[COURSE -12] – (ENG – EL - 304): INDIAN

LITERARUTE IN ENGLISH

TOPICS :– Q1. Quest for Identity in Voices in the

City.
Q2. Significance of the title Voices in the
City written by Anita Desai.

NAME – ANWESHA ADHIKARY

ROLL NO – 20414ENG014
ENROLMENT NO - 393824
CLASS – SEMESTER – III
COURSE – M.A. ENGLISH, DMC
SECTION – A
SESSION – 2020-2021

SUBMITTED TO – PROF. DEEPALI MA’AM

DATED: 18/11/2021

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Q1. Quest for Identity in Voices in the City.
Among the post- independence Indo-English writers Anita Desai holds a
prominent place not because of any inventions in style or technique or treatment of startling
new themes, but because of the immense popularity she commands as a novelist of human
predicament of anxiety, frustration and loneliness in the insensitive and inconsiderate
contemporary world, and because she has given new dimension to the Indo-English
novel by turning from outer to inner reality and by carrying floe of the mental
experience of its characters. As a novelist of high order, she has the deftness to generate
characters that are unique and introverted. The characters in the novels of Anita Desai are the
representatives of self identification who are in quest for their identity. Even though her
major characters are tormented by their fears and phobias as they feel circumscribed
by their frightening conditions of their existence they are not losers but seekers of
meaning and truth. This search for truth or quest for identity gives them a different
dimension, depth and meaning even in a wretched condition of life. Desai is frequently
inspired to peep into the inner recesses of man rather than in the outer spectacle of the world.
Her novel Voices in the City is existential in character, for it explores the inward subjectivity
of its main characters. She adds a new dimension to the genre of Indian fiction in English by
probing the unquestionable existentialism concern of her three most vital characters.

The characters of this novel especially Nirode and his sister Monisha feel
themselves detached from this city. Living in a small, corrugated, tinted and filthy place,
Nirode’s horizon also narrows down and vision gets blurred. His pursuit of higher values in
life constitutes the thematic nucleus of the novel. Freedom is the primary quest of Nirode
for which he is ready to sacrifice everything. He resents his father's inheritance, shifts from
one business to another one. Considering the heavy cost of freedom, he says that
“independence is too damned expensive”. But still he has a positive soul full of admiration
for greatness. His faculty is verified by the amazing play he writes although theatres are unfit
for it. It is only that the society fails to understand his talent. Even though he is
misunderstood, he never gives up his quest for identity. His struggle raises him above the
level of common humanity. He wanders all his life from one rejection to another one, from
failure to the next one to achieve total freedom. He reflects that it is “better to leap out of the
window and end it all instead of smearing this endless sticky glue of senselessness over the
world”. He also confesses that happiness or suffering - he wants to be done with them,
disregard them, and see beyond them to the very end. In order to free himself from bondage
of security he gives up his handsome job and starts editing “Voice” magazine. Then he begins
to write as a free-lance writer. Again he opens a bookshop in a dirty locality. All these are his
attempts to get hold of freedom and wholeness. Success for him is but a mere delusion. For
him “life lived to be a success only follows one success after the other, but eventually has to
bend with the arch and arrive at the bottom”. He lives in a world he creates for himself and
he is by and large all alone. He rejects every outside agency that would obstruct his
freedom of becoming. He is also engaged in an unequal fight against the social and
commercial values of life which the city of Calcutta symbolizes. Nirode’s quest for

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identity and meaning in life leads him to a point where he perceives the worthlessness of
all art.

Married into a traditional Bengali family, the dreamy intellectual Monisha is

driven to suicide by the claustrophobic atmosphere she was engulfed in. On one hand she
longs for privacy because she is unable to share the world of her in-laws who are
materialists to the core and on the other, she is lonely in the midst of her husband’s
family. Her intellectual aspiration is beyond the grasp of the ladies of the household, who
always talk about dowries, saris, babies and jewellery: “Kalyani di throws open my wardrobe
in order to inspect my saris…. The whole wardrobe full of books. To my perplexity, she
laughs…. I see that of course she cannot know that there is nothing to laugh at in Kafka or
Hopkins or Dostoyevsky or my Russian or French or Sanskrit dictionaries.” Monisha
describes vividly how they lay bare even her insides, “my ovaries, my tubes, all my recesses
moist with blood, washed in blood, laid open, laid bare to their scrutiny”. The alienation
between Jiban and her is rooted in their temperaments, and Jiban’s inability to
understand her emotional needs fuels her adverse circumstances and thus she suffers
from a nervous anxiety. The barred window offering no glimpse of the outside world, the
monotonous and meaningless sound of a next door child preparing for his exams: “a black,
bitter, terrifying sound that repeats and repeats itself like the motif of a nightmare”. Even a
simple visit to the zoo seems like a release to her. Monisha is caught in a truly existentialist
contingency especially when she is accused both by Jiban and his family members of stealing
money from Jiban’s wardrobe.

Monisha is depicted not only as an alienated soul, but also as a seeker of the meaning of her
existence. She refuses to live a “one-dimensional life’. She longs for peace and solitude
where she could nurture her selfhood and grow into dignity. Her search is to attain freedom
and solitude, both internal and external. All this impels Monisha to mentally withdraw either
to her childhood days at Kalimpong or to “Jiban’s last posting, out in a district, away from
the city and the family. The solitude of the jungles there….our house which we had to
ourselves…” and help her to temporarily forget her sense of isolation in Calcutta. The young,
dreamy-eyed, romantic Monisha finds marriage to Jiban a very stifling experience for
marriage turns her “into a woman who keeps a diary…Traceless, meaningless, uninvolved”.
This leads to her final choice of “unimpeachable silence” by her act of suicide in
preference to meaningless life. Her suicide is preceded by self-knowledge which asserts
her freedom. It is an exercise of her choice. Monisha is thus a rebel with a cause and
rebels inwardly against the servile existence within the rigid confines of a traditional
Hindu family.

Armed with a fine arts degree from Bombay, Amla arrives in Calcutta to begin
working as a commercial artist. Aunt Lila thinks of Amla as “absolutely free and in the centre
of such an exciting world”. However, very soon the city of Calcutta engulfs her in its
morbidity and melancholy. The round of parties which she initially enjoyed now becomes a
meaningless activity: “despite all the stimulation of new experiences, new occupations, new
acquaintances, and the mild sweet winter air, this sense of hollowness and futility persisted.”
Even at her place of work she feels like “an outsider in the group of colleagues that gathered

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about a trayful of coffee cups”. Calcutta becomes a living person that impinges on her and
“lassitude overcame her like a fever”. A flicker of brightness and change came into Amla’s
life when she becomes a model for the artist Dharma and looks forward to her visits to his
studio. In the hours that she spends there, she becomes another Amla, “a flowering Amla,
translucent with joy and overflowing with a sense of love and reward”. Their relationship
cannot be defined or circumscribed as accepted conventions because it always seemed
complex and unreal. When Dharma compares her to his estranged daughter Amla
realizes that it always her fault for having tried to enter his world as a lover. Her
enchantment with him and his world seems over though she had earlier revealed in the
enchantment, been grateful for her joy. Her decision to stay away from his exhibition and
go instead to the races with Jit proves that the break was total. Monisha’s suicide makes
Amla see her future very clearly for she “would never allow her to lose herself. She
knew she would go through life with her feet primly shod…precisely because Monisha
had given her a glimpse of what lay on the other side of this stark, uncompromising
margin.”

Among the minor character in the novel, Dharma is one of those who show
existentialist values of life. His existentialist subjectivity made him feel responsible towards
his wife who could not bear the loss of her daughter. Feeling responsible towards her, he
chooses to leave Calcutta and settled at the city’s outskirts. It was an effort to prevent his wife
from becoming insane. She believes in the process of discovering the truth. She has herself
stated: “Writing is my way of plunging to the depths and exploring this under lying truth. All
my writing is an effort to discover to underline and convey the true significance of things”

It is, therefore, the search for identity, which makes the characters of Anita
Desai different for the others. They try to create and preserve their own values of life. In
order to protect their self-identity or self-created ideals, these characters adopt various
measures – like Monisha setting herself in fire or Nirode’s search for freedom. These
characters face the agony of living without giving up their battle against the oddities of life.
In the process of their search they also undergo transformation leading to self-knowledge like
Amla. All these portrayals of human attempts to reach and capture the holistic vision of
life, search for truth and quest for an identity, the hunt for a meaning in life, and the
desire for a moment of balance has remained the most essential feature in Desai’s novels.

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Q2. Significance of the title Voices in the City
written by Anita Desai.
A comprehensible and new vision of life has been presented in the novel where
new visualization of Indian life has emerged as an idea in this novel, Voices in the City. The
very title - Voices in the City itself indicates the central theme of alienation and isolation
of the modern man and the novel becomes a medium for Desai to voices out their agony.
These voices are the different visions of life which puts forth a concept of freedom in life
which gives way to forceful characterization of the novel rather than plot construction. The
title of the novel made critics to debate on the point whether Nirode or the city of Calcutta
may be called the hero of the novel. Anita Desai’s skilful handling invests the city with a
character. Nirode’s sketch on the other hand is rather insipid. Discussed in depth by
A.V.Krishna Rao, who also feels that it is Calcutta which is the hero of the novel and not
Nirode: Thus although one may be tempted to consider Nirode as the hero of the novel, the
city of Calcutta is indeed the protagonist of the novel. Calcutta, conceived as a fore of
creation, presentation and destruction is ultimately identified as a symbol for the
Goddess Kali.

It is true that the city of Calcutta is the locale for most of the actions of the novel
and serves as a background and it influences and affects all the major characters in the novel.
But the novel itself is primarily a family drama around which the story revolves. Anita Desai
uses polyphonic narrative to enlarge upon the theme of urban alienation of displaced people
in Post-independence India. It is this city that affects the protagonist and forces to go out of
the city and to find a good place to live on. The situations and circumstances in the city make
a rapid change in the life of the many characters in this novel. Thus Anita Desai took a gentle
effort to exemplify the surroundings of the city and makes the reader to understand how a
society can change the human life. The callousness, griminess, sordidness, oppressive heat
and disgusting ugliness of the metropolis Calcutta is evoked through a spirit of the place that
pervades the novel. Meena Beliappa remarks, Anita Desai “seeks to relate the subjective
world of the individual to the spirit of the place”.

Voices in the City voices the struggle of Monisha, Amla and Nirode to adjust
to life in and experiences of Calcutta. Along with them the city of Calcutta becomes a
metaphor for the complexities of life depicting numerous other anonymous depressed
and disillusioned voices. As signified by the title, the City of Calcutta takes the role of
living spirit. It is the city of Death. It turns to the tragedy of man in a society where both art
and life are in lack of love. The novel is divided into three sections: “Nirode,” “Monisha,”
and “Amla.”

Nirode is the first of Desai’s tough, cynical protagonists, who realizing that his
uncreative job at a respectable newspaper will never allow him to live meaningfully, quits.
He refuses support from his rich, widowed mother, who lives in the hills; instead, he sinks
from failure to failure, cynically awaiting the bottom. He starts a magazine that fails after a

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brief run; his subsequent attempts to be a writer fail, too, when his brutally honest play is
rejected by a theater group. Nirode envisions himself as fighting Calcutta, the city of Kali,
the city that destroys all that is worthwhile in its denizens. Surrounded by quitters, he
refuses to compromise, to succumb to an existence he despises.

Monisha, the sensitive elder sister of Nirode is married into a traditional Bengali
family which forces her to accept and compromise a morbid routine existence. In fact,
however, Monisha leads a secretive inner life that is inviolate despite the ugliness of her
surroundings. For example, her inability to bear a child symbolizes her refusal to allow
another life into what is, to her, a meaningless and loathsome world. Her situational
depression takes the form of a diary.

Amla, the youngest sibling, is a muted version of Nirode. Beneath the surface,
all three characters struggle against Calcutta, fighting to preserve their inner integrity.
but interestingly of the three, Amla seems the most likely to succeed because she has
neither the excessive cynicism of Nirode nor the neurosis of Monisha.

An interesting minor character is Dharma (“righteousness”), the unflappable

painter who has left Calcutta but who, upon discovering an ideal model in Amla, returns,
following a drastic revolution in his painting. Though Dharma is shown to be the only
character who has survived against Calcutta, his inscrutability renders him
incomprehensible to Nirode and Amla, as well as to the reader.

The novel thus becomes a successfully conveys the voices of the characters, their
importance and subtleties in the novels, strong characterization as well as freedom of
creativity which is the subjectivity and sensibility of the novel. The novel has a sensational
climax and a somewhat contrived ending. Monisha triumphs by burning herself to death in
her bathroom. Her death brings her mother down to Calcutta from the hills. Nirode has a
vision of his mother as Kali, the preserver and the destroyer; apparently, his conflict is thus
resolved. Nirode, therefore, becomes the initiate, and Amla’s more promising efforts at
wisdom are sidestepped. In fact, Amla is the only character out of the three whose
spiritual growth is utterly convincing; after her encounter with Dharma, she becomes
more reconciled to Calcutta. Disregarding the triviality of her job in an advertising agency,
she manages to do something that truly satisfies her—making sketches for Professor Bose’s
translations from the Panchatantra. The title Voices in the City thus presents a “powerful
articulation” (Iyengar) of the characters as well as their pathetic relation with the dreadful
city of Calcutta.

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WORKS CITED:

1. Voices in the City, a Novel by Anita Desai.

2. Unspoken voice of exasperation and vision in the novel Voices in the city by Anita
Desai by Dr. B.S. Arun.
3. Themes of Alienation and Displacement: A Study of Anita Desai’s Voices in the City
and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss by Meenakshi Goyal.
4. Quest For Identity In The Fiction Of Anita Desai by M. A. Gaikwad and S. A.
Gaikwad.
5. Existentialist vision in Anita Desai’s ‘Voices in the city’ by Prof. Rahul P. Ghuge.
6. Anita Desai: the novelist by Madhusudan Prasad.
7. Initiative in the Novel Voices in the City of Anita Desai: Freedom in Life by Imam
Aman Khan.

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