Desai seems to have asked her readers to read the

novel in the perspective of time but the philosophy of time

that the novel expounds is larger than mere chronology or

history or temporality. Though localized in Delhi since

1947, the novel touches upon aspects of life that are

universal. The novelist seems to be more interested in

discovering the final patterns of meaning that come out of

the apparent meaninglessness of life in a small family than

in mere chronology.

The novel revolves around two brothers, Raja and

Baba, and two sisters Bim and Tara, who grow up in old

Delhi. They are threatened and made xenophobic by their

inability, to cognize the deep connection with one another

hidden under the apparent divergences and differences. In

their quest for individual destiny they come to the loss of a

wider-based, socially integrated deep - rootedness. The look

back at their past in anger, guilt and crave for a recovery of

a sense of wholeness and closeness that they seem to have

lost.

The study begins with the return of Tara, the

younger sister, with her husband, Bakul, a foreign

executive, to attend the marriage of Raja's daughter in

Hyderabad. First, they visit their old Delhi house where

[ 212 ]

only Baba, the younger brother and Bim, the elder sister

are living. Tara is engulfed by the disturbing memories of

her childhood and the atmosphere of surrealistic states

that the old house produces, "Years of westernized and

antiseptic living in different capital cities have not exercised

these ghosts from a vividly remembered past from Tara's

mind."27 she goes back into the darkest depth of the past

together with her sister Bim. Together they wade across the

sea of anger, guilt, fear and remorse.

Tara is a highly sensitive and extremely imaginative

woman whose flights of fancy are kept somewhat in check

by Bakul, her assertive husband and by the presence of her

two almost grown up daughters. But Tara is not at piece

with herself. She comes to the old decaying house, trying to

exercise the ghosts of her childhood and adolescence. The

past bears down on her with the intensity of a half-

remembered dream and she tries to go down memory's lane

to connect the past with the present, to inter-relate the

changes, distortions and revelations that the two realities

bring.

The house is decaying slowly and so are its

inhabitants. In all these years that Tara has been away

from her old house and has a family of her own, Bim, the

[ 213 ]

brilliant but eccentric sister has became a school teacher,

and Baba, an elf-like but imbecile younger brother have

never left the house. The house is like a tomb in the great

cemetery of Delhi which does not change or rejuvenate

itself. Images of decay and destruction assault Tara's

consciousness constantly as she watches her sister and her

retarded brother. Her sister is graying, bitter, grappling

with dull students her brother is smooth, silent, white,

locked in his lunatic world constantly listening to the

records of the forties.

Reminiscences continue to invade Tara's mind. She

recalls the old well where a cow had drowned and remained

unsalvaged, the picnic in the Lodhi Garden where Bim was

attached by the bees while she herself escaped. She also

remembers her father injecting insulin into her mother's

arm making her feel that he is murdering her. Her

nightmarish vision of the insane aunt tearing her clothes in

alcoholic frenzy comes back to her mind. She revives the

memory of Raja, her elder brother so full of promise, yet

languishing in bed sick with tuberculosis. The decadent

pomp of Hyder Ali Benazir and the collusion of Raja and

Bim against her as well as her insufferable sense of

isolation at home and at school constantly invade her mind.

[ 214 ]

When Tara becomes mature, she chooses to be a

wife and mother and gets marries and goes abroad with her

husband. She is the only one among her brothers and

sisters, who escapes the pall of decay and death that the

old house thrusts on all. Bim, exposed to the world of

knowledge, imbibes the heroic idealism of Joan of Arc.

Whereas Tara discovers a world of tenderness and love in

her adolescent infatuation with her teacher and she prefers

to hide under Aunt Mira's quilt or behind shrubs in the

garden rather than doing anything constructive.

Tara was not happy during her schooldays. Apart

from an unhappy childhood, her schooldays were also dull

and dreary, blighting all the prospects of comfort and

security that she so earnestly longed for. She became a

complete pessimist think that these grey wretched days

would stretch on forever blighting her life with their

creeping mildew. Tara's life was full of anxiety and

helplessness and she became timid and shy developed a

fear psychosis which made her a weak individual. She was

conscious of the fact that she had abandoned Bim, not

because of spite or retaliation but because of fear. While

Bim stood firmly against marriage, Tara provided a contrast

to Bim's fierce independence, hedged in as she is, by her

fear and insecurity.

[ 215 ]

For many years Tara passed through tremendous

mental torture and guilt for having abandoned Bim and her

mentally retarded brother. When she wanted to ask her

forgiveness for her running away from the bees that

swarmed around them in Lodhi Garden, leaving Bim to

their mercy, it is symbolic of her asking for forgiveness for

the greater abandonment of Bim forever. She feels guilty of

breaking out, seeking fulfillment elsewhere while Bim

stagnates and Raja too abdicates responsibility running

away to Hyderabad with Benazir.

The two sisters are poles apart so far as their ways

and aims of life are concerned. This difference in them is

the outcome of their tendency to live either by reason or

emotion and imagination and is reflected the types of books

they liked reading Tara enjoyed listening to the fairy tales

narrated by Aunt Mira and being an incurable romantic,

she believed firmly in the possibility of coming upon a

treasure or at least a pearl in the shells she picked up in

their garden. She was happy to reading romantic novels

specially Gone with Wind and was happy to be dominated

by her husband Bakul who had preferred her to Bim

because of her gentle and soft nature. Although Bakul

admired Bim's sharp mind and strong domineering

personality he chose Tara to be his wife who would be more

[ 216 ]

gentle and easily manageable. Tara had read romances and

in reading them she had been dragged helplessly into the

underworld of semi-consciousness of the romances while

Bim felt irritated and tossed them aside dissatisfaction.

Bim's sharp mind did not give in an easily to

romance and romantic feelings instead she developed a

liking for reading history and chronology. Her interest in

history grows and she begins reading. Gibbon's Decline and

Fall in search of knowledge. As she realizes the mediocrity

of her brother's compositions she cringes at a kind of heavy

sentimentality of expression that was alien to her. She

becomes conscious of her inability to give in to excessive

emotions. Raja also realizes this development in her and

admires her intellectual interest for he is not at all unaware

of his inability to accomplish something.

In order to have a psychological perspective of the

novel and particularly of the protagonist Bim, it would be

fruitful to look at the formative influences that affect Bim's

psyche. Raja, Bim, Tara and Baba all have a home, a family

but their parents are so engrossed in their Rashanara club

and cards that there is a wide communication-gap between

the children and the parents and they turn to Mira Masi for

love. Raja and Bim do not appear to be in need of a mother,

[ 217 ]

too busy as they are in their hectic outdoor activities. But

her presence is there, and they could turned to her

whenever need be. She acts as a saviour for Tara who

clings to her for protection against the elder brothers and

sisters much of the emotional crisis is warded off just

because Mira Masi, a good mother is there. Baba, the

retarded child, gets emotional security and Tara, the

weakest of the three, changes from the protective love of her

aunt to that of Bakul and is happy with her life. the

atmosphere of home affects Raja and he turns into an

escapist, a self centered dreamy romantic, shrugs off all

responsibilities like the parents, and settles down to an

ordinary life. It is Bim, an avid a reader of Eliot, Byron,

Swin burn shifts between past memories and present

realities, vacillates between her self alienating forces and

her strength of spirit and mind. How she emerges out of

these is the question.

Bim's awareness and mental alertness are revealed

in her decision not to enter in to a marriage with a person

like Dr. Biswas. A well-off officer like him, particularly for a

young girl in Bim's situation could be a romantic

experience. She could have responded positively to the

doctor's courting, but she decides to decline it. At first, she

is swayed yet she at once realizes that he is not a man

[ 218 ]

made for her. Mr. Biswas understands why Bim is not

willing to marry him. She has dedicated her life to others;

to her sick brother and her aged aunt who will be

dependent on her for the rest of her life. Bim feels hurt at

being so grossly misjudged by Dr. Biswas; she reacts

vehemently, presses her hands together, as if to break

something, but soon drowns her rage and frustration with

laughter. Her struggle to close all doors on the past and run

away from conflict commences with this breaking up of self

image.

Living in the house where she was born, teaching

in the college where she was taught, Bim, unlike all others,

is not a highly strung and neurotic creature tormented by

the uncertainties of the past and present. Memories of the

past haunt her and as she goes about picking the pieces of

the past and connecting them with the present, the house

seems drenched in a deceptive calm. Yet underneath the

polite murmurings, unspoken demands and exchanged

glances; underneath this dull routine and domestic

placidity, the imponderables remain. Hints of incest,

unguarded recriminations and private traumas do not

provide answers to Bim's tormented vision and thus she

remains isolated from her brothers and sisters. Her

separation from her brothers and sisters gives her a sense

[ 219 ]

of incompleteness, of being unfulfilled and slowly

disintegrating. She loses her sense of coordination within

herself and with others and feels isolated and unwanted.

She even rejects Tara's and Raja's gestures of love and

affection, for she feels that she is somewhat different from

others.

But there is other side of the picture too. Bim, in

her childhood, had been Raja's companion in his robust

boyish activities. She was ambitious enough to see herself

in the image of a heroine. In their childhood game of

questions, the inevitable answer to what she would be

when she grew up was always that she would become a

heroine. The traces of these qualities are still present in

her. She displays her sincere urge to be independent, to do

something. The sincerity of her determination has the seed

of self actualizing tendencies; but her aggressiveness

changes, imperceptibly, into a glorified image. Bim's

glorified self image thus is that of heroic figure who can

achieve something in life. Earnest endeavour to be really

great like others indicates growth but trouble arises when

instead of the real self the idealized self-image is upheld.

Here, it is important to have a glimpse of their home by

atmosphere, the mounting dissatisfaction in their family,

the growing adolescents Tara and Bim becoming infected

[ 220 ]

with some of Raja's restlessness.

Raja married with Benazir, the daughter of his long

cherished hero, Hyder Ali Sahib, and went away to settle

down in Hyderabad. Here Usha Rani has remarked:

He changed his role from a brother to a landlord and had the guts to write to Bim that, she could keep on paying the same sent as before.32

The tone and meaning of the letter deeply stabbed her soul.

He too never looked back. Bim found it very hard to

reconcile with this harsh reality. The thought of the

insulting letter haunted her mind constantly and she failed

to understand the real intention of Raja.

Raja achieves his goal by second-hand means by

betraying Bim; Bim stuck as she is with her abnormal

brother, Baba is entangled, feels lost and also inferior to

Raja and Tara who attained what they aspired for Bim is

not jealous but the futility of her desires torments her. Her

main tendency is to grasp power and glory. Triumph for her

means to be at par with Raja to wear his clothes to puff his

cigarettes secretly, to fly kits with him are some of her

passions in the field of physical activities. In the intellectual

arena their paths diverge as they grow up. Boy's books like

Robin Hood etc. that set Raja's imagination ablaze, have no

[ 221 ]

fascination for her, nor can she enjoy the light romances

dragging her into the underworld of semi-consciousness,

like Tara. Bim cultivates a higher taste in her reading. She

reads Bibbor's Decline and Fall and this enkindles in Raja a

sense of applause, admiration and awe for her intellectual

depth. But apparently he ridicules her for her lack of

imagination which hurts and puzzles Bim and this

naturally creates a gap between them. Bim resents

marriage of Raja with the neighbour's daughter, Benzir,

and moving to Hyderabad away from her. She too wishes to

be independent like him and is left, behind, lonely in the

house engulfed with bitterness with Raja and Tara, who she

thinks, have broken apart from their childhood closeness

and become very different. She feels rejected, deserted and

needs a renewed sense of self-justification. Reacting

violently when Raja leaves, she tends to exaggerate Raja's

action and feels that he is too rich, too fat, too successful to

be an interesting anymore. Bim succeeds in presenting an

exaggerated view of her suffering and realizes that:

somewhere deep down this frustration lies the under-

current of fear of being left alone.

Over the years her memory had tricked her into

thinking that Raja was a hero, but she now realizes that a

spokesman of Mughal decadence in the crumbling old

[ 222 ]

Delhi. She discovers that he was just mouthing Byron and

Swinburne and Iqbal in a fever of vain romanticism without

any belief in them; he was a mere imitation, not an original

poet. Being merely repetitive, too weak to confront reality,

he had run away, abdicating all responsibility. Part of the

debris accumulated form the past is now cleared up by Bim

as her new awareness, her self-knowledge, crumbles and

discards the false romantic image she had built up of Raja.

Raja would not matter to her any more. His poems were

really derivative because on each of them she could clearly

see the influence of the poets he loved and copied. There

was no image, no metaphor, no turn of phrase that was

original. Each was a meticulous imitation of what he had

read, memorized and recited. He had made no effort to

break the iron rings of clinches, he had seemed content to

link them, ring to ring, he had not, it seemed, really set out

to startle by originality, to burst upon the literary world as

a new star, fresh and vivid. One could see in them only a

wish to emulate and to step where his heroes had stepped

before him. This destruction of the heroic image of Raja

makes Bim aware that she is not a heroine either. The

fictitious image of self, she had guarded so well, dissolves is

the process and the emergence of a new self provides an

opportunity and a scale to re-evaluate and re-judge her.

[ 223 ]

Her new awareness does not mean that she is out

of the wood yet. Her personality achieves continuity in time

as she develops an ability to integrate the past and the

future. The past is irrevocable and memories cannot be

wiped out. Individual personality is made up of memories,

habits and reactions. The past is to be digested, so that it

assimilates with the personality and does not remain alien

to it. Against the metaphors of decay the crumbling old

house, the decaying old city, the conflicts of the post-

independence era she has to work her way out through the

tapestry of jealousy, guilt, loneliness and betrayal. It is to

her credit that she tries, repeatedly to clear herself of the

debris from the past to organize herself into some sort of

order, life and happiness. Her ordinary working life, her

routine of teaching at college is of great help in maintaining

her sanity, her spirit and her profession helps her to be a

whole, sane being against all odd. She used to long for the

college to re-open so that by following a time-table, she

would be able to end the storm of emotion in which she had

been dragged back and forth all summer as in a vast, warm

ocean, and return to what she did best, most efficiently,

with least expense of spirit.

Bim's psychic movement from self isolation to self

awareness is the journey of self temporarily befogged by

[ 224 ]

compulsive drives. Some critics are of the view that Bim's

transformation from sickness to health is not convincing.

Growth is a continuous process, and the real self of man is

not completely obliterated. It is always present and strives

to come up at the slightest opportunity. Bim's character, all

through the novel, shows some positive qualities but her

circumstances and her inability to see what she really

wants from life, impede her growth and diffuse her

energies. Slowly as the narrative unfolds, we observe her

renovated vision. She attains internal freedom; and is

liberated from her twisted vision and confused values. By

forging unity into the diverse fragments of her world into a

unified whole Bim achieves wholeness and when she is able

to establish a viable contact with her surroundings and her

siblings.

Bim's realization of her relations with her self is

related to her experience of music in the last part of the

novel. In the music programme organised by Mishra's we

find her realization widening into a broader awareness of

time, culture and society. Bim and Baba attend the

programme, after Tara, Bakul and their daughter have left

for attending the wedding of Raja's daughter at Hyderabad.

Bim has conveyed through, Tara her desire to make peace

with Raja and invited him to the house in Delhi. In the

[ 225 ]

evening at the Mishra's house she finds a carefully planned

and executed programme. The individual's skill in singing

becomes and occasion of social relationship. The

programme is also a group activity - Mulk, his Guru, the

accompanist together create an atmosphere of harmony. A

relaxed, congenial and friendly atmosphere prevails, with

all the persons sharing and belonging to a cultured society.

Traditions of music, musical programmes are observed, and

congenial individual-society relations are seen here. The

aspirations of the individual, the singer's search for his own

right combination of notes and melody, more in harmony

with the old traditional form which moulds and renews

itself from an age to age. The evening audience and singers

all together form a congenial whole, like a design on a

tapestry, forming that composed absorbed group before

them. While listening to the song of Mulk's Guru, whose

voice was sharp and cracked by the bitterness of his

experience, the sadness, passion and frustration, Bim is

reminded of T.S. Eliot's Four Quarters in which time is the

destroyer as well as the preserver and looks through her

own inner life, her own house and its particular history

and, analyzing herself, establishes identification of the

inner and the outer worlds. Her despair and loneliness are

thus given a spiritual dimension in the novel.

[ 226 ]

Thus, in Bim Mrs. Desai studies the intelligent

woman's psyche, the woman who is aware of her

potentialities and sense of direction. She is aware of the

incompatible sex roles inflicted upon women by the

male dominated society, of threats to feminine identity.

Burdened with heavy responsibilities, she is pinned down

to narrow worlds of immobility and insecurity. In a society

where no room is made for woman's sensibility or

individuality, where every attempt at asserting her feminity

and individuality leads her to being called neurotic, where

her male counterpart invariably fails in his traditional

masculine role, the woman is made to feel like a frail bark

upon the waters of life. Yet, there is hope in women like

Bim, who have the courage to withstand the onslaughts of

time and society, who lead their lives on their own terms,

who ask for the deeper morality of intelligent beings, who

struggle for the loyalties of sensitive human sensitiveness.

As Ramesh Gupta has said:

Bim is fairly representative of a

new woman of contemporary Indian urban woman-single, independent, self assured. At a superficial level, such women may be seen as westernized.33

Bim's younger brother Baba, whose problems are

slightly different, is a lively and an innocent figure. Lack of

[ 227 ]

ability to conceptualize and communicate forces place, a

vacuum of silence upon him and he fills it with the sounds

of gramophone records of the 1940s, refusing to change the

familiar instrument and records by the latest music system

brought for him as a gift by Raja. Forced to live on the

periphery of the lives of others, he creates her society in the

sounds that he can control and regulate. His withdrawal

from the world, his silence, and his undemanding existence

give him an aura of other worldliness. Both Bim and Tara

think of his lack of worldly concern and it becomes a test of

their sensitivity and perceptivity when they insist on his

going to the office and trying to learn to work, he at first

ignores them by his reticence. But as the pressure of their

will increases, he leaves the house in a state of acute

tension and fear, and the sight of a man cruelly beating his

horse sends him rushing back. In his room the

gramophone has been put off, and Baba feels threatened by

the overwhelming silence. When Tara comes to his room it

rings with her voice, then with her silence and in the

shaded darkness, silence has the quality of a looming

dragon. Even Tara senses the oppressive silence in the

room and wonders, whether it was to keep his silence at

boy that Baba played his records endlessly. Change and

growth frighten Baba where ability to understand other and

[ 228 ]

comprehend abstract concept is severely limited. For him,

time is at a standstill, and any indications of change

disturb him. His routine life is governed by the circular

motion of the gramophone records and as he changes the

needle of the gramophone, he feels defeated and infinitely

depressed. This fondness for music is limited to the music

of 1940's for he has no liking for contemporary music and

is also unable to respond to the musical notes of the

various birds calling out in their garden. Not only do these

other sounds arouse his interest, he finds comfort and

consolation only in the mechanical music.

Mira Masi has been portrayed as the traditional

picture of an unwanted widow who leads a life of drudgery

till her death for her husband's family or for relatives. Since

Mr. & Mrs. Das have no time to look after their children,

she is brought to Das family where she plays the genuine

role of a mother and identifies herself with the family

interest. She feels protective towards her children and her

charming, self denying, affectionate personality represents

the traditional Indian woman working and suffering for

others.

Mrs. Das, the mother of the family suffers from

diabetes and does not enjoy good health. Her physical

[ 229 ]

ailments make her husband devote most of his time to

entertain her at a game of cards and in the club. She is

conscious of her duties towards her husband but, husband

and wife are so absorbed in each other that they find little

time for the children and the family. They live for each

other and die almost together. The only bright aspect of

their character is their deep concern for their imbecile son,

Baba for whom Mr. Das leaves some money after his death.

Bakul, the humorous character, is an excellent

specimen of Mrs. Desai's character portrayal. He leads a

formalized ritualistically perfect routine of a life and makes

his wife yield to his will and system. The daughters of Tara

and Bakul are charming young girls who introduce some

liveliness even in the dull and dreary routine of Baba's life.

Hyder Ali whose house is frequented by poets and

Muslim advocates, is another character with mentioning in

the novel. He arouses Raja's respect and emulation and

Raja is drawn towards Benazir, Hyder's pampered only

child who is presented in the novel only as a phantom and

so is her son Riaz. Other minor characters and servants

impart liveliness to the novel. Portraits of Mishra, sister,

brothers and the old father add to the diversity and

richness of human portraits in the book. Dr. Biswas and

[ 230 ]

his mother are excellent creations.

The central psychic conflict is portrayed through

the major protagonist of the novel, Bim, who has to

undergo so many tensions, tortures and mental agonies.

But she finally emerges not only as a triumphant

personality but also becomes personification of the time

eternal. She is symbolic of the time past, the time present

and the time future, all meeting at one point.

The novel, a sweet bitter story of a family reunion

moves from the past to the present and from present to the

past. The canvas is vast and the novelist's presents a larger

number of characters than she has done ever before. Her

delineation of characters is marked with detachment and

insight. Several points of view of different characters have

been successfully portrayed by the universal observer

technique which Mrs. Desai adopts in this novel, as it

dynamically suits her purpose. Accounts of past events

with their present reactions are excellently depicted.

Clear Light of Day is by far the most affirmative of

Anita Desai's novels. There is anger and bitterness but

there is also an attempt to reconcile and accommodate.

Unlike other female protagonists of Anita Desai, Bim is

symbolic of forces that have sustained the foundation of all

[ 231 ]

family life. She is symbolic of the sustaining mother who

denies herself so that her children can lead better lives.

When her mother fails to fulfill her duties, Bim steps into

her shoes and takes over the role of the mother. Bim not

only sustains the family but also the house and this is

suggestive of an acceptance of traditional values. But the

greatness of Bim lies in the fact that she is symbolic of the

new woman in her desire to dress like a man smoking and

opting out of matrimony to pursue a career of her own, with

the ability to accept what life has to offer her gracefully.

It appears reasonable to conclude from Bim's

personal and professional interest in history that she finds

in it a much needed feeling of stability, of continuity,

concomitant with change. Her interest in poetry likewise

reflects her inner experience of life's transitoriness and

uncertainty and these intellectual and imaginative interests

are her means of contemplating and dwelling in a more

satisfying world.

Of all her works, Clear Light of Day is undoubtedly

Desai's most genuinely feminine work in the sense that it

presents exclusively a woman's point of view and her ways

of tackling the problems of life and struggling for freedom.

The novels written by the other two women writers chosen

[ 232 ]

in this study do not present this intellectual or spiritual

crisis of a woman. Bim's line of thinking may not be

acceptable to the modern mind nevertheless she does have

a mind of her own. This is a positive virtue, which many

other women lack.

The fact is that among all the women protagonists

in Desai's novels, Bim stands apart with her unique and

extraordinary capacity to brave and cope with the suffering,

the failures and the pains. In a way she is the combination

of Maya, Sita, Nanda and Sarah, yet she is much more than

all of them together.

Her inner courage and strength, her real self,

surpasses them all and she emerges triumphant with a

divine love and affection. Inspite of all dejections and

disappointments, Bim embraces her brothers and sister in

all their totality. She is also unique the way she cheerfully

accepts the truth of life in all its shades and there in lies

the real beauty of her existence. Bim's realization of the

meaning of life through love is also expressive of the time's

healthy effect on one's psychic health.

*****

[ 233 ]

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Rani, Usha. Psychological Conflict in the Fiction of

Anita Desai, Abhishek Public-ation Chandigarh,

2006, p. 15.

2. Desai, Anita. "The Book I Enjoyed Writing Most",

Contemporary Indian Literature, XIII, No. 4, Oct.-Dec.

1973, p. 24.

3. Ram Atma."Anita Desai: The Novelist who writes For

Herself", An Interviewed by Atma Ram. The Journal of

Indian Writing in English. Vol. 5 No. 2, July 1977,

p. 31.

4. Barke, G.D. "A Study of Alienation in Bye-Bye

Blackbird and The Strange Case of Billy Biswas"

Critical Essays on Anita Desai's Fiction. Ed.

Jaydipsingh Dodiya Pub. IVY. Publishing House, New

Delhi, 2000, p. 93.

5. Desai, Anita. Bye-Bye Blackbird, pub. Orient

Paperbacks, Delhi, 1985, p. 32.

6. Ibid., p. 72.

7. Toffler, Alwin. Future Shock, London, The Bodlehead.

1970, p. 13.

8. Mukherjee, Meenakshi. "The Theme of Displacement

In Anita Desai And Kamla Markandaya", World

Literature Written In English, 17, No. 1, April 1978,

pp. 225-33.

9. Barke, G.D. "A Study of Alienation in Bye-Bye

Blackbird And The Strange Case of Billy Biswas",

[ 234 ]

Critical Essays on Anita Desai's Fiction, ed.

Jaydipsingh Dodiya Pub. IVY, Publishing House,

Delhi, 2000, p. 97.

10. Manawat, B. Dushyant. "Ethnic Love - Hate Relation-

ship in Bye-Bye Blackbird". Critical Essays on Anita

Desai's Fiction, ed. Jaydipsingh Dodiya, pub. IVY,

Publishing House, New Delhi, 2000, p. 93.

11. Desai, Anita. Flight of Form, India International

Centre Quarterly, Vol. 10. No. 4, D., 1982.

12. Mukherjee, Meenakshi. "The Theme of Displacement

in Anita Desai And Kamla Markandaya" World

Literature Written in English, No. 1, April 1978,

p. 240.

13. Rani, Usha. Psychological Conflict in the Fiction of

Anita Desai, Abhishek Publication, Chandigarh,

2006, p. 129.

14. Dubbe, P.D. "Feminine Consciousness in Anita

Desai's Fire on the Mountain". Critical Essays on Anita

Desai's Fiction, ed. Jaydipsingh Dodiya Pub. IVY,

Publishing House, New Delhi, 2000, p. 121.

15. Szxena, Alka. "The Impending Tragedy in Fire on the

Mountain". Critical Essays on Anita Desai's Fiction, ed.

Jaydipsingh Dodiya Publ. IVY, Publishing House,

New Delhi, 2000, p. 124.

16. Horney, Karan. The Neurotic Personality of Our Time,

New York: Norton. 1937.

17. Tripathi, J.P. The Mind and Art of Anita Desai,

Bareilly, Prakash Book Depot, 1986, p. 83.

[ 235 ]

18. Wall Stephen. A Neurotic Response To A Failed

Marriage: George Meredith's Modern Love. Mosaic

XVII/1, Winter 1984, p. 51.

19. Dubey, P.D. "Feminine Consciousness in Anita

Desai's Fire on the Mountain", Critical Essays on Anita

Desai's Fiction. ed. Jaydipsingh Dodiya, Pub IVY,

Publishing House, Delhi, 2000, p. 116.

20. Sharma, R.S. Anita Desai Indian Writer Series, Vol.

18, New Delhi, Arnold, Heinemann, 1971.

21. Dubey, P.D. "Feminine Consciousness in Anita

Desai's Fire on the Mountain", Critical Essays on Anita

Desai's Fiction ed. Jaydipsingh Dodiya. Pub. IVY,

Publishing House, Delhi, 2000, p. 121.

22. Saxena, Alka. "The Impending Tragedy in Fire on the

Mountain", Critical Essays on Anita Desai's Fiction ed.

Jaydipsingh Dodiya. Pub. IVY, Publishing House,

Delhi, 2000, p. 127.

23. Desai, Anita. Fire on the Mountain, William

Heinemann, London 1977: Allied Publishers, New

Delhi, 1977.

24. Lal, Malashri. "Anita Desai: Fire on the Mountain",

Major Indian Novels and Evaluations, ed. N.S.

Pradhan, New Delhi, Arnold Heinemann, 1985.

25. Ibid., p. 252.

26. Rani, Usha. Psychological Conflict in the Novels of

Anita Desai, Abhishek Publication, Chandigarh,

2006, p. 203.

27. Gupta, Ramesh Kumar. "The Concept of 'New

[ 236 ]

Woman' in Anita Desai's Clear Light of Day." Critical

Essays On Anita Desai's Fiction ed. Jaydipsingh

Dodiya. Pub. IVY, Publishing House, New Delhi,

2000, p. 153.

28. Sethi, Sunil. "Pieces of the Past: Review of Clear Light

of Day", India Today, S.No. 23, Dec. 1-15, 1980.

29. Mukherjee, Meenakshi. "A Review of Clear Light of

Day", The Hindustan Times, 8th Dec., 1980.

30. Dalmia, Yashodhara. "An Interview with Anita Desai",

The Times of India, 29th April, 1979.

31. Desai, Anita. "The Book I Enjoyed Writing Most",

Contemporary Indian Literature, XIII, 4, 1973.

32. Rani, Usha. Psychological Conflict in the novels of

Anita Desai, Abhishek Publication Chandigarh 2006,

p. 207.

33. Gupta, Ramesh Kumar "The Concept of New Woman

In Anita Desai's Clear Light of Day", Critical Essay on

the Anita Desai's Fiction ed. Jaydipsingh Dodiya Pub.

IVY, Publishing House, New Delhi, 2000, p. 153

*****