Individual Identity and Quest for Survival: An Exploration of the Inner Psyche of the Existential Hero in Anita Desai’s Voices in the City

Literature is the finest manifestation of human experience, thinking patterns and social norms prevalent in the society. Literary fiction reflects the aspirations, passions and faith and so forth. Fiction which represents life in all its complexities is one of the most dominant forms of literary representation. In the Indian context, the paradigm shift that took place in literature focus on the profusely creative literary release on multifarious issues that directly linked with individual identity and consciousness. Voices in the City is a seminal work by Anita Desai. It stands unparalleled to other fictional works of her contemporaries as it manifests the existential quest and social conflict unraveling the psychosomatic miseries of the individual characters that permeates the entire novel. The novel echoes the mute voices of the characters who feel outlandish in the city of Calcutta. As a novelist of human concern, Desai exhibits a strong inclination towards the existentialist interpretation of the human predicament. Voices in the City documents the pitiable plight and failure of a typical Bengali youth, Nirode along with his sisters Monisha and Amla in the city of Calcutta. The novel mainly projects the spiritual cataclysm of a journalist Nirode, who is destined to reside in Calcutta in quest for finding truer meaning of life. The study attempts to explore the intense sufferings, disappointments and frustrations of the wrathful youth which arises out of the intense sensitivity of his intellectuality

Revisiting the Past: Nostalgic Experience in The Grandmother’s House by Kamala Das

English poetry written by Indian writers has gained a new momentum by manifesting a new quest of establishing national identity. Kamala Das who took the literary world by storm in the mid sixties emerged as one of the dominant voices in all the leading anthologies of Indo English poetry. My Grandmother’s House, a constituent poem of Kamala Das’ first publication, Summer in Calcutta presents an intriguing sense of nostalgia and uprootedness, It is a forcefully moving poem at war with nostalgia and anguish in sharp contrast with her childhood and her grown up stage. The poet desperately yearns for the return of those days at her ancestral house which was affectionately surprised by her grandmother. The image of the ancestral home stands as a symbol of strong support and pure love that the poet craves for in her loveless married life. Bereft of love in her later life at her husband’s house, Kamala Das yearns to visit the house which one’s was a place of symbolic retreat to a world of purity and happiness. The study attempts to present the nostalgia and the memories the poet ponder in the present about her childhood days

A HOT NOON IN MALABAR - A POEM OF REMINISCENCE

Kamala Das is considered as one of the best known women poets in the cannon of contemporary Indian writing in English. The sixties of the twentieth century saw the upsurge of poet writing in English and writing as a woman on the women issues closely related to women. To Kamala Das, poetry serves as a handy tool of social criticism and social consciousness and thus makes her poetry truly confessional in nature. Taken from the collection of poems, Summer in Calcutta (1915), Kamal Das’s poem, A Hot Noon in Malabar deals with her happy childhood days spent in her grandmother’s house in Malabar. The nostalgic poem, A Hot Noon in Malabar shows her longing for the days in Malabar as an escape from the torturing experience of city life she lived after her marriage. She feels nostalgic of those golden days of her ancestral house where she spent a carefree life, not bogged down by worldly or domestic responsibilities. Apparently, the poet who is now living far away from her ancestral home recalls every minute detail of that place. Malabar is not only the place where her loving grandmother lived. It was the place which was associated with love and emotion. The Poem is conspicuous of autobiographical element with a pouring of personal sorrows and feelings etc. Through the vivid description of her childhood days, the poem beautifully records the eternal bond of attachment between the grandmother and the poetess, Kamala Das