DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REALITY AND IMAGINATION IN ANITA DESAI’s IN-CUSTODY

Abstract; Anita Desai’s novel In-custody shows the character of Devan, a Hindi lecturer. Imagination denotes the works of thoughts, but in changed hypothetical models it has additional strength. In psychotherapy illusion are often compensatory of wish and fulfilment. It agrees the visionary to be handled with regret. The dreamer may even prove to him or herself that imagination is true. Illusion is defined as temptations or dreams. It is a genuine wish, anxiety or obsession which discovers appearance in different ways.

Anita Desai’s novel In-Custody reveals the character of Devan and his love for Urdu poetry. The imagination of his great hero Nur leads him to be sad, unfaithful and often powerless. He dreams that Nur himself look like his poetry and he occurs on this upper plane because his poetry boosts Devan to such statues. His effort to write factual review about Nur is challenged by adverse condition and individuals. Devan with his confidence and tenaciousness raise the dejection of Nur.

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Devan who idealizes the Urdu poetry and the poet meets his hero surrounded by sadness and misperception. Devan likes to become an Urdu poet from his adulthood but could not do so because of his responsibility and finally becomes a lecturer. Devan’s imagination differences with the practicality of Nur the Urdu poet. The title of the paper, Difference between reality and imagination in Anita Desai’s In- Custody brings out the struggling character of Devan being stuck between imaginary and realism. Key Words;Imaginary, Dreams, Illusion, Realism, Sufferings.

INTRODUCTION; Novels, create the most important and influential form of literary manifestation. Nowadays novels have a great position in the Indo-English Literature. It is generally agreed that the novel is the most suitable way of expressing involvement and thoughts in the environment of our time. Thus Indian writing in English originates a voice in the material of Post- Colonial Literature. Novels by women authors, add majesty in the excess of Indian Writing by rewriting and creating their thoughts of experience with their unique emotional response. Most of the Indian Women Writers deliver vision a wealth of sympathetic, a lake of senses and basis of conversation in their works. Anita Desai is a famous writer in Indian English Literature.

She’s not only a popular Indian writer but also one in the world of fiction writing. She appeared on the literary horizon after independence and she focuses on the Modern issues. Desai has structured a new factor to the contemporary Indian English Novels and Fiction. She has protected a unique and important place due to her original thematic anxieties that reflect in her novels with womanly sensibility. Her obsession is searched of deep emotional of her character, she has revealed her skills in her novels. Some of Anita Desai’s famous novels are like Cry, the Peacock(1963), In Custody (1964), Fire on the Mountain (1977),Fasting and Feasting(1998), and so on. Anita Desai’s novels and the short stories deliver the most conspicuous formulation of the tormented corner of the contemporary age, namely, the difficulty of unreachability of the separate. Her works show the fractioned human awareness, the inner pressures and feelings that leave people painful. She describes the human beings as violently ill-treated by polarization which characterise contemporary Indian society. The novels of Anita Desai are relatable to readers of all times because Desai writes about the difficulty of modern man. She probes into man’s inner soul and goes away to peel and the flesh.

The exposure of post colonialism and imperialism tracks a disaster across the culture, civilisation, displacement, migration, alienation and consequential chain of temptation and disillusion. A similarity is drawn between novel and history in relation to the languages. In common, dreams of languages refer to the mechanisms of imagination but in different kind of theoretical model it has more power. In psychotherapy imaginaries are often compensatory that agrees that the dreamers have to survive with regret and the fantasist may even convince him or herself that the imaginary is true. Anita Desai herself states that In-Custody she symbolizes the decay of Urdu Language and this novel was short listed for the Booker Prize. The hero of this novel, named Devan Sharma comes from a poor middle class family. He is a junior Hindi lecturer, in a small town at Mirapore near Delhi in a provincial college. He endures the pains of unsuccessful pursuits in trained professional and internal life. He pursues to reach out into a broader world in the hope of self-fulfilment. Desai describes himself as an ordinary man who lacks creative traits due to his timid environment. He leads a fateful family life with his wife named Sarala and his small son Manu. He deliberately makes himself an unsuccessful person and considers his life as that of one caught in “a cruel or prison” (P-19). Unable to stop one night he steps up and down thinking; “In his youth, he had the illusion of having free will, not knowing he was in a trap.

Marriage, a family and a job had placed him in this cage: now there was no way out of it. The unexpected friendship with Nur had given him the illusion that the door of trap had opened and he could escape after all into a wider world that lay outside but the closer familiarity with the poet had shown him that what he thought of as the wider world was an illusion too”… (P-131). Devan is a lover of Muslim Urdu poetry and he has to teach Hindi literature written by Hindus and he does it so badly without spirit. He wishes, to become a good poet from his childhood but he could not do so because of his personal responsibilities and finally becomes a Hindi Lecturer. The story surrounds around the character of Devan, his feelings and his eagerness comes to light when he gets the opportunity to interview, the great living Urdu poet Nurshajehanabadi. Devan’s love for Urdu language is his dream whereas his job as Hindi Lecturer is a reality. Anita Desai gracefully portrays assail between reality and imaginary in the novel In-Custody. The class position forces the hero to enter into the imaginary of sudden wealth, sudden cheques, and acceptance in the literary circles of the metropolis. He works only for his survival as a Hindi Lecturer. His meeting with his friend Murad produces total change in his life. Devan complains to Murad about failure to pay for his input to the Urdu magazine Awaaz. He counsels Devan to meet Nur at Delhi. Being inspired by Nur, he likes Urdu poetry. In order to fulfil his miserable longing of becoming a Urdu lecturer, he goes to Delhi and meets Nur. But the first official visit to the house of Nur makes him feel suffocating by the rudiment environment of Nur’s wife.