CHAPTER – III

CONFESSIONAL MODE IN THE POEMS OF GAURI

DESHPANDE

3.1 Introduction
3.2 Man-Woman Relationship
3.3 Shashi Deshpande’s Life and Personality
3.4 Shashi Deshpande’s Reputation as a Novelist
3.5 Shashi Deshpande’s Position
3.6 The Quest of Love
3.7 Crisis of Identity
3.8 Confessional Content
3.9 Main themes of Gauri Deshpande’s Poetry
3.10 Over Views of Shashi and Gauri Deshpande’s Works
(1) Themes of that Long Silence
(2) A Matter of Time
(3) The Binding Vine
(4) Roots and Shadows
(5) The Dark Holds No Terrors
(6) In the Country of Deceit
(7) Small Remedies
3.11 Conclusion
 CHAPTER – III

CONFESSIONAL MODE IN THE POEMS OF

GAURI DESHPANDE

3.1 Introduction

Gauri Deshpande (1942) is another poet who has earned a niche for herself. By
both the merit and the body of work that she has to her name. She is known for her three
collections of poetry, Between Births, Lost Love and Beyond the Slaughter House which
are published in 1968, 1970 and 1972 respectively. With a total of eighty poems,
presumably and hopefully excluding the ones not published and not anthologies so far.

Gauri Deshpande was born in Poona on February 11th, 1942 and buried on March
1st, 2003 who was a novelist, short story writer and poetess from Maharashtra, India. She
published literary outputs in both Marathi and English languages. Her father’s name was
Dinkar Karve and mother’s name was Irawati Karve. In Pune from Ahilyadevi School she
completed her schooling. To receive a degree of M.A. in English Literature, she secured
her admission in Fergusson College of Pune. From Pune University she was awarded for
her Ph. D. degree. In 1961 she married Avinash Deshpande and she devorsed him in 1971
and in 1974 she remarried with Surinder. She had each child from both the husbands. In
1972 she was awarded with the Satya Katha Award. She was the prolific and bilingual
writer. For Illustrated Weekly of India she worked for the long time. The relationship
between man and woman is perfectly explored by Gauri Deshpande and she also focuses
on the cause of absurdities and frustrations of the females. From her childhood she had
learnt to work for the woman emancipation from her parents and grandparents because
they had worked for the betterment of the women. So her main concern is of female
psyche and her intention is to define woman in the real sense.

Gauri Deshpande’s poetry explores sensitively the frustration and alienation

resulting from her incapacity to make meaningful relationships. She published her first
poem in English entitled ‘Between Births’ (1968). This was followed by ‘Lost love’
(1970) and ‘Beyond the Slaughterhouse’ (1972). Deshpande’s poetry seeks to highlight
the idea of ‘misery and discontent’ of an urban existence; her poems reveal a world of
modern existential anxiety chaos with fragmented human beings struggling to hold on to
decadent dreams. She also probes into the repressed and claustrophobic world of women
‘barren and bereft’ of hope and consolation.

A sense of frustration, conflict and dilemma, futility, sadness and loss are the main
themes of her poems. It is shown in her poems that women at the end of the day crave for
some love of the care that they have taken very heartily for their children and husband
and family members. The paper attempts to investigate some of her poems and explore
the various themes that marked her creativity.

Her Literary Outputs:

She has enriched the Indo English literature with her great endeavor.

Books:

1. Ekek Pan Galawaya (1980)

2. Teruo Te Ani Kahi Door Paryant (1985)
3. Ahe He Ase Ahe (1986)
4. Niragathi Ani Chandrike Ga Sarike Ga (1987)
5. Dustar Ha Ghat Ani Thang (1989)
6. Mukkam (1992)
7. Vinchurniche Dhade (1996)
8. Goph (1999)
9. Utkhanan (2002)
10. The Lackadaisical Sweeper (1997)
11. Pine for What Is Not
12. Diary of a decade of agony.

She also translated the ten volumes of Arabian Nights written by Sir
Richard Burton from English to Marathi.

Collections of Poems

1. Between Births (1968)

2. Lost love (1970)
3. Beyond the Slaughterhouse (1972)

Having read the three collection one after another one may say clearly get an idea
that she is a very sensitive poet. She is very emotional and realistic in her expression.
These collections of the poems express the feelings and emotions of the poet. Through
these poems she reflects her views and observations in the best words. In these poems we
find the themes of men women relationship, love, marriage, life, death, feminine world,
suppressed desires of women, male dominated society etc.

The confessional mode becomes a device to formalize the process of analysis and
adjustment of the problems which crop up from personal life. Gauri Deshpande’s poems
and autobiography stem from her own experiences and therefore often classified as
‘confessional’. Confessional poetry is all autobiographical; it is rooted in the personal
experiences of the poetess. Gauri Deshpande confesses a number of things exclusively
related to herself, self as a woman with her strong feminine sensibilities. Her poems are
indeed an intense study of her personal traumas and tribulations that she faced in her
married life bereft of emotional bounding.
 In poem of her there a relationship of women and men which are described in not
limited chances and ways. In relation the central subject and concept of it are found
woman and man love ship attachment. There constant struggle involved found in that
particular society. And that inner search and quest is the central and love and loneliness,
suffering and pain and their different and that was very effective in the writing to that was
effective to them. Deshpande is a centralized poet and thinker particular in the area of the
feminist area. In her poems that were an striking features and affected to all in the society.
To regard Gauri Deshpande as one of the hundred and fifty odd women poets ‘jostling for
space’ in contemporary Indian women’s English poetry is to mistreat and underrate her.
Gauri Deshpande is a prolific writer of Marathi and English literature. She leaves a
memorable impression on her critics and readers. As for her post of prestige in the
tradition of genre, she is no doubt, with Toru Dutt, Sarojini Naidu and Kamala Das. Gauri
Deshpande have put across the predicament of a woman in one of her poems; You sight
me glimpsing and won‘t wait too long, with a half-smile in your raised eyebrow will
leave me between shores and walk off.

In her fiercely honest search for identity, Gauri Deshpande reveals her inner
contrasts, conflicts, emotions, feelings, ironies and extremes. Her poems move rapidly
through sentiments, anger, sympathy and tensions. It is somewhat complex to understand
the emotion and texture of her verses because she is a very mature poet. A sense of
sadness and loss are the main concerns in her poems. She somewhat similar to Thomas
Hardy in the matter of theme because like Hardy she also believes that evils surpass the
virtues and human adventure seems very puny in front of evils. In her poems we find
very common story of everyday life, death of a puppy dogs, coming lover, ingratitude of
children etc. Thus, she writes on a very pretty things and common matters.

3.2 Man-Woman Relationship

Man-woman relationship is the prime concern in the works of Gauri Deshpande.

As a female she has experienced all the fear and doubts and expresses in her works in the
best words. She has observed men and women very minutely and poured out her
observations in her works in an eye catching manner. Her poems show the tensions at
different stages of her relationship with man;

"When you left me lying . . . . . . . . . . .

I hated the cold air
drying my sweat on your hands
and driving my thought
from your tired thigh. "1
(Poems on a Lost Love)

Throughout history, women have been appropriated as sexual objects, Karl Marx
says, Marriage is incontestably a form of exclusive private property and this is echoed by
Gauri Deshpande who expresses about this position of a woman in marriage in her poem
Man and Woman. ,

"That she could with such ease

be enslaved by your skilful hands
beggar‘s heart and from himalayan heights
Condescend to warm your bed
Stiffen your manhood
and bear your spawn. "2 (Quoted in Barbuddhe )

She reveals how a woman torn ruthlessly between fulfillment and frustration, is
forced to accept her identity as a lonely being;

"When from the good fortune

of smiles and caresses
we move into the inexplicable
unintelligible darkness
of sorrow, delay, departure, suspicion. "3
(The Eclipse)
 Love for a man is a temporary refuge from boredom and loneliness. For a woman
love means complete emotional involvement. She wants a lasting and stable relationship
with man. Man looks upon sex as a means of self-gratification and sensual pleasure
whereas woman relates it to the emotional fulfillment and meaning in life. Sex seems to a
woman a mere dry activity that leaves her unsatisfied. Gauri Deshpande expresses men
do not penetrate into the plunging depths of women‘s souls /and bodies. In her Re:
Memories there is much anguish and tears. ’A stillness before sleep, and an awareness in
dreams. You should be left with a face at the window, heartbreak, a farewell. Otherwise
there‘s nothing. ’

Love is enriched with the sense of meaningfulness when the lover is absent even
more than when he is present near her:’ When the vast barrenness of your presence.
Confronts me, I feel your absence fruitful, In you personified were all, My loves
unreached. ’ Gauri Deshpande is, thus, primarily concerned with the exploration of the
various intricacies and conflicts of the man-woman relationship. She depicts woman as
distressed by the non-fulfillment of physical as well as emotional cravings. Kanwar
Dinesh Singh while discussing her poetry expresses. She finds the lack of genial after
play in lovemaking as most unsatisfying and disappointing. In the whole gamut of
lovemaking she perceives neither physical intensity nor mental satisfaction, and finds
neither emotional contentment nor even spiritual delight.

3.3 Shashi Deshpande’s Life and Personality

Shashi Deshpande from Indian soil and name of her village is Dharwad, she born
in 1938. She is not the first but after first she was daughter of the writer and dramatist
Shriranga who was Sanskrit man and scholar. She went her way on Mumbai at the age of
half thirteen and getting the education of law. And that degree was practiced in Bangalore
for few years in her career. And after sometime she got married and then she has two sons
and got busy with them in her life. After all this, she has started writing in 1970.
Deshpande began her writing with short stories which later developed into writing
novels. ‘The Legacey’ first collection of stories of short in 1972 had been prescribed for
graduate students in Columbia University. I don’t think so that I planned ever for
becoming a writer in my career and that was not so easy to be a writer. It was conscious
decision was taken by me. I was busy with my two sons and in the beginning of life that
was not possible and easy for me to become a writer. And other factors are there found is
that she didn’t have any friend at this time and whole day with her children and then after
sometime from this life she got the idea to put her hand and writing and also her
imagination in writing and created an immense contribution in this field. She got the
point that something was there that which asked her to go towards her unidentified goal
and that was about to be a good writer and known as feminist movement.

Shashi Deshpande now in India’s one of best place at Bangalore with her husband
and also completed her Master Degree in Literature there. She is best in all regards of
literature. She is different from another perspective and unique in her writing and
depicted totally different way in writing and go against the traditional writing and
presented the realistic picture in her writing and described in details and most
contemporary qualities also found in her writing that is her best quality in her drama and
play and most of her fictional writing. Deshpande began her writing with short stories
which later developed into writing novels. ‘The Legacey’ first collection of stories of
short in 1972 had been prescribed for graduate students in Columbia University. She is
not the first but after first she was daughter of the writer and dramatist Shriranga who was
Sanskrit man and scholar. She got the point that something was there that which asked
her to go towards her unidentified goal and that was about to be a good writer and known
as feminist movement. Actually her education background is economical and later on she
got the degree of Literature though she has shown beautiful sense in literature writing in
her performance. And her grandfather who is known as the Bernard Shaw of Kannada
theatre, yet she never got any guidance from him in this field. She repents the fact of
being detached from her father. In response to a question of Vanamala Vishwanatha, If I
should criticize him, I should say he was somewhat detached from us. . . never guided us.
May be if he had directed us at an early age, I could have done better. He never did that.

Some of her themes are: there is a woman from and her husband house
background present connection is with politics and there so many problems she has and
nothing else, and a girl in womb not able to understand why all this is happening with her
because she doesn’t have that level and existence, a new married couple try to adjust
herself in the company of each other and they are not able to decide what to do and once
shown compassion and lucidity. All these writing provided the lost data of human
relationships and feeling which was mostly forgotten in all corner in the society that was
ridiculous reality. These writings have focused light on those forgotten facts of human
relationships and feelings in different form of literature.

Deshpande has tried not to write any fictional and novel to entertain the people
and amuse them but actually she had presented the realistic view and daily Indian life that
was found in everyday in various part of the society among different cast and community
in India. Shashi mostly described the place and the realm in which our society belonged
and lived in it with the realistic and ridiculous factors in that found the disastrous factors
and fault and weakness of the society. She is not intentioned to criticize anything and
discuss it but she has just presented the picture of Indian society as it is found in present
days with its traits and tradition in ridiculous manner. Her writing is not demanding high
intellectuality for reading because she has presented the things in which people are taking
breath and performing their duty in that society. Shashi Deshpande dives deep into the
society and also into the minds of her male and female characters and she very wittily
portraits the problems of men and women relationship. She also shows how her male and
female characters act and react to the situation.

Shashi in all her writing seems to be a prolific writer and huge creator and make
silent many social issues in her fictional writing that was eye catching factor which
concentrated audience highly in their life. She used simple and usual picture of Indian
society and this simplicity attracted a lot and number of people and caught them in their
society. In all her contribution in literature it was easy to find the traits and factors of
Indian culture easily and that’s why there is the central concept and theme of her all
writing that was Indian way of life and woman. With this concept and constant attempt
and her interest which she regaled the majority of Audience and of her enthusiastic
followers and readers who are going to share her dilemma, fears confidentialities and
hope, prerogatives and experience.
 Shashi in all her performance and inscription seems to be a prolific writer and
massive architect and formulate noiseless many societal issues in her story bound writing
that was eye transmittable reason which resolute audience highly in their life.

"So these two fellows who are caused for their fate and
upcoming and the compilation in very high. ” 4

She uttered the contribution of her and indifferently, there must be another
time introduction ability of her to converse in her mind.

"It was real empowerment and that of lack of equality

and fear and that was in the concern of the about it. ” 5

So when there is a doubt about the central character in all her writing and fictional
novels, in which she concentrated the middle class woman and their condition and in
urban city area where it is Norman to found working women and their personal
difficulties and crisis.

“Reluctant factor resist women to reflect them properly

in the society. I just want to describe human ad their
relationships and their ridiculous fact in the society. ” 6

Further she underlines and asserted and not accepted to play and the rules of
global. And she continued her work and make aware herself and aware others about the
prevailing situation and she doesn’t not follow the tradition and work as per that tradition
but she created her tradition and way of work different.

“English writing in India that have to Imagine. She then

all of a sudden mixed and swirled and make one to
understand that the abstract language you inscribe in
does not put up with upon the superiority of creativity
in literature”. 7
 Shashi in all her writing seems to be a prolific writer and huge creator and make
silent many social issues in her fictional writing that was eye catching factor which
concentrated audience highly in their life. Shashi Deshpande described great Indian
culture and the essentiality of English language in her writing and that was great and
found a supreme creativity in Indian literature. Indian writer see western writing and for
them the English writing was exotic and tough to understand but literature from Indian
soil written that was easy to understand for Indian people.

She got Sahitya Award for her best work ‘That Long Silence’ and she was also
respected for her two ‘The Dark Holds No Terrors’ and ‘Shadow and Roots’. Small
Remedies, her latest novel, was released in India on the 16 th of March, 2000. We will
deal with six novels of Shashi Deshpande in detail in the next part of the study Sarita in
The Dark Holds No Terrors 28 undergoes a similar trauma like Indu in Roots and
Shadows. She confronts reality and in the end realises that the dark she feared really
holds no terrors. Saru is a 'two-in-one woman. ' A doctor in the day time and a trapped
animal at night. She wants to be free and have an identity of her own. She longs to break
away from the rigid traditional norms. She hates her parental home, yet the work was
found Saru, who going to meet her father after long period of time, she decide to visit her
father because after listening the death of her Mother from their friends. In the past she
left that home in her young age. Denying her parents to marry the man Manohar whom
she loved. So at the end she wanted to establish all good and well and resolution
everything and forgot her past try her best to established well and good.

In the beginning of that fictional work found that Sarita was scolded by her
mother because she was not helped out her brother when he was drowning in deep water.
But at present situation changed so much her mother was now not anymore and she
comes back to her childhood place. She wanted to provide her service to her father but
her husband was not happy with this and create so much problems in her life and there
was very much brutal behavior was done by him to her and she has piteous condition. In
her childhood home she remember all her past incident who changed her a lot she
observed her village, her marriage against her parents wish, and her relationship with her
childhood friend Manohar. So there is constant incidents and situation of Sarita addressed
as ‘Saru’, with whose character Deshpande prevailing situation of Woman in the society
is described and reflects constant struggle of woman to prove their status constantly in
their living place and around atmosphere. The hostel life is a kind of "rebirth" into a
totally different world where you don't have to stay outside for;

"Those three days, you are no longer an `untouchable';

you can even talk about it. "8

When Sani falls in love with Manohar, a boy from a lower caste, again she defies
the authority of her mother. Saru's marriage is a means to get away from her mother and
her home. The departure of the heroine from the mother is the first step towards
autonomy; for, the mother is the first pedagogue of the restrictions on the woman.
Marriage, the promised end in a traditional society, in feminist fiction becomes only
another enclosure that restricts the movement towards autonomy and self-realization.
There are recurrent images of enclosure in Roots and Shadows as well as in The Dark
Holds No Terrors. Indu constantly speaks of the dark room where so many women had
given birth. Saru is reminded of a room whose doors are closed whenever she looks at her
daughter, Renu. Saru, even when she comes back home, "felt herself enclosed. " When
she enters into her room, she finds male clothes hanging on the wall and realizes that she
has no room of her own. The feeling of being enclosed is associated with the mother's
house and the protagonist wants to escape from the enclosure, as revealed in Indu's
dreams. The image of the enclosed walls suggests the suffocation these women undergo
not only in their parental homes but the homes they have chosen as refuge. The novel is
presented in four parts and even in the first part, all the important issues bitterness
towards the mother, insecurity of Manu, Saru's relationship with Manu and children,
Dhruva's death are touched upon. The rest of the three parts elaborate Saru's introspection
of and her reaction to different issues touched upon in the first part. Shashi Deshpande
works with a dubious world that falls between reality and unreality. The truth behind
Saru being the murderess of Dhruva, Manu being the predator and Saru the prey is a
matter that lies in this realm between reality and unreality. The italicized description of
Saru's traumatic but dream-like experience when she slowly recognizes the predator to be
her own husband defines the dubious area better. It also lays all the cards on the table,
 takes away the element of shock and the reader is left with nothing to anticipate about the
monstrous problem. The second part too begins with a dream suggestive of the
uncertainty of the destination and the inability to know what lies in store as she drifts by.
In the course of Part IV there is a reference to another dream that evokes the road image
again with "something, somebody awful, frightening" at the end. But she has no way out
and has to proceed. The dream suggests the definite need to proceed and confront
whatever is at the end. Though the novel deals with an uncertain situation, Shashi
Deshpande makes use of effective concrete images to drive home the reality and gravity
of the problem. The Dark Holds No Terrors presents the inner drama of Saru that has a
lot to do with the past. Hence narration is introspective sliding across the past and the
present through effective "quick cuts. "Occasionally, Shashi Deshpande sidetracks into a
bit of philosophizing on human life, grief, happiness, pain, man's aloneness and so on,
and these digressions make the novel a bit too wordy. She never leaves anything unsaid
to evoke rich suggestions. Some Indian elements like the son's importance in the family,
girls getting importance only during haldi-kumkums, a woman possessed by Devi, find a
natural place in the novel that deals with a woman's status and the dichotomy within her
personality.

3.4 Shashi Deshpande’s Reputation as a Novelist

Shashi Deshpande is known for creating women characters that are contemporary.
Shashi Deshpande makes use of effective concrete images to drive home the reality and
gravity of the problem. The Dark Holds No Terrors presents the inner drama of Saru that
has a lot to do with the past. They are conscious of the great social inequality and
injustice towards them, and struggle against the oppressive and unequal nature of the
social norms and rules that limit their capability and existence as a wife. Fettered to their
roles in the family, they question the subordinate status ordained to them by society.
Deshpande prevailing situation of Woman in the society is described and reflects constant
struggle of woman to prove their status constantly in their living place and around
atmosphere. Her regular and serious concern for women and their oppressive lot is
reflected strongly in all her novels and stories. Shashi Deshpande is identified for creating
women typescript that is contemporary. Shashi Deshpande makes use of successful
existing descriptions to constrain home the authenticity and gravity of the problem.
Deshpande has chosen sensitive issue among the all factors and theme of Literature and
that was a major weapon of her writing. And all her creation just highlights the realistic
picture of the society and nothing else.

What really sets Shashi Deshpande apart is that she holds a universal appeal
through her effective and best writing and that is without any doubt emanates from the
rootedness in India every day. She has steadfastly refused to compromise in order to suit
the global market, never exoticising India, never 'presenting' it as she puts it , and
certainly by not playing to the gallery. She is often compared to regional language writers
firmly entrenched in our social realities and grappling with our issues. One agrees with R.
K. Dhawan's remarks that in her writing and period found the pretty packaged and her
lucid thought in her fresh writing. Everything is said as it should be, not a superfluous
word to be found anywhere.

The aesthetics of her writing is informed from her subject matter and all those
thing create her thought very firm and articulate her observation and make people to read
the things and experience by her was sharing in that work. And so there is no doubt about
that she has very strong bounding with her content and her inner self was attached with it.
What in actuality sets Shashi Deshpande spaced away from home is that she holds a
widespread application through her valuable and best characters and that is exclusive of
any uncertainty emanates from the rootedness in India every day. Reading of Deshpande
was so effective that it pull in the reder and make his or her that actually this situation
was happening with them directly or indirectly, that is the feeling which comes from the
reading of the Deshpande. It proved a satisfying and immense experience to the reader
and make them to feel aware about the system.

In all her novel finds the central subject is about crisis and problems of women.
People go out through the reading of Deshpande but their effect was not found any longer
in that personal and public behavior about this disastrous fact of the society. All these
things which were put by Deshpande in front of the people of society was not making in
their behavior and it gone to the fail. People are not asking any question and without any
doubt they are accepting this ridiculous fact of the society. The central character of her is
Woman and their suffering and behavior of the society with them was major and eye
catching factor of her writing.

In all her work of fiction finds the innermost subject matter is about crisis and
problems of women. Populace goes out from end to end the reading of Deshpande but
their effect was not found any longer in those personal and public behaviors about this
disastrous fact of the society. All these things which were put by Deshpande in front of
the people of society was not making in their behavior and it gone to the fail. People are
not asking any question and without any doubt they are accepting this ridiculous fact of
the society. The central character of her is Woman and their suffering and behavior of the
society with them was major and eye catching factor of her writing. But on other side it is
reflected that woman has a great strength, power and ability to deal with difficult
situation and their problems. Among all these complexity she has a great and sustainable
power that she handles with great ability and deal with them. She is not just described as
emotional fool but depicted as a warrior. This is because woman has great bearable
ability and they have best inner ability. Shashi Deshpande in her writing with all these
problems and dealt with them nicely and presented the realistic picture of the society.

When a couple was seen by them in ‘The Dark Holds No Terrors’. She is
uniquely Indian and her use of Marathi words very evidently presents the customs and
traditions of the people belonging to Maharashtra and Karnataka. For example, words
such as Kaka, Kaki, Atya, Dada, and so on, are essentially Marathi words and might be a
bit difficult to grasp by the readers who do not know the language.

Shashi Deshpande cares more for literary qualities of her creative works. Her
language is transparent. It does not draw attention to itself, nor does it come in the way.
She is Indian by every inch and always writes for citizens of India. She states that if you
try to make everything easy for everyone, then, you end up belonging nowhere. So, I've
left it at that- characters in their novels, without providing glosses for the western readers.
. . Also literature can be appreciated even without understanding every word of it one can
still respond to the core of it. Before the publication of her great novel That Long Silence
she was unknown to the persons. For the very first time Virago Feminist Press, London
published her novel. She says: It's meaningless that people know me as a person and not
know what I've written. I feel publicity is not a good thing for a writer. It detracts you
from your work. Further she writes about the need to write:

“All these writing were done by me and it was realized

that this writing happened because it requires in the
society. And it is also in me. It's one and similar point in
me that point of view.” 9

She does not see males as the cause of all, troubles as some feminists do, and she
deals with the inner mind of women. Education and experience in foreign countries sets
women writers apart from traditional Indian women. The traditional Indian women
suffer, submit and adjust themselves to the circumstances. The women novelists like
Anita Desai, Nayantara Sahgal, and Ruth Prawar Jhabvala have, in their novels, portrayed
this aspect of women's life without having the first hand experience of it. Shashi
Deshpande has projected this aspect of Indian women with more sensitivity and
instinctive understanding as she belongs to this category. Unlike other women writers,
she is born and brought up on this soil, gained her education in India itself and wrote
about India. The projection of the woman's world in her novels is more authentic,
credible and realistic. She knows what Indian women feel. Shashi Deshpande does not
want to be categorized with other Indian writers writing in English. She has a unique
place among the novelists writing in English. She declares that she is just like any other
regional writer but her medium of writing happens to be English, as it is the only
language she knows well. Explaining her position, Shashi Deshpande says: I'm isolated.
I'm not part of any movement and not conscious of readers to impress. To get wider
recognition here and abroad, you have to be in the university and places like that with the
right contacts. I'm an ordinary woman who writes sitting at home. None of these things
are within my reach.
 This has, I believe, done me good. It has given me great freedom. I'm happy with
this anonymity. Once you get publicity-conscious, your writing becomes affected. I'm
truly happy with this freedom. Shashi Deshpande believes that a writer gives to society a
mirror image of itself, so has she tried to do in her creative writing. Vanamala
Vishwanatha points out that the author has presented in her works a typical, middle-class
housewife's life. . . . . That's every woman's problem as well. That's where Shashi
Deshpande has touched a chord. The study tries to understand and perceive the real
dilemma of middle-class educated women in her novels.

Deshpande has never ever tried to portrait her female characters mightier than
they are in actual life. Rather she has exposed their transitional state, as pinpointed by Dr.
Promilla Kapur. The educated women demand more sexual freedom and independence
but are not very sure about what they should do with the same, which leads them to a
bitter confusion, anxiety and tension. Their psychology is still wedded to tradition. The
projection of the woman's world in her novels is more authentic, credible and realistic.
She knows what Indian women feel. Shashi Deshpande does not want to be categorized
with other Indian writers writing in English. The picture of such women has found place
in Shashi Deshpande's novels: Character of mine find their own by themselves. People
saying that there are strong character described by me in the novel but the reality is that I
have just put my characters as they are. It is not that Shashi Deshpande has deliberately
made women the focus in all her novels. She, in fact, wanted to portray the whole society
in her writings; but somehow, as the characters took shape, the women characters turned
out to be the protagonists. That is the world she knows more closely. The reason may be
that being a woman, she felt more for the women characters, could understand the
mundane reality, the complex structure of man-woman relationship better.

It's needed. The system in India is like that woman has to depend on their family
and have to be in a relationship. And in family she is woven in different roles such as
sister, mother and wife. And this concept was the prime object of this writing and
discussion of the present research study. And try to convince the concept in the future of
woman. Search for identity and inner conflict, parent-child and other ritual and just
medium of child generating and tools for sex and marriage are the main themes of Shashi
Deshpande's novels. Female psyche is studied fully in Shashi Deshpande’s novels.
Deshpande does not want to be categorized with other Indian writers writing in English.
She has a unique place among the novelists writing in English. She declares that she is
just like any other regional writer but her medium of writing happens to be English, as it
is the only language she knows well. Explaining her position, Shashi Deshpande says: I'm
isolated. I'm not part of any movement and not conscious of readers to impress. It is well
set in Karnataka, and the name of work titled ‘A Matter of Time’ which discover and
illustrates the not easy of dealings and an complete family, surrounding in different
generations of women and men.

In the beginning of the novel there is a girl named Anu, under demands and that
was be aware of her father's `absconding and her mother's impressiveness and
unresponsiveness, and in the few route of a confused months and falsified and it
completely depended on uneasy to expect of relationships. Sumi the main woman
character of the novel is different from the women protagonists of Shashi Deshpande's
earlier novels. Sumi is gradually emancipating herself as a new and independent woman
who has evolved from utter desolation and bitterness linked with invisible chains of
patriarchal pressure and family responsibilities. Gopal's desertion makes her experience
the trauma of a deserted wife and the anguish of an isolated partner.

When there is a Gopal who gone for specific reason and other side there a Sumi
who brought out three children along with her all these three are girls and their names are
Charu, Anu and Seema. All these three from big shelter home and the name of their real
parents is Shripathi and Kalyani. Their parents are mysterious because they with each
other not talking form last since thirty five years and that was a long period of silence. So
there is a horrifying story of them in which they became silent for long period of time and
Sumi finds her own reflection in their story. So it is the women who are always in the
centre, here found a woman who deals with three different generations. And here
Deshpande’s depiction reveals question that why Kalyani married with her maternal
uncle named Sripathi. So there are so much suspension and tragic elements with woman
 and their life. And Sripathi deserted her wife because of to marry with Kalyani. Sripathi
spent her reaming life in isolation shelter and that was very big. But he never talks with
and found any conversation with Kalayani, in this situation spent thirty five years spent.
Kalyani is overwhelmed from man who is not from them and desertion of this instance
that of her relatives.

3.5 Shashi Deshpande’s Position

‘Shadow and Roots’, this work of Deshpande won the Rangammal Thirumathi
award for author. That was allocated for the best fictional performance and written and
published in India for the year 1982-83. Her collection of short stories, The Legacy, has
had the single distinction of being used as text-book in Columbia University for a course
in Modern Literature. And almost all her books have been well received by the reading
public, though seldom acclaimed by academics, or anthologized. For her, writing is a
vocation, not a profession, and so she seems to have been untouched by the reception
accorded to her work. Shashi Deshpande's novels are concerned with a woman's quest for
self; an exploration into the female psyche and an understanding of the mysteries of life
and the protagonist's place in it. Shashi Deshpande uses irony in the majority of her
stories and novels to satirize the morals and manners of our society although she is not an
ironist. She employs situational, attitudinal and verbal irony to telling effect. Simplicity,
directness and brevity of language are the chief characteristics of her. She uses her words
very economically but very effectively in her works.

Six of her major novels, Roots and Shadows to Small Remedies in the
chronological order are chosen for this thesis. The focus in these novels is on heroines or
the major women characters. Her heroines are sensitive to the changing times and
situations, they revolt against the traditions in their search for freedom. They succeed in
achieving self-identity and independence and choose their partners in life to live within
pursuance of their felt need to lead a family life. Women have to play their role as an
obedient daughter, faithful beloved, faithful wife, loving and caring mother in a family.
Standing at cross-roads of tradition they do seek a change, but within the cultural norms
so as to enable themselves to live with dignity and self-respect.
 Indu, the protagonist in Roots and Shadows, her first novel, emerges and just flow
as a woman of her thought and ideas and she was determines in her ideals and reflected
as challenge for male dominated society. In the transitional period she demonstrates and
exemplifies in that particular transitional area of the society. She was, who reflect her
ability and gone through out all tradition and just rise up as new form of presented by her
in the patriarchal society.

Saru of The Dark Holds No Terrors seeks freedom without impinging on her
obligations and responsibilities and achieves harmony in Life. It shows how she
undergoes a not a god sight of at the time when she was persisted by her cast and its
shadow in her union with her husband in that her blunt behavior as woman make her
different and shining character in the all field of writing.

Jaya of That Long Silence gradually emerges as a confident individual fully in

control of herself and refuses to be led by nose. A stereotyped housewife initially nervous
and needing male help and support all the time, she understands that she also has
contributed to her victimization and that she has to fight her own battle and work out her
own strategy. It also shows how with this new confidence Jaya becomes emancipated
without rejecting outright the cultural and social background. Urmila of The Binding
Vine is depicted as an advanced version over the earlier women protagonists in Shashi
Deshpande's novels as she goes a step further and helps the poor and the downtrodden.
She fights for another woman's cause while the others have fought their own battles. It
shows how she exhibits her interest and capacity to purge the society of its evils.

Sumi, a deserted wife in ‘A Matter of Time’, a best contribution of her and a god
adversity reflected by her, in which she evolves and connect herself not from good sight
but from the bitterness and desolation and described unseen chain of society dominated
by the society. She attains her final stage thought here are so many problems and
obstacles like dignity, courage, independent thinking and spirit and responsibility. She got
her final self awareness and satisfied her desired wishes.
 Madhu in Small Remedies, her latest novel, writes the biography of Indorkar
Savitri represented the tradition and good sight of Indian music during her career and she
was a versatile personality at that time. An unconventional existence and life was led by
her in most of her life, and suffered a lot because of her independent thinking and action
in male dominated society. There is so many other stories like this, in which finds the
situation as it was described in the present discussion like Madhu who told and narrates
her own story. Shashi Deshpande's six novels have been critically analysed with a view to
understand and appreciate the impact of the conflicting influence of tradition and
modernity and the responses to the emerging situations in life in the contemporary
society. Different kinds of challenges faced by her characters are studied in detail here.
The novels have been analyzed individually and commented upon in detail. A close
analysis of her novels leaves no doubt about her loyal and good concern about female and
for their generation. The major thinking and fact is that her character are enough
intelligent and aware about path that it is smothered or not in patriarchal area of the
society.

It is she was who is in fault that a stubborn because of her desire and wishes and
there is also founds the description of nails and lips and the things which were happened
with her. One character named Shakita, present the picture most of all woman and their
situations in the field of her action in which there was situation in which she loved her
children but stick family and its rules tied her hands and sacrifice because of false honor.
There is one character name Urmila who brought out the attention of entire society and
not stand with the false values and norms of the male dominated society. In fact she was
not declares fight against the society and its system but she has trust and faith that things
are going to develop with the passing of time. Mira and her excellent poetry is the best
example of above discussion. It is not Deshpande that created a great Indian mythology
and tradition in her conceptual fiction but suffered and bitterness of the society generated
by the man and felt by the woman in different role of wife, sister and mother. Deshpande
observed the world of woman and depicted in her best artistic sense.

So, there is also found the presence of men but not on the primary stage but on
secondary stage in which they have power and used over their daughter wives and
 mother. There are women in the centre who suffered a lot and loses their hopes the
incidents and creates a problem for them. It is only that poem in which found the
suffering of female character are described in verse and open a new realm of writing in
literature. And Deshpande presented and occupied a great picture in the society.

3.6 The Quest of Love

Gauri Deshpande occupies a prominent position among the poets who constitute
the modern tradition of Indian poetry in English. It is only Gauri Deshpande among all
her contemporaries who draws our attention immediately. Longing and yearning for love
and unfulfilled love are the chief themes of most of her poems. A cursory reading of her
poems at once reveals the facts that the person and the poet are not different. Her
desperate attempts to search for genuine love are shown in all her poems. Women are
more emotional and sentimental by temperament than men.

Her love poetry is different from the love poetry of other Indian poets; she has
rejuvenated the tradition of love poetry by a contemporary new voice. There is
reconsideration and reassessment of the experience of love. Though love is considered as
giving eternal pleasure in some of her poems, but she seems to be quite aware of the
dreams which shatter because of love. Slightly unwelcome, taciturn, you moved in and
we lived on in disharmony, slowly, silently the green came into trees.

At the same time love seems to give her endless contentment. In There Was a
Time love gives her abundant recompense for a loveless past and an uncertain future. It
has more than made up for the times when they were not together: And our solace . Will
be: we knew of you and me. In her In Absentia she recalls her past association with the
lover and expresses her disappointment because of his absence. The rainy days, which
used to evoke sensuality earlier, are now painful for her. And winter, which is a symbol of
decadence, has now overtaken her; this time I know that you are not near , . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . I know that winter is here to stay.

She has no glee and delight in her life. The parting with the lover seems to her so
shocking that even re-union could bring them no joy the reality of the present misery
becomes too cruel for her to be lived again. And from our present misery. Do yearn to
believe. That that too was a reality. To be lived again. In her distress she further says:
‘Teeth clenched, Breath held, I wait for your coming, for, from that moment, I must start
to live, The coming of your departure’.

Eunice de Souza while discussing her poetry says: She doesn‘t trust her lover‘s
affection, which seems to her, beyond confines of need and desire. She is unable to study
his mind:

"and have thrilled shivering to think

of what you think
alone in your sleep. "10

(Poems on a Lost Love)

Even the memories of love have their own significance. For Gauri Deshpande the
most dear treasure is an old letter with violets preserved in its leaves and she feels that
memories are essential `otherwise there‘s nothing’. Even the very intensity of her love
sometimes becomes painful because it involves almost slavish attachment. And attached
by the same, Painful devotion and self-loss. To the feet of God . I‘d be canonized.

Here she doesn‘t seem to be much different from the early Romantics like Toru
Dutt and Sarojini Naidu. It is her frank, free and uninhibited portrayal of sex that makes
her different from these early poets. In order to flout the rules which patriarchy has set up
as norms, women poets like Gauri Deshpande have unreservedly expressed their sexual
desires and have, thus, replaced the earlier timidity and tenderness. In fact free expression
of sexuality is an act of self-assertion and freedom according to the feminist point of
view. Lost Love reveals Gauri Deshpande‘s concept of love as modified by her attitude to
sex because What was in Between Births an innocent flower of love has become in this
volume a blood-stained symbol of sex orgy. Sex is now almost a substitute for love
(Saha). In Poems on Lost Love she uses the imagery of earth and rain to suggest the act of
consummation. She compares herself with the earth. She admits that she is as deep and
black as the earth. She experiences the first rain as the blessing of God.

For her sex is a natural desire and an irresistible biological need. It gives her
delight and pleasure. Even while reveling in the physical act, Gauri Deshpande expresses
her contempt and distaste for sexual pleasure which reveals her bafflement in this
patriarchal world. She finds modern love-making devoid of intensity as men do not
plunge into; the plunging depths of our souls and bodies. The intensity of her passion
often cripples her power of exploration. Love and sex provide no enjoyment. However, at
the same time Gauri Deshpande expresses her desire for man‘s love in some of her
poems. In Integration tortured by the agony of existence, she longs for a lover: If only
there was someone to fall in love with.

Her nights are spent in `causeless researching’ and waking in the mornings is dull,
flat and unprofitable. She considers the final outcome of this physical act as moving into
the darkness from the good fortune of smiles and caresses. The act is itself a mere ritual;
Mental calculator says only five more minutes. She doesn‘t desire her lover to be
physically present with her as his closeness makes her feel disgusted with bareness of
your presence. There is disillusionment and disappointment with love. She finds love-
making most unsatisfying. While going through her poems H. L. Amga observes: Her
conceptual strategies seem to hover between two extremities of love, the one dealing with
the exuberant feeling of conjugal satiety, and the other with the etiolate nausea or
boredom, which comes after the surfeit of love . She shows woman as dismayed by the
non-fulfillment of physical as well as emotional cravings. When you divided our love
thus, With your strong and calloused hand. To me fell the harsh, Waking up of cold
nights. The tired soothing, the quiet. Retreat and unquestioning emptiness. The illness
and magnifying of flaws. You chose well, my love .
 Her heart has broken when her love has lost. She feels confusion and withdraws
herself from the outward. In her poems the feelings of disappointment and despair are
found often and often. She acquires a somewhat sentimental outlook; and that
surrounding facts and that heap upon not only from the one side but all over. She
complains about the relation of her lover with other woman in one of her poems and
expresses her hatred;

“When you divided your love thus

With your strong and calloused hand
To me fell the harsh…..
You chose well, my love
For before you they been been all
Thought me carefully to read contempt” 11

Her treatment of love and sexuality shows how much she is dissatisfied with the
society which demands silent acceptance from a woman. Though the poet doesn‘t
become strident like Mamta Kalia and Eunice de Souza who adopt an aggressive tone,
yet she is quite aware of the gnawing unrest of her life that gives her pain and suffering.
She longs for a haven of peace. She asserts that her rest has been snatched away by the
world. She doesn’t want to go ahead now. With her fists that clench and unclench.
Thoughts come pouring in her eyes. And drain away leaving a whorl of dirt. If only it has
rain. If only she has die.

Sometimes the harshness which is a major feature of contemporary poetry written

by women is also found in her poetry. Portrait is a poem written with a caustic pen. It
cleverly brings forward the juxtaposition of the conventional Christmas day its mother
and child against dug wrinkled hanging apples down depending from it a bundle the
Madonna and the Dame of the Streets. The short-line poems of Gauri Deshpande reveal
her useless mornings for her lost love. She has varied the line-length within her poems as
this mode gives her greater freedom to express the mood and feel of the moment. It gives
her the opportunity to express the natural flow of poetic frenzy without being unduly
worried about the binding rod of syllabic number;
 "Without wondering how,
when, why, or where
We live and meet with death
Turning a street corner.
But I want to see him coming
Scan his face joyously. "12 (Death)

Repetitions within a line like. The sun poured and poured and at the beginning of
successive lines can be seen in her poetry: If only it‘d rain.

"If only I‘d die

If only there were someone to fall in love with.
If only the day was all done with. "13

(Integration 6-9)

Such repetitions intensify her feelings for her lost love. Thus, while her love
poems voice her emotions and experiences, they also reflect a constant dilemma and
conflict in the backdrop. In the article Modern Indian English Women Poets: An
Overview Sunanda P. Chavan studies Gauri Deshpande‘s frustrations and dissatisfactions
and attempts to trace the causes that lead to trauma. According to him, her poetry gives
place to sheer sentimental outbursts when the poet abandons herself weakly to the
passion of grief in the face of the traumatic experience of frustration (Chavan, Modern
79). As when she speaks of; and the now familiar beat of. I won’t cry I won’t cry drums
at the base of my throat.

In Known is this City she can tolerate the strange city only because we were here
once, in love. But soon the mood deserts her and she is found lamenting her loneliness
and emptiness in her next poem at the loss of her love. I wanted to weep for you. And me
but I had already spent. All tears in useless mourning. So now I watch arid eyed. As my
fingers open slowly. And let you go. Her love poetry is a commentary on male
indifference, callousness, insensitivity and exploitation of the female. Cracking under the
pressures of chaotic world in which male cruelty and exploitation go hand in hand, she
 feels torn by the pain and meaninglessness of existence: ‘And so meaningless is the drift
of years. That the only residue is this habit of pain.’

Probably such poems lead Eunice de Souza to regard Lost Love as a great poem
of blood, sweat and clenched teeth. It should however be noted that the poem defines
love in terms of sex only in a limited number of poems. The awareness of sex becomes
gradually an integral part of her total awareness of love only in the later poems. For
instances, her expression achieves uninhibited frankness and honesty of tone in ‘Lying of
Ghosts’ where she communicates her sense of guilt for the aborted children;

"But what of those I rejected,

Those that are dead
Those accidental sowing cleaned out
In minutes without pain?
Lying of Ghosts. "14

Love emerges as a multi dimensional experience in the case of Kamala Das, while
Gauri Deshpande’s exploration suffers from certain basic limitations. Furthermore,
Kamala Das’s ironic stance enables her to achieve then necessary artistic detachment
while Gauri Deshpande‘s intensity of passion after cripples her power of exploration. She
says,

"Sometimes you want to talk

About love and despair
And the unforgetfulness of children
A man is no use whatever then. "15

3.7 Crisis of Identity

Gauri Deshpande also strongly feels that a woman has to compromise and adapt
to the circumstances she is situated in. But at the same time in such circumstances she
can neither have tranquility, nor peace of mind. A frustration results from the shock and
despair she experiences in her life. She develops the habit of pain and the grit of
surviving in a milieu that is meaningless. She says that she has just glanced at the passing
face. That face is not much familiar but little known and wondered at the sudden gust of
pain. After an hour or two it came back again: It was a face very like your own. Your son
or daughter, I‘m certain (Souvenir).

A woman feels marginalized, cornered, even overwhelmed by the harsh and

unpleasant realities of the society. She demands some space in such a situation:

"Oh let me go out into the rain

....................
Then like a lizard I‘ll lie
Between sliding mud and water
,....................
And feel my limbs from time to time
As they send down roots and sprout shoots. "16

(Oh Let Me …)

She longs for some peace. She is tired of the unrest of her life which gives her
pain and suffering:

"This gnawing unrest that was sent

From far away mysteriously
....................
Destroying to elemental everything
All that I call me. "17 (Integration)

She like any other new woman has emerged with her own desires, ambitions and
quests to break away the shackles of age-old customs, beliefs and mores. But the attempt
to fight against the repressive forces of tradition and prescriptive roles based on idealized
modes of a bygone era and her desire of newer, wider horizons only results in her living a
dual existence; feel confused, angry and reactive. The style of her poetry is an exposure
 of all this. Isolation and defeat are the prime concern in most of her poems; ‘voyages and
when they begin’. Thereafter like Hopkins in ‘spring and fall’, this poet’s advice to a
child is to keep innocence in order to rise above superficialities and see sorrow and joy.
Loneliness has many faces. In “No more” the waking is “tireless, dull, flat
and/unprofitable” as the prince of Denmark also found it. The metaphor of separation is
quite home-spun with a touch of characteristic of feminism.

Isolation and defeat are the prime concern in most of Gauri Deshpande’s poems.
In Absentia is the fantastic and proper example of this theme. The protagonist of this
poem is suffering from the loneliness and frustration. The entire poem is full of symbols.
In the present poem rain is symbol of the hope for the protagonist. It is rarely, as in
‘Waiting’ 2 that the rain becomes a harbinger of the lover who actually presents himself.
The clouds had gathered all day long . And absently I had noted them. As I waited…Until
you stood at the door, drenched. Smelling of trees and rain. The exuberant Gauri
Deshpande excelled in the poem ‘Two self portraits’, The opening line: One learns to live
with. All the misconceptions about oneself .

Perhaps the poet thinks that the society does not permit an individual with true
identity and she treated the poem at the psychological level-how the self could react,
respond and disguise itself in order to lead the daily life without any disturbance. There is
a danger in over confidence about oneself-an approach to the humility of oneself-a sure
way to self respect. A cleansing process, it is better understood. Then is the witch of
oneself-with hurt bewilderment, one could accept, the lewd snigger. The poet suggests the
high intensity and severity of the satisfaction of the self, one would automatically protest
by saying that. I am not like that, meet. Knowing smiles only. At the next stage, the poet
is interested to state that there are behind factors that are invisible like treachery, crime or
untruth that are cruel and obscene and these could be understood if at all the individual
has s the smartness to perceive it in the image of the mirror-no other than its own self
image. She believes that there is certainly another self of hers and this definitely
understands the disguise form and for this, the poet would like to get a dream.

3.8 Confessional Content

 A poet like Gauri Deshpande who has in her possession-an anthology of poems to
their best number is best understood for her expression of thoughts on various themes. In
a poem like ‘A child waking’ she described about the tenderness of the infant. She wants
to weave the skill cloths for the infant. She praises the depth of the eyes of the infant and
also admires about the silky hair. The volume ‘The female of species’ is entirely dealt
with the feminine arena. There are also poems that handle the concept of death with
effectiveness. In the poem, ‘The death’, where the poet is quite mature enough to invite
death in the IV party by asking it. How long must I walk. These long and wind some
streets.

The Female of the Species is a poem of Gauri Deshpande. In the present poem she
talks about love, frustration and loneliness but there is no link about these thinks she talks
about. She also talks about the infant child in this poem and she also talks about the
innocence behaviours of the child. She also talks about the household thinks like the price
of tea and coffee, price of rice and wheat etc. Logically, the topics of conversation, the
price of tea, the scarcity of cheese, have nothing to do with what the speaker desires to
communicate love and despair and ungrateful children. However, by making such a
comparison the poet tries to lay emphasis on the frustration experienced by women in
every sphere their dissatisfaction with relationships which is accentuated by their
discussion of the material world.

She experiences the all-pervasive pain that comes through body, flesh, heart and
spirit. The poetry of Gauri Deshpande is overflowing with an overwhelming sense of
frustration, discontentment, brooding over the past love and an unsuccessful waiting. The
lady doth weep too much. There is only one mood to weep in nostalgia. Monika Varma
puts across the same obsession of Gauri Deshpande while talking about her poetry: Our
women poets weep too much in nostalgia. In her frustration, Gauri Deshpande has made
death a part of her collective unconscious. She finds a bitter disgusting odour emanating
from new-bathed earth in her poem The Renascence and in her view. I wonder why
instead of the baked fragrance . The bitter stench arises out of the new-bathed earth. It is
the smell of a death she‘s hiding in her womb.
 Between Birds is the first collection in which she deals with the theme of death.
She describes the different faces of death in her poems. She praises and curses the last
event of life. Death is the last stage of the human being. She also deals with the theme of
love in this collection. She also deals with the man woman relationship in this collection.
She also talks about the Indian marriage. She deeply discusses about the seven commands
which is known as Saptpadi in Hindu marriage.

Appropriate images of color like brown patch, gray blood grass, dusky fall,
yellow tipped leaves, yellow winter, to suggest death are used, finally leading to the
overwhelming question. In order to be gathered into the sanctuary of his arms. Further,
reiteration of this willingness is laconically worded in the haiku ‘Farewell’, Death has
struck a note, Clear and blue on the piano, and I go.

This is not to suggest that there is no trepidation but it would be indecent to

disturb the house by the expression of fear. I can see the noose wait/but fear to tremble/as
I may quake the noise. But familiarity after all, breed contempt enough to say; ‘I go over
it,I got used to it. All dying and my living’.

One even learns to live with the bitter stretch; ‘the smell of a death’ hidden in the
earth instead of the ‘baked fragrance’ after the first rains, as the last poem of the
collection ‘The Renascence’ puts it. There is contradiction in speech and thought in the
poetry of Gauri Deshpande. She has not revealed a consistent attitude towards death. In
her poem Death, she says.

". . . you are my friend,

My brother who held my hand at every bend,
My lover about whose neck I must fall now. "18
(Death)
Having declared death to be a Reliever, Lover, Friend and Brother, she expresses
a very distinct attitude towards death in her other poems. In Habit, she says all dying and
her living has become her habit when she grew up. However, later on in the same poem
when she finds death approaching her she presents it as a stranger.
 "Now when I see him crossing a street
to me, coming swiftly
How am I going to get used to him,
It‘s the first time
And I‘ve had no time. "19
(Habit)

She expresses her horror at the mere thought of death in Kalpavraksha. She
wishes for rain and it pours down. The poet says. ,I was frightened thinking. This fatality
of fulfillment would lead me into strange Lands.

A Change of Seasons is a poem in which she writes about the mental and physical
depression. Family Portraits is her other poem deals with Iru’s hypochondrias and gloom.
Her poems are very modern in her themes and treatment. Disillusionment and boredom of
modern life are well narrated and discussed in her poems.

Memories a sin “In absentia” which is deeply nostalgic poem in six short sections
conveying various moods redolent with memories of meeting and parting, such as, I
remember you did not lift you hand. To touch lightly upon my head.

The poet uses an unusual striking image of a bird to describe her mental state of
loss, shock and bewilderment and irrelevance in: ‘But can bring to mind only the bird
trapped in the beam of sudden light’. A similar monsoon of memories is seen again in
‘Waiting’ where the hope of meeting deferred makes the heart sick, though sometimes
unexpectedly there are delicately sensitive moments of beauty also encased in sun blank
silence. I had meant to wait for tears. But a flight of red. Dragonflies distracted me. And
kept from remembering. The shape of your lips.

But there is nothing and superficial in the poet’s love; its integrity has the dignity,
honesty and sanctity of a worshipper’s devotion for shiv . Since no physical pleasure is
expected in love, the physical pain in it also does not matter . If devotion is a new
dimension of love, an equally noble sentiment of maternal love is also an important part
of the poet’s world of experience. Another striking quality of some of the poems in the
 second collection is the lilting line, occasionally regularly rhymed also with marked
prosodic measure that makes it heard. Sometimes musical effect is created with
alliteration as the repetition of the ‘h’ sound in.

Gauri Deshpande thus emerges as a post of significance, with a steady integrity

that inherent her. She infect explores her psychic geography with the curves of her
exceptional feminine energy to articulate her variegated moods, and perceptions. The
quest for an emotional liaison with the outer world of flux or her failure to establish the
basic connection with the established conventions becomes the central burden of her
poetry. Her confessional outpourings have been explored in terms of crystalline images
and symbols which serve as designs on the tapestry of her emotive feelings. With a
frankness and openness unusual in the Indian context Gauri Deshpande, expresses her
need for love.
3.9 Main themes of Gauri Deshpande’s Poetry

Gauri Deshpande’s poetry is full of gloom and pain. She was deeply influenced by
the modern scientific theories like Darwinism, evolutionism, which have brought drastic
change in the entire gamut of human thought. Deshpande seeks to highlight the idea of
‘misery and discontent’; of living ‘in disharmony’ with decadent dreams; ‘barren and
bereft’ of hope and consolation that characterize human lives in modern times. Her
treatment of life and the world around her is most scientific and as such, she finds a man
almost at the mercy of natural causation as Thomas Hardy did a century ago. Her poetry
is stuffed with a sense of suppression, tyranny, deep-rooted gloom, melancholic fancies
and helplessness. Patriarchy creates and recreates the psychic conditions for women’s
subordination which does not exist in the form of thin veil of false consciousness but the
very flesh and blood of female subjectivity.

After her M. A. she published her first poem in English entitled Between Births in
1968, in 1970 she published another poem Lost Love and in 1972 she published Beyond
the Slaughterhouse. She expresses her immediacy of experience through a tightly webbed
series of images in poems as A Change of Seasons, Migraine and The Female of the
Species. Family Portraits poetically represents an entire lineage. Deshpande boldly
encounters sexuality in Between Births. Her next collection Lost Love also breaks away
from the sensuous and honeyed treatment of conventional love.

Her treatment of sex is more spiritual than carnal and it is seen to be the beginning
of a process ultimately leading to spiritual fulfillment. Her primary concern with man-
woman relationships is expressed in a series of poems ranging from the treatment of
sexual love and abortion to barrenness and old age. She projects the dilemma of a lost
love through poems such as The Eclipse where she is forced to accept her alienation and
December where she accepts love but hesitates because it chains and confines her. A clear
progression towards accepting poetry as a social outgrowth can be noted in Beyond the
Slaughter House where she shows a rare insight about employed women in the busy city
of Bombay. A woman who has lost her responsiveness to love is explored in the Work of
a Day Woman and replication of the loss even of gender roles within a changing society
finds expression in Where Do Lonely People Live. The existential torment of the modern
woman finds expression in Deshpande’s poetry. After her mother’s death in 1970, she
wrote her memoir in Marathi for a newspaper and commenced a new tradition of Marathi
writing with the idea of narrating Kahani or women’s tales. She started with Ekek Pan
Galawaya (1980), and then she wrote above mentioned books consequently.

Daruwalla, Keki N, Two Decades of Modern Poetry,Deshpande through her

poems probed into the deeper intricacies of the fragmented, neurotic and disjointed
modern society. Her poems depict life in its clinical details, representing facts as facts
without any attempt on her part to gloss over them or idealize them. She can be compared
to Thomas Hardy for her treatment of good and evil elements. In his epic tragic novels
Hardy offered a new dimension of the spirit of tragedy. The tragedy in Hardy is brought
about by the blind and malicious Immanent Will which regards human life as mere
playthings. In Deshpande human efforts seem puny endeavors caught in the great web of
inexorable fate. A note of sadness and loss prevails over her poetic fabric. However this
note of sadness and loss is not to be construed as something linked with her sense of
defeatism or pessimism: but like Hardy she believed herself to be a melodist, an
individual who had faith in the human efforts to bring about changes in the universe. It is
fairly a gleaming hope of endurance and perseverance in a human being that makes her
outcry, like a great prognosticator, about the littleness of human endeavors and also the
littleness of their achievement even after much lab our and strife. In a poem entitled
Female of the Species, Deshpande writes, ‘Sometimes you want to talk about love and
despair and the ungratefulness of children. A man is no use whatever then. You want then
your mother or your sister or the girl with whom you went to through the school, and
your first love ,and her first child a garland your second. You sit with them and talk . She
sews and you sit and sip and speak of the rate of rice and the price of tea and the scarcity
of cheese. You know both that you 've spoken of love, despair and ungratefulness of
children’.

The title of the poem contradicts the informality of expression that follows. The
title in itself makes one conscious of the aspect of the female as ‘the other’ and also about
the fact that Deshpande was fond of Darwin’s work on the origin of species. The term
‘species’ in itself makes one wonder at the exclusiveness it represents as how many of us
would have said ‘the male of the species’ for the masculine is taken as the norm and the
female as the aberration of nature. Juliet Mitchell in her essay Femininity, Narrative and
Psychoanalysis talks about the marginalized and repressed condition of women.
Deshpande’s poem goes on to state how when a woman needs to have a candid heart to
heart talk on love and despair or about children, talking to a man has no value or solace.
It is difficult for a woman to narrate and chronicle her experience for history or she has
always segregated and marginalized her identity as that of the as opposed to the thereby
forcing her to acquire an alternate identity in sharp contrast to that of the absolutely
powerful image of the man. It is the construction of Woman as the quintessential ‘Other’
that Simone De Beauvoir identifies as fundamental premise to women's oppression in her
seminal work ‘The Second Sex’. The capitalized 'O' in ‘other’ indicates the wholly other.
Robin Liftoff in his study ‘Language and Woman’s Place’ goes a step further to assert
how the personal identity of women is also linguistically submerged. He goes on to state
how ‘the marginality and powerlessness of women is reflected in both the ways women
are expected to speak and the ways in which women are spoken of. ’
 In her ‘The Second Sex’ Beauvoir observed, ‘Woman has ovaries, a uterus, hose
peculiarities imprison her in her subjectivity, circumscribe her within the limits of her
own nature. It is often said that she thinks with her glands.

Aristotle identified feminine identity as one afflicted with a natural defectiveness.

Beauvoir claimed; ‘I cannot be just to books which treat woman as woman…My idea is
that all of us men as well as women should be regarded as human beings. ’In the poem
Female of the Species Deshpande talks how a woman presumes that when she seeks to
unburden herself another woman would make a better understanding heart hearing her
saga of pain for her language of feeling and communication differs from that of a man in
its essence and spirit. The poem about woman sharing her heart with a female confidante
reminds us of The Color Purple, a great American novel written by Alice Walker. This
novel is a story of coloured women and their sorrows. In the novel a colored woman
unlocks her heart in the form of letters to her estranged sister and finds a new meaning of
life by coming into close communion with her husband’s mistress. Deshpande refers to a
sheltered all-female world in her poem which also reminds us of Mahesh Dattani’s world
of anguished women in his Bravely Fought the Queen. The women indulge in ordinary
conversations, gossips and small talks to hide their inner insecurities in the same way as
the Dattani’s female protagonists wear facades of sophistication in the in the three act
play. The façade collapses in the course of the play revealing their bruised and battered
selves struggling against the nothingness and futility of their life. The protagonists in the
poem Female of the Species try to find a catharsis in sharing and purging themselves of
their repressed emotions and frustrations. These women are housewives whose world
consists of managing rations, paying bills, providing food, health and succor to all in the
family. It is a common belief that no matter how much a mother has to tolerate, she is
fated to love her children and so, perhaps in context of their perceived ungratefulness the
feeling of despair manifests itself. Adrienne Rich in her seminal work of Woman Born
goes on to affirm; ‘most labor in the world is done by women: that is a fact. Across the
world women bear and care for children, raise, process, and market food, work in
factories and sweatshops, clean the home and the office building, engage in barter, create
and invent group survival. Procreative choice is for yeomen an equivalent of the demand
for the legally limited working day which Marx saw as the great watershed for factory
workers in the nineteenth century’.

The poem ‘The Female of the Species’ talks about these innumerable nameless
faces that keep life going on sacrificing themselves for the sake of others. The poem
recounts how at the end of the day they who surrender their lives for others also yearn for
some love or acknowledgement of the care that they have so profoundly bestowed. Such
women can be found anywhere across India, chatting with their saris tucked as they make
a vociferous group of chattering women who seem happy and content but within their
hearts hold secret desires which were stifled or sacrificed a long time ago.

The poem alludes to the fact how the Constitution of India ensures gender
equality in its preamble as a fundamental right but also empowers the state to adopt
measures of positive discrimination in favor of women by ways of legislation and
policies. The poem also refers to the fact that discrimination is not merely a socio cultural
phenomenon but a psychological condition which is integrated deep within one’s own
consciousness. The woman speaker makes it clear that she would be able to find a
sympathetic confidante in a fellow suffering woman, for men would not be able to
comprehend the sheer intensity of her experience. The late 1960s Women’s Liberation
Movement was based on this premise of sharing and bonding that believed in the
ideology of ‘personal is political’. This was however over laid by the New Age
Movement which believed in the new notion of ‘personal-for-it own-sake’.

Whether it was motherhood, womanhood, marriage, relationships or life itself,

Gauri Deshpande had the ability to be brutally honest, much to the chagrin of the male
establishment of the time. In the Female of the Species which has been identified as one
of her most autobiographical poems, she also goes on to examine and scrutinize her
difficult relationship with her daughters, not sparing herself or them and in the process,
filtering her own experiences into evocative literature the hallmark of many a great
woman writer.
 In the poem ‘A Change of Seasons,’ she reiterates the bodily malaise, the
uncouth emotional fits and the ever-prevailing sense of fear and despondency. Even in the
month of June, she shivered from ‘a deep foreboding. In another poem named’Family
Portraits,’ Deshpande offers a glimpse into the life of a family not in possession of a
good living. Barely acquiring sufficient means of survival the members’ present wry look
of sadness and loss. The poem highlights the fortitude, forbearance and struggles against
poverty that had immunized the members of the family depriving them humanity and
warmth.

Migraine is another poem in which she again talks about the sadness and loss;
‘you rage and pretend you’re dead. But it’s clever, goes on–until, tears streaming from
pain-destroyed face, mouthing long, inarticulate screams, your body heaves up its very
guts and you cry, reduced to sweat-drenched, shivering, whimpering lump of agony,
smelling of sickness and vomit, humiliation. ’The magnitude of pain intensifies as the
poem progresses. The poetic persona complains of a melancholy and claustrophobic
existence that creeps into senses and gains control over emotions and goes on to conclude
how there is no easy respite from that numbing pain. There is no alleviation for the
malaise; nothing can soothe the senses, or offer comfort or consolation.

Pain can be merely redeemed temporarily through momentary escapade and

permanently through death, and like Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale Deshpande too seems to
suggest that the final respite in life from pains of existence can only be sought through
death. The poem ‘I Wanted to weep’ reflects upon the numbing pain and suffering of
modern life and the poetic persona hopes that tears would offer a release and respite from
the morbidity of life. In ’The Guest’ the sense of despondency is stifling while The Air
Fills chokes us with the sensation of all engulfing loneliness; ‘I wanted to weep for you
and me. But I had already spent. All tears in useless mourning’s. So now I watch arid
eyed as my fingers open slowly and let you go. ’

In the poem Two Portraits she negotiates between the two splits of her own self,
and much like the Joseph Conrad’s protagonists she tries to come to terms with the
dormant evil instincts ingrained within her own consciousness engendered by the forces
of darkness dominating the world around her, and the deep rooted residues of virtues that
still remain within her somewhere unknown and unseen. The poem manifests a Freudian
moral conflict. She talks about the two levels of consciousness, one part reacting,
responding to the daily activities of life and the other self lying dormant within the depths
of the unknown reminding us of the Freudian notions of id, ego and the super ego. The
readers become aware of the poetic persona’s desire to transcend the self-fix, get released
from the stress of negotiating between the two splits of her selfhood. Her poems finally
symbolize an integration and assimilation of both the instincts. She acknowledges the
dormant forces of evil and violence in human nature and hints at the bitter struggle that
the soul has to undergo while living in this modern world of lost hope where things fall
apart and there is no strong centre of faith that can hold of sustain us. Her poems
exemplify her reading of Darwin’s Origin of Species which deprived man of firm faith in
god thereby ushering a big blow to Christianity. Deshpande’s poems depict humanity in
its raw details without any romantic idealization whatsoever. Her treatment of death is
casual and bold. She invites death to come and meet her; ‘How long must I walk. These
long and wind some streets. Before I meet you?’

Some of Gauri Deshpande’s poems reveal a somewhat sentimental outlook as

well. In a nostalgic mode and schmaltzy tone, she celebrates the sweet-sour
reminiscences of her lost love. The poem The Guest pronounces her agony of her parting
with her lover. The poem In Absentia deals with the theme of thwarted love. The poetic
persona expresses her sense of displeasure in parting, and her ache of waiting for union.
In the poem ‘We Hadn’t the Guts’ she comes to term with her past with some guilty
feeling and pain.

The tone is that of repentance and realization. The poet emphasizes on the need of
honesty and trust in love to sustain a relationship. In the words of S. P Sree; ‘Deshpande
could write with an authority and she never deviated from the simple usage of words. ’
Her imagination was vivid and graphic and she could spread herself to various human
thoughts, she was a woman who possessed a vivid understanding of the multiple layers of
the human mind. Feminist Ideology in Deshpande’s Poetry.
 Gauri Deshpande confesses a number of things exclusively related to herself, self
as a woman with her strong feminine sensibilities. Her poems are indeed an intense study
of her personal traumas and tribulations that she faced in her married life bereft of
emotional bounding. The relationship between men and women are the prime concern in
the poems of Gauri. She focuses on male love, female sensibilities, search for the identity,
suppressed desires of female, longing for the respect, loneliness etc are the main themes
of her poems. Her female characters have become the victims in the hands of male. She
displays the power and criticality of male dominated society.

To conclude we may say that Gauri Deshpande writes on the little things of
everyday life. She is very simple in her narration and writing. Even an ordinary man can
understand the language of her. She shares her personal experience with her readers
through her poems.

3.10 Over Views of Shashi and Gauri Deshpande’s Works

There are the following works of the Shashi and Gauri Deshpande’s Works:

(1) THEMES OF THAT LONG SILENCE

This novel was written about the Jaya and Mohan`s life. This novel
developed around the character of Jaya. She was the main character of the novel.
Shashi Deshpande explains very clearly how she was suffered from the family
and beard with her husband. Dilip and Kusum were brother and sister. Their
parents thought that Dilip was born for success from the very beginning he was
ready to do anything that helped him to get on. His motto was in his own exorable
English,’ Whose fathers what goes!’ Where Kusum was carried the aura of defeat
about her from her birth.

This was concept of parents about their children they were always thought
that the son was so important and the daughter had only worked women. So that
Shahi Deshpande give that contrast the between girl and boy both were born with
same worm. When the child is born into the world she/he has no idea about
her/his sex. After her/his childhood his/her parents create two ways a girl or a boy
so that that concept always growth with her/his. Shashi Deshpande was not
written of all those innocent young girls. She has written of till now, girls who
intimately mated themselves with the right men nor she writing a story of a
callous insensitive husband and a sensitive, suffering wife. She writes her
autobiography and explains the condition of women during that period. She
explains how she was suffered and what was the concept of that period to
understanding and different between two genders male and female. Shashi
Deshpande deals directly with feminist narrotological preoccupation with the
context of how a woman writes. Her writings she explained her condition in the
novel during after her marriage life. She was suffered so much. The stillness, the
silence reminded her of something’s. It was like sitting in a stationary train. There
is movement, bustle, noise all about you, your train is gathering speed, and you’re
off. Then the sudden shocking silence and the gleaming rails outside tell you it
was another train that has left, the other train that moved away. Your own
movement has been only an illusion. You are right where you were all along. The
truth was that we had both lost the props of our lives. Deprived of his routine, his
files, his telephone, his appointments, he seemed to be no one at all; certainly not
that man, my husband around whose needs and desires her own life revolved.
There was nothing he needed, so there was nothing for me to do, nothing she had
to do. Her own career as a wife was in jeopardy. The woman who had shopped
and cooked, cleaned, organized and cared for home and her family with such
passion. where had she gone? We seemed to be left with nothing but our bodies
and after we had dealt with them we faced blankness. The nothingness of what
had seemed a busy and full life was frightening. She gave the explanation about
suffering. In this novel she explained how she was suffered during that long
period.

The fiction named That Long Silence there is one more character found
who is brave named Jaya and her high intellectual expose a lot of things to her in
her process of feeling, thinking and reacting situation and moment. Jaya is not
totally a mad and clean and silent and not found any longer to mute sufferer.
There is in ‘The Binding Vine’, in which Mira’s poems and other document and
diaries draw her full attention. There is an establishment of Urmila and in which
she was try to construct a worst sketch of an energetic girl, who is live in a very
worst condition and not happy with her married life and compelling to live in a
forceful life. In ‘A Maths of Time’ brilliant work in which Kalyani’s character
described oppression made her silence and quite. And she was always
misinterpreted by her rounding people.

Shashi Deshpande gives the information about her autobiography and

explains the condition of women during that period. She explains the role of
women’s as a wife and explain the heartily feelings of her own condition. The
truth was that we had both lost the props of our lives. Deprived of his routine, his
files, his telephone, his appointment, he seemed to be no one at all; certainly not
that man, my husband, around whose needs and desires my own life revolved.
There was nothing he re-used. So there was nothing for me to do, nothing. I had
to do. My own career as a wife was in jeopardy. The woman who had shaped and
cooked; cleaned; organized and cared for her home and her family with such
passion. Where had she gone? We seemed to be left with nothing but our bodies,
and after we had dealt with them we faced blankness. The nothingness of what
had seemed a busy and full life was frightening. I had asked her once. I had heard
her curing men her husband, her brothers, her father-as wasters, good for
nothings, drunkards. I suppose it was hard for him. He did not know what waiting
was. He had always moved steadily from one moment to the next. But for women
the waiting game stars early in childhood. Wait until you get husband comes. Wait
until you have kids. Yes, ever since. I got married. I had done nothing but wait.
Waiting for Mohan to come home, Waiting for the children to be born, for them to
milk, the servant, them lunch-carrier man. And above and beyond this , there had
been formed that other waiting…. Waiting fearfully for disaster, for a catastrophe.
I’ve escaped it today, its still there round the corner waiting for me; the locked
door, the empty house, the messenger of doom bringing news of death. With
 Mohan’s confession. I was actually relieved. Here it was at last-my disaster. No
more waiting no more apprehension, no more fears. A husband is like a sheltering
tree. Without the tree, you’re dangerously uprooted and vulnerable. This followed
logically. And so you have to keep the tree alive and flourishing, even if you have
to water it with deceit and lies. This too followed, equally logically. But in
Saptagiri we had a creeper that was watered and matured assiduously; yet it died-
of too much water, of white ants in the mute that destroyed its roots. He spoke to
me of his Spartan boyhood, of walking to school in the rain, without an umbrella,
of the wet mud-spattered clothes he could not change out of because he had no
others.

He saw strength in the woman sitting silently in front of the fire, but I saw
despised. I saw despair so great that it would not voice itself. I saw a struggle so
bitter that silence was the only weapon. Silence and surrender. Almost worse to
me than this constant noise had been the sense of being invaded, not just by
sounds, but by a multitude of people and their emotions as well. Anger, fear,
hatred, only, tenderness, love-all of these came to me as I lay in bed, a fascinated
listener. Sometimes at night, when there was a diminuendo in all sands, I had
heard even the tinkle of a women’s bangle distinctly. Mohan had managed to get
the job. I never asked him how he did it. If Gandhari, who bandaged her eyes to
become blind like her husband, could be called an ideal wife too. And there was
enough for Mohan to send to his father- for Sudha’s fees, Vasant’s clothes and
Sudha’s marriage. His words, and even more his peevish, complaining tine, gave
me a peculiar feeling. There were my lines. It was I who should be saying them.
Since we got married, both of us had been scrupulous about playing out our
allotted roles.

(2) A MATTER OF TIME

Deshpande’s most of the works deal with the problems of woman in India
and domestic life of the women. In 1996 A Matter of Time was first time
published in India. In the present poem she deals with the silent sufferings of
three generations of women. The leading women characters like Kalyani,
Manorama, Sumi and her daughters act and react to the various situations in their
life. Kalyani represents the character of weak and frail female in the present work.
She suffers silently without making any complaints to anybody in the family and
endures all the problems. She sacrifices her life to perform her duty as an ideal
Indian woman. Thus, she represents the old generation of Indian woman. Sumi
also like Kalyani suffers from the many problems and she also makes any
complaints to anybody in the family or outside the family. She lives her tragic life
with keeping silence and endures all troubles with cool mind.

Set in present-day Karnataka, A Matter of Time explores the intricate

relationships within an extended family, encompassing three generations of men
and women. At the heart of the novel is eighteen-year-old Aru, struggling to
understand her father's `desertion' and her mother's 'indifference', and in the
course of a few turbulent months, forging entirely unexpected relationships that
are destined to change the course of her life. Sumi the main woman character of
the novel is different from the women protagonists of Shashi Deshpande's earlier
novels. Sumi is gradually emancipating herself as a new and independent woman
who has evolved from utter desolation and bitterness linked with invisible chains
of patriarchal pressure and family responsibilities. Gopal's desertion makes her
experience the trauma of a deserted wife and the anguish of an isolated partner.
When Gopal walks out on her for reasons even he cannot articulate, Sumi returns
with their three daughters, Aru, Charu and Seema, to the shelter of the Big House,
where her parents, Kalyani and Shripati, live in a strange silence: they have not
spoken to each other in the last thirty-five years. As the mystery of this long
silence is unraveled, a horrifying story of loss and agony is laid bare, a story that
seems to be repeating itself in Sumi's life.

Kalyani and Shripati, Manorama and Vithalrao, Goda and Satyanarayan,

Premi and Anil, Devaki and Vasudev Murthy, Ramesh and Chitra and also Sudha
and PK are the leading characters. This juxtaposition is possible thanks largely to
the double perspective which she presents thus, exploring the simultaneity of past
and present, thematically and structurally. As Ritu Menon has noted, in all her
novels, the past is presented in the first person, the present in the third. In a
decisive break, the first person voice in the novel is that of Gopal even though
both Sumi and Gopal have imaginary, tortured discussions in their own minds
with each other throughout the novel. The all-pervasive hold of the patriarchal
worldview is made obvious right in the beginning of the novel in the description
of the ancestral house. The ancestral house, Vishwas or the Big House is a living
presence in the novel. The name of the house is not derived from the abstract
quality of trust but from an ancestor, the man who came down South with the
Peshwa’s invading army and established the family there. Still, the house
proclaims the meaning of its name by its very solidity. This very solidity also
makes it obvious that it has been built by a man not just for himself, but for his
sons and his son’s sons. The omniscient narrator conducts us on a tour of the
exterior of the house: the front yard is bare and nothing it seems can ever grow
there; the family entrance is at the side of the house where the outhouse is
situated; the back garden is full of towering, giant trees, while on the fourth side
of the house everything grows wild and untamed. The ‘schizophrenic’ exterior of
the house is mirrored in its interior. ‘A long passage running along the length of
the house bisects it with an almost mathematical accuracy, marking out clearly the
two parts of its divided personality. Deshpande had once admitted to Usha Tambe
that she always begins with the characters first; even the themes emerge from the
characters In the novel, Gopal abandons his wife and children because, ‘I stopped
believing in the life I was leading, suddenly it seemed unreal to me and I knew I
could not go on. ’ This action prompts her father, Shripati to take Sumi and her
daughters back to her parental home. Aru and the other family members attempt
to find out the reason behind Gopal’s ‘baffling’ decision only to realize that they
do not really know him. The question of identity resurfaces when Gopal is
informed by Kalyani and others that Sumi has changed. When Kalyani comes to
know about it she cries like an animal in pain, ‘No, my God, not again. ’ Gopal’s
desertion is of a different order but still, Shripati, her husband has cut himself off
completely from her and has not spoken to her for more than thirty years and she
fears that the nightmare is being revisited on her daughter, Sumi. As Ritu Menon
notes, it is ironical that both Shripati and Gopal have taken sambas of sorts; both
of them have renounced house holding much before the prescribed time and
before they have fulfilled their duties. In doing so, they have left the house
holding duties to the women. Sumi remembers Gopal telling her that it is never
possible to disclaim the past.

In her Mother’s house again, she finds herself inclined to agree with him.
‘Gopal was right. Kalyani’s past, which she has contained within herself, careful
never to let it spill out has nevertheless entered into us. it has stained our bones. ’
Sumi reflects that the potential to walk out on her was always there in Gopal.
Once, while arguing about the word Sahriday, Gopal had stressed that there is no
word in English that can fit the concept because it is a practical language; it has
no words for the impossible. Although Sumi manages to keep her feelings on a
tight leash, it is Aru who finds it difficult to come to terms with the situation.
Sumi understands what she is doing: she is trying to reclaim, not her father, but a
situation of which he was a part. Sumi urges Aru to let him go for her own sake.
Aru is soon to realize something else: they are trapped into inactivity by that
greatest of fears the fear of losing face. Gopal’s desertion is not just a tragedy; it is
both a shame and a disgrace. In a joint family, it won’t be so visible, but now the
rent in the fabric, gaping wide, is there for all to see.

Deshpande believes that there is a vast difference between the world of the
male and female. However, Gopal is different in the sense that he is able to
present the whole aspect of his personality to a female and not just a part of
himself. But, the sharp demarcation in a man’s and a female’s worldview still
exists. When Gopal saw Sumi put the baby to her breast he felt that they belonged
together, they were together in a magic circle in a way in which he never could
be. ‘A man is always an outsider for a woman, from the moment she is pregnant,
and there is an overriding reason for living, a justification for life that is loudly
and emphatically true. A man has to search for it always and forever. ’ In his quest
to discover himself and man’s relation to the universe he realizes, ‘Emptiness is
always waiting for us. All human ties are only a masquerade. ’ However, Ritu
Menon makes a pertinent point,

“Would Sumi, a daughter, a wife, and most importantly a

mother, ever feel the need to walk out of her family? If she
did, would she walk out? I suspect that my answers to both
the questions would have to be no. ”20

According to Gopal, destiny is just us, and therefore inescapable, because

we can never escape ourselves. However, Sumi wonders, ‘If Gopal’s life is shaped
by what he is what about us, the girls and me? We are here because of his actions:
how does this fit in?’ The mother-daughter relationship has also occupied an
important place in Deshpande’s fiction. She does not give much credence to the
mother as angel or goddess who is valorized in Indian culture. Instead, she
presents us with different facets of the mother-daughter relationship as she is
acutely aware that the prevalent patriarchal ideology is more often than not too
strongly ingrained in women for them to treat their daughters as human beings in
their own right. This is evident in Manorama’s treatment of Kalyani. Manorama
wanted a son; instead there was Kalyani. For Manorama she became the visible
symbol of their failure to have a son. Moreover, she fulfilled none of the dreams
Manorama had for her. When it was clear that Manorama could have no more
children, she became afraid that Vithalrao might adopt a son or marry again.

According to the narrator, the hero and heroine do not matter so much in
the story of an arranged marriage; it is the parents. The truth of this statement is
borne out in Manorama’s marriage to Vithalrao. Manorama was the daughter of a
poor village Brahmin while Vithalrao was an educated son of a well to do man
from Bangalore. Vithalrao’s father did not hesitate to do what could have damned
him in the society he lived in: make an offer to a girl’s father for his son. Also, it
was Manorama’s mother who had sent her daughter to Yamunabai’s school at a
time when schooling for a girl was something that could come in the way of her
marriage prospects. And she did this in spite of the fact that Yamunabai and most
her students were not Brahmins. Moreover, Manorama’s mother had induced her
husband to write a letter to Vithalrao’s father about the disaster that struck, just a
month before the wedding was to take place: Manorama ‘grew up. ’ When
Kalyani at last gave birth to a son he turned out to be mentally retarded. While
coming to Bangalore for the vacations, the four year old child somehow got lost at
VT station. Premi tells Aru, ‘Baba had gone to check the reservations, leaving
Amma with the children, when he returned the boy wasn’t there. ’ It is clear that
Shripati suspected Kalyani of deliberately losing the mentally retarded child
whom she found difficult to manage. Kalyani and her daughters did not see
Shripati for nearly two months as he went on searching around the city like a
madman for his lost son. Even though he was distraught and frantic for his son, it
was an act of public desertion as he left Kalyani and her daughters on the
platform, surrounded by curious strangers. After this, Kalyani like Sumi, later,
went with her daughters to the ancestral home. After being forced by Manorama
on her deathbed, Shripati returned back to Kalyani after more than two months.
However, he stayed in his room and never spoke to her again. Like Premi told
Anil, My father never spoke to me until I was ten. . . . the truth was a father who
stayed in his room, who never came out, never spoke to you. The first time he
really talked to her was after her medical exams when he summoned her to his
room to tell her that she was getting married to Anil. As stated earlier, the
husband-wife relationship does not exist in isolation. It gets affected by myriad
factors. Manorama never relented in her anger towards her daughter. There was
more to it than the disgrace of her coming back home, a rejected wife.
Manorama’s treatment of her daughter adversely affected her relationship with
Vithalrao and the rift between them never healed. Vithalrao had a stroke soon
after and for this, too, Manorama held her daughter responsible. Kalyani has
turned the very weapon employed against her into her armour. Her silence is a
mode of resistance which is highly potent because it does not allow anyone even a
glimpse of her feelings or thought process. It puzzles Aru to distraction as she
attempts to fathom the inscrutable nature of Kalyani and try to reconcile her
contradictory attitudes towards her. In her attempts at making sense of the
situation, she gradually moves towards an understanding that perhaps, whatever
we do, we are always giving the past a place in our lives. However, Kalyani has
come to terms with the past and she reminds Sumi of a spider she had seen a few
days ago, spinning an intricate delicate web into a beautiful design because of the
variety of relationships she has at present. As the narrator says, the family does
not seem to realise that ‘the real miracle is Kalyani herself, Kalyani who has
survived intact, inspite of what Shripati did to her, Kalyani who survived
Manorama’s myriad acts of cruelty. ’ During a conversation, the talk veers
towards a person who was interested in Goda and who died a year later. At this
point Goda shudders involuntarily, prompting Sumi to wonder whether it is this
that has helped Kalyani to endure everything; the fact that Kalyani has the right to
all the privileges of the wife of a living husband. After Shripati’s death, they find
in his will he has left the house to ‘Kalyani, daughter of Vithalrao and Manorama’
Goda had looked anxiously at Kalyani when Anil read the will, but for Kalyani,
clearly, there was no sting in the words that took away her marital status.

The words have given her back her identity. Sumi, who had begun to
reclaim herself by indulging in gardening, learning the scooter, becoming
economically independent and by writing plays, is suddenly killed in an accident
along with Shripati. It is interesting that the accident takes place when they have
just mentioned Madhav, the lost son. In fact Sumi takes a while to realize that
Shripati is referring to the lost boy. She is surprised that he is taking about the
child to her and turns around and sees a look of brooding tenderness on his face. It
is the only time that father and daughter utter his name and both die with it on
their lips. As Ritu Menon notes, it is ironical that Kalyani’s silence is broken with
the deaths of Shripati and Sumi.

Aru had rushed to Kalyani and kneeling by her huddled body said, Amma,
I’m here, I’m your daughter, Amma, I’m your son, I’m here with you. . . . It is Aru
who takes charge at home, doing all the things that have to be done. ‘She has the
concentration of a rope-walker, holding the weight of her grief in her two hands,
not as if it is a burden, but to balance herself. ’ Ever since she had heard Kalyani’s
 story from Premi, after initial tumult, she had been left with two images: a
woman, her two daughters by her side, frozen into an image of endurance and
desperation; and a man, moving all over a city, tirelessly searching for his lost
son. Even when Kalyani learnt about Sumi’s death and cried out ‘I lost my child
Goda’ Aru couldn’t help wondering whether it was a declaration of innocence
when it was too late and did not matter anymore or was she referring to Sumi. But
when she saw Goda envelop her in the folds of her love and compassion she
realized that it did not matter. Forgiveness has no place in this relationship, accept
all.

(3) THE BINDING VINE

In 1992 The Binding Vine was published in India by Penguin publisher. It

was republished in 1998 and after a decade in USA Feminist Press again
published it. Shashi Deshpande deals with the problems and issues of women of
middle class family in her novels. Her protagonists are very intelligent, smart,
sensitive and career oriented. Shashi Deshpande through her novels presents and
narrates the life of the frustrated and disappointed women of the male dominated
society. The present novel is a story of three women who are suffering from the
different problems. Kalpana, Mira and Urmi are the three leading women
characters around whom the entire novel revolves. Among these three Mira is
dead, Kalpana is unconscious and Urmi tries to find the real essence of life
through the life stories of formers.

The present novel opens with the death of Anu, Baiajji’s and Urmi’s
daughter. Urmi is soothed by the persons around her but no one can consol her.
Her fast friend Vanna is always stays at her side. To get out of her despair he
recalls many past incidents to Urmi. Though Vanna is distressed, he tries to to
help her in any way. He reminds the story of Mira and thus she slowly gets
 refreshment. From an old trunk Urmi gets out the poems of Mira and stars to read
them one by one. Thus, she gathers her strength and courage to face this critical
situation which arises in front of her. From the reading of these poems of a
teenager college girl Mira that she comes to know about the many facts of her life.
She comes to know that Mira was married off a man whom she didn’t like or love.
Thus, Urmi realizes that women’s life is full of miseries and many problems but
they keep silence and dare not to raise their voice against the male dominated
society. In the hospital Urmi meets Shakutai where Vanna works as a medical
social worker. Kalpana the eldest daughter of Shakutai is brought to the hospital
after she was raped and beaten. When Urmi sees her, she feels compassion for her.
She patiently listen her sufferings and ready to do something for her and keeps her
constant company. Kalpana slips into coma and Urmi tries to consol Shakutai by
saying that Kalpana is not responsible this trouble. There is nothing wrong to
dress up well, paint the nails and lips but she is trapped in the hands of male
monster. For a long time Urmi cannot understand her need to come here and listen
Shakutai. She realizes that her world is very different from that of Shakutai. Urmi
is constantly asked by Shakutai that what she shall do at that time she expresses
her own tormented cry and helplessness at the time of Anu’s death. She thinks that
she could not do anything to save her. Non violence, brotherhood, love, care,
aloofness are the only words of the dictionary they are not found at all in the real
life of a woman.

The present novel is not only the story of Urmi but it is the same story of
Shakutai and Mira also. The journey of novel begins with the story of Urmi and
with the passage of time many characters join with her. The main plot of the novel
is about Urmi and her sorrow and grief of her dead daughter Annu. The sub plot
of the novel deals with the story of Kalpana and Mira. These two plots mingle
with each other in such a way that readers cannot make it different. Thus, the
resent novel is a tale of three women and their actions and reactions to the
particular situations.

(4) ROOTS AND SHADOWS

 The woman protagonist in Roots and Shadows is the new woman Indu.
Indus, an educated young woman, is highly sensitive. She starts aspiring to
become independent and complete in herself. She brushes aside all the age-old
beliefs and superstitions prevalent in the society. As a motherless child, she was
tended by the members of the joint family who never denied her any amount of
care and affection. Old Uncle, Kaka, Atya and other family members always
cushioned her position in the family. But now she finds the dominant Akita, a
senior member and a mother surrogate in the novel, and even the family to be a
hindrance in achieving her goal of attaining independence and completeness.
Indus develops an aversion to the natural biological functions of the female as
mother and has apathy towards bearing a child. She develops a vague sense of
guilt and feels that her womanhood closes so many doors for her. Defying the
traditional role she is expected to play, Indus seeks fulfillment in education and a
career. She works as a journalist for a woman's magazine but gives it up out of
disgust for writing only about women and their problems and starts working for
another magazine. Indu recollects that she has surrendered herself to her husband
Jayant step by step, not mainly for love but to avoid conflict. She resorts to
deception by putting up a façade of a happy married life which, as she feels, has
taken its toll on her personality.

Indu sprang out of the claustrophobic world with courage. She was free.
But often to be free is to be lonely. But there is always the beacon light of love.
And love leads to the certainty of marriage. But marriage invariably takes you
back to the world of women, of trying to please, of the fear of not pleasing, of
surrender, of self-abnegation. According to Shashi Deshpande, Indu in Roots and
Shadows, and many women in her other novels had their roots in the same place.
Shashi Deshpande herself says: Life as I saw it in a small town as a child, as a
growing girl. Life as I saw it in Mumbai as a woman. And I saw it, the sharp,
clean line dividing the world of men from the world of women. As a child I could
cross over easily from one world into the other. Often I was the bridge. But as I
grew up, I realized the bridge wasn't there anymore. I had ceased to be one
 myself. I was trapped into a world of my own. But, still, for some reason, outside
the claustrophobic world of womankind, motherless and with an absentee father,
didn't belong. She was an outsider because of this, so was Shashi Deshpande
because of an agnostic father who had broken from orthodoxy and family. But the
women all came to Shashi Deshpande. She watched them from a distance. The
girl who burnt herself because her mother said she had shamed the family by
talking to a boy in public. The clever girl taken out of school because she got
engaged and 'they' didn't want her to study any more. The ugly girl with huge feet
and hands and a humble fixed smile listening to her mother telling mine ‘he has
approved, but. . . ’ The smile wavering at the but, falling off. All these women
came to Shashi Deshpande from the society that she watched from a distance.
‘The childless widow, the deserted wife, the scheming woman. I saw these again
with Indu. And now, the knowledge shaped itself into words, ideas. . . The
vulnerability of women. The power of women. The deviousness of women. The
helplessness of women. The courage of women. In Roots and Shadows, Shashi
Deshpande portrays an independent woman from contemporary society defying
traditional roles and holding her womanhood responsible for closing many
adventurous doors to her. This woman Indu came to Shashi Deshpande from the
society in which Shashi Deshpande lived.

(5) THE DARK HOLDS NO TERRORS

Sarita in The Dark Holds No Terrors undergoes a similar trauma like Indu
in Rootsand Shadows. She confronts reality and in the end realizes that the dark
she feared really holds no terrors. Saru is a 'two-in-one woman. ' A doctor in the
day time and a trapped animal at night. She wants to be free and have an identity
of her own. She longs to break away from the rigid traditional norms. She hates
her parental home, yet the novel begins with Saru visiting her father after a gap of
fifteen years. On hearing through a friend about her mother's death a month ago,
Saru wants to visit her father's house from where she had left as a young woman.
Defying her parents to marry the man Manohar whom she loved. She now
returned to it as a well-established doctor and a mother of two children more out
of an urge to escape from the hell of life she is passing through. She appears to be
confused, hopeless, dull almost thoughtless and a recluse. Years on Sarita still
remembers her mother's bitter words uttered when as a little girl she was unable to
save her younger brother from drowning. Now, her mother is dead and Sarita
returns to the family home, ostensibly to take care of her father, but in reality to
escape the nightmarish brutality her husband inflicts on her every night. In the
quiet of her old father's company Sarita reflects on the events of her life: her
stultifying small town childhood, her domineering mother, her marriage to the
charismatic young poet Manohar, her children. As she struggles with her emotions
and anxieties, Sarita gradually realizes that there is more to life than dependency
on marriage, parents and other such institutions and she resolves to use her new
found truths to make a better life for herself. The Dark Holds No Terrors is a
tremendously powerful portrayal of one woman's fight to survive in a world that
offers no easy outs. Saru in The Dark Holds No Terrors has childhood scars. She
hates her mother to such an extent that she says, ‘If you're a woman, I don't want
to be one Saru's mother shows gender difference in her treatment of her son
Dhruva and daughter. ’ He's different. He's a boy these words establish the
traditional Indian mother against whom Saru has to rebel all her life.

The childhood experience of watching her brother sink into water and die
gives her a sense of guilt that she is responsible for the death of her brother. There
are recurrent images of enclosure in Roots and Shadows as well as in The Dark
Holds No Terrors. Indu constantly speaks of the dark room where so many
women had given birth. Saru is reminded of a room whose doors are closed
whenever she looks at her daughter, Renu. Saru, even when she comes back
home, ‘felt herself enclosed. ’ She enters into her room, she finds male clothes
hanging on the wall and realizes that she has no room of her own. The feeling of
being enclosed is associate with the mother's house and the protagonist wants to
escape from the enclosure, as revealed in Indu's dreams. The image of the
enclosed walls suggests the suffocation these women undergo not only in their
parental homes but the homes they have chosen as refuge. The novel is presented
 in four parts and even in the first part, all the important issues bitterness towards
the mother, insecurity of Manu, Saru's relationship with Manu and children,
Dhruva's death are touched upon. The rest of the three parts elaborate Saru's
introspection of and her reaction to different issues touched upon in the first part.
Shashi Deshpande works with a dubious world that falls between reality and
unreality. The truth behind Saru being the murderess of Dhruva, Manu being the
predator and Saru the prey is a matter that lies in this realm between reality and
unreality. The italicized description of Saru's traumatic but dream-like experience
when she slowly recognizes the predator to be her own husband defines the
dubious area better. It also lays all the cards on the table, takes away the element
of shock and the reader is left with nothing to anticipate about the monstrous
problem. The second part too begins with a dream suggestive of the uncertainty of
the destination and the inability to know what lies in store as she drifts by. The
dream suggests the definite need to proceed and confront whatever is at the end.
Though the novel deals with an uncertain situation, Shashi Deshpande makes use
of effective concrete images to drive home the reality and gravity of the problem.

The Dark Holds No Terrors presents the inner drama of Saru that has a lot
to do with the past. Hence narration is introspective sliding across the past and the
present through effective ‘quick cuts. ’ Occasionally, Shashi Deshpande sidetracks
into a bit of philosophizing on human life, grief, happiness, pain, man's aloneness
and so on, and these digressions make the novel a bit too wordy. She never leaves
anything unsaid to evoke rich suggestions. Some Indian elements like the son's
importance in the family, girls getting importance only during haldi-kumkums, a
woman possessed by Devi, find a natural place in the novel that deals with a
woman's status and the dichotomy within her personality.

(6) IN THE COUNTRY OF DECEIT

Shashi Deshpande’s recent novel In the Country of Deceit (2008) certifies

her position once again as one of the remarkable authors in the domain of Indian
English writing today. Deshpande, in her prolific writings accurately mirrors the
microcosm of India with its tradition, culture and social conventions. Love,
relationship, family, and home are some of the recurrent themes imbibed in the
narratives of her novels. At the same time she catches feminine sensibility too as
a perennial context. The title of each segment metaphorically informs about the
content. The story begins with a detailed description of the background where the
heroine Devayani is shown recovering from the demolition of her ancestral home
by building a modern house. As Devayani puts in the beginning:‘Ground Zero’. It
was I who said the words. And, in spite of the death knell sound of the words, in
spite of their association with destruction. . . For us, this was not an end, but a
beginning. A clean state (ICD1). The next segment “Epiphany” enkindles delicate
feelings in the heart of Devayani who experiences the epiphany ecstasy of love
and sex with her lover Ashok. The third segment is of immense significance in
the novel because it offers a close view to the dilemma and mental processes of
the protagonist who wins at last over the circumstances with a spiritual
realization in the fourth segment.

Devayani in the novel is one of Shashi Deshpande’s highly ambitious

characters which could take its proper shape in nearly 20 years. As the author
herself says in an interview to The Hindu: “Devayani, a character in an early
novel Come Up and Be Dead lingered. I ignored her, but she was quietly
persistent. Five novels and 20 years later after completing Moving On, I realized
that the next novel would be Devayani’s story’. The novelist contextualizes the
character of Devayani Mudhol with the mythical Devayani of Mahabharata. In
this story, though Devayani was the queen of king Yayati but it was Sharmishtha,
the other woman who enjoyed king Yayati’s love. Yayati’s Devayani allegorically
presents a woman ‘who never got what she wanted, who never understood what
love meant’. Through the context of Devayani Mudhol and Ashok Chinnapa, the
author re-tells this story from the perspective of the protagonist Devayani in the
first person. Apart from this, the novelist has made use of numerous letters
written by other characters to the heroine as fillers in the narrative. In due course
of the novel, wealso see how Devayani gradually matures and evolves from
Devayani to Devi and finally to Divya, a modern incarnation of the mythical
Devayani. The blurb of the book rightly highlights the following extract from the
novel that gives a clear indication of the anguish as well as the dilemma of the
heroine after her entrance in the country of deceit. Devayani feels perplexed to
understand the difference between right and wrong, love and the less accepted
versions of love in the society. But she gradually learns this through her
experiences of life and matures largely on account of her love relationship with
Ashok. When the narrative begins, we are introduced to Devayani in her 30’s
who has decided to live alone in a small town of Rajnur after the loss of her
parents. With this objective, she engages herself whole heartedly in the task of
gardening and takes up the job of teaching English to the school children which
offer her immense tranquility. She prefers solitude and sustains herself despite
loneliness which is occasionally defeated by memory and nostalgia. In order to
preserve her privacy and hard-won independence she decides to never get
married. It is ironical, however, that Devayani refuses the seemingly promising
marriage proposals brought by her friends and relatives for her and unexpectedly
enters into an illicit relationship with a middle aged DSP of Rajnur Ashok
Chinappa who is much older, married and father to a ten year old daughter.
Devayani is introduced to Ashok by a middle aged actress Rani in a small
gathering. Unexpectedly, after few days Ashok proposes Devayani by promising
her nothing in life. His call for love stimulates the lady in such a way that she
breaks all social barriers and steps into what Shashi Deshpande calls ‘the country
of deceit’. The ‘country of deceit’ could be interpreted in various ways.
Apparently it seems to be the world of love or desires. At the same time it also
refers to a state of mind when an individual is conscious of some guilt. As the
protagonist says: ‘I had entered the country of deceit. I could no longer be open
and honest with people I loved; I had to deceive them’. This shows that the
heroine is conscious of her act of hiding the reality and it is largely due to this
reason that the author has given the title In the Country of Deceit to the novel.
Highlighting the significance of the title Shashi Deshpande frankly says in an
online interview: ‘It seems odd, doesn’t it? But, when you think of what love
does to people and the things love makes them do. . . My novel explores the
slippery, treacherous terrain that love takes people into’. Love undoubtedly
happens to be perennial theme in Deshpande’s novels but in the present novel she
focuses more on the adult love between two highly mature couple. The author in
an online interview explains: “All my books are about relationships, particularly
this one which is about love between an adult man and an adult woman”.
Therefore, Devayani’s fall in love is though unexpected but not sudden because
she ruminates seriously over the pros and cons associated with her would-be
relationship with Ashok. When we carry out a compassionate examination of the
narrative we find that the threads of love, loyalty and deception intimately
intersect each other in the novel. Speaking thoughtfully about adult love the
author states: It is very difficult to judge if adult love is good or bad. Human
being always crave for love, even in death a dying man wants to hold someone’s
hands. . . My novel is about adult love. . . In my book, the first thing the man tries
to tell the woman is that ‘I promise you nothing. But I stand outside your gate
and cannot get you out of my mind’. I think that’s the real sign of love. Critics
often compare Shashi Deshpande with Jane Austen for her art of characterization,
magnitude of narrative and range of themes. Rumina Sethi writes in this
connection:

“Deshpande’s novels are about the ordinary lives of

women, too ordinary I might add. These are women who
live a humdrum existence. . . a world so common that I
sometimes think it does not deserve to be written about” 21

There is an epic quality in her writing with prime focus on the

consciousness of the characters rather than their appearances. In ‘In the Country
of Deceit’, Devayani undergoes a process of mental scrutiny regarding her terms
with Ashok and the bourgeois world of moral and ethical values in which she has
to justify herself. Devayani, in this novel is a prism like character with many
potential shades which emanate only when the spark of Ashok’s love falls on her.
She is many times deep inside than what she appears on the surface. He is a
highly thoughtful and self-conscious being which knows what it does. The events
and incidents in her life apparently seem to be accidental or coincidental but the
deeper observations inform that they are well deliberated actions. For instance,
she doesn’t accept or reject Ashok’s proposal immediately, instead, she thinks
over it for several days, evaluates every idea and then proceeds. She has an
insightful, meditative and philosophical temperament which gives her an
independent perception of life uncontrolled by social conventions. Devayani
reflects in the following manner: I had wanted to go to a place where no one
would know me. . . I felt as if I had shed my past and become a new person
altogether. I was not Devayani Mudhol, I was an anonymous Nobody. It felt
good. I knew then why people walked out of their homes leaving everything
behind.

These words reflect the heroine’s mood in complete dejection. Truly,

Devayani in the beginning of the novel is found least influenced by the flood of
marriage proposals and sex suggestions coming from her friends and relatives.
She is not even slightly moved by the advices such as ‘anything is to be preferred
or endured rather than marrying without affection’ or “collective experience has
value, individual experience has none’ or ‘the generating organ is the centre of all
pleasure’ but her friendship with the neighbor actress Rani opens that gate of
Ananda for her in which she enters to never return back. Devayani’s life changes
completely with her frequent clandestine meetings with Ashok. After this meet,
love and sex acquire prominence not only in the life of the protagonist but also in
the plot of the novel. The nectar of love certainly intoxicates Devayani but a
realization what she is doing persistently compels her to evaluate the two sides of
her being: ‘I believe in marriage, I believe that marriage means loyalty, it means
being honest. . . As for love, I think it does not justify deceiving another person, I
don’t think it excuses cruelty. . . ’. Devayani-Ashok love relationship is governed
primarily by head rather than heart and this feature differentiates their love from
the adolescent one. One may easily understand the distinction between adolescent
and adult love through these words of Devi when she plans to Trans-create her
 own love story into a film in order to revive the film career of her friend Rani: ‘I
was not thinking of the usual filmy love story. I am thinking of the real thing.
Between two adults . . . I am speaking of people in their thirties and forties’. The
third segment of the book which also provides the title for the novel may be
interpreted as a domain of deceit due to the illicit nature of the love relationship
between Devi and Ashok. The author however doesn’t seem to approve of this
idea. She believes in the concept of pure love which is highly respectable and
doesn’t demand or promise anything. It could be deceitful from societal point of
view but is divine if selfless and unconditional in nature. And the guilt that Devi
feels in the later half of the novel is not her own but it is generated due to the
pressures of social conventions. Her mental dilemma gives us an elaborate
examination and explanation of what a true love should be like. Deshpande
probes deep into the psyche of her young heroines especially when they rebel
against the traditional ways of life. The conflict in the psyche of Devayani
germinates when her sister bewares her that the society would call her Ashok’s
‘girl’ or ‘mistresses or a ‘whore’ or ‘flossy’ for her relation with a man who is
already married. In this novel through the character of Devi, the author has tried
to present the position of unmarried girls amidst the social and individual reality.
Devi thinks too much about herself, about Ashok, about love, sex and society.
Her too much thinking at times reminds us of Shakespeare’s hero Hamlet. She,
however, differs from Shakespearean hero in the sense that Hamlet fails to
resolve his conflict whereas Devayani succeeds in doing so.

(7) SMALL REMEDIES

Small Remedies, Shashi Despond’s latest novel was published in the year
2000. Here she adopts the structure of a biography within a biography. Madhu
Saptarishi, the protagonist is an urban, middle-aged, educated woman who has
been commissioned by a publisher to write a biography on a famous classical
singer, Savtribai Indorekar, doyenne of Gwalior Gharana. Madhu has been asked
to write Savitribai's biography wherein she was to be presented as a heroine. But
she refuses to present her as such since the latter had been a victim of gender
discrimination prevalent in our patriarchal social set-up. Imposing the current
concept of heroines on an old woman seemed not only impractical but out of
place to Madhu. Instead, she presents her as a young woman who had led a
sheltered life not only as a child in her parental home but also as a daughter-in-
law in an affluent Brahmin family. It is her daring independent nature that makes
her seek her own identity and elope with a Muslim table player to live in a strange
town. Although born in a tradition-bound orthodox Brahmin family, she makes a
name for herself as a great classical singer. Madhu records how Savitribai felt hurt
when her grandmother asked her to stop singing immediately during her
performance at a family gathering. ’

Savitribai's father with his unconventional ways stood out from society.
He was a widower, bringing up a daughter on his own with a male servant at
home. He would observe no rituals or religious rites and would openly indulge in
a drink or two every evening. But all his unorthodox behavior never invited any
censure or disapproval from society. He too could get away with his way of life
without any censure or disapproval from society. He had a mistress who was a
well-known Thumri singer. He visited her regularly and the people around knew
this. It was not much of a secret affair and the women gossiped about it. His
choosing a wife from his own class and mistress from another was quite
acceptable, but for a daughter-in-law pursuing a career in classical music was
scandalous. The gossip surrounding Savitribai in Neemgaon was that a Station
Director who had helped her get many contracts with the radio was her lover. He
was a regular visitor to her place. In course of time a daughter Munni is born to
her from him. As the child grows up, Madhu recalls how children would tease
her by calling the Station Director her mama, a euphemism for mother's lover.
Savitribai, while narrating her life story to Madhu, conceals the fact that she had
any lover, but the small town knew that the Station Director was her lover. In a
patriarchal set-up, as Savitribai was ‘A woman who had left her husband's
home’, she was considered an immoral woman. Like her father and father-in-
law, she too had led a most unorthodox life and had also paid a price for it as a
woman. To society, her way of life was inexorable, while her father's or, for that
matter, her father-in-law's was connived at.

Savitribai is ashamed of her youthful indiscretions as while relating her

life-story to Madhu, she conceals her intimate association with Ghulam Saab and
also hides the fact that she had a daughter from him. This shows Savitribai's
anxiety over her past's reckless action, which she considers a blemish on her
character and respectability. She keeps herself aloof from her illegal daughter
Munni, lest it should tarnish her image. But this dissociation of hers from her
daughter is too much for Madhu as she herself is a devoted and loving mother,
grieving over her son's death. Madhu cannot stomach the fact that Savitribai has
kept herself dissociated with her daughter born out of wedlock and has kept it a
most guarded secret. She also gave Munni her name ‘Indorekar’ which she had
adopted as her very own identity as singer and which comprises neither her
maiden name nor her married one; all this smacks of her possessiveness as she
claims her as exclusively her own child, neither her husband's nor her lover's. In
her quest for identity she has become overly selfish and possessive, for she gives
the child her own identity for her own sake, but disowns her when it comes to
sacrificing her hard-earned name for her only child. She loves the child till her
own emotional needs get fulfilled but when it comes to Munni's own identity and
happiness; she selfishly keeps her out of her life, recoiling under the guise of
respectability and a good name. Madhu wonders as to why a woman who had
the daring to walk out on her marriage and family, feared to make public the fact
that she had borne a child out of wedlock. Meenakshi Indorekar, her daughter, is
no exception. She leads the life of a disowned child and is unhappy and ashamed
of her existence, as she is a child born of her mother's association with another
man. She was desperate for a new identity that would cut her off from her past.
In her desperate quest for a new identity cut off from her past she has not only
given up her mother's identity but refused to acknowledge any familiarity with
her past connections or acquaintances. Then there is a story of Leela and Joe in
the novel. After the death of her first husband, Vasanth, Madhu's aunt Leela takes
up a job to become economically independent and also to educate her brother-in-
law. Living in the crowded chaws among cotton mills she would work for
women suffering from TB. This led to coming into contact with Joe, her second
husband, who had set up a clinic for TB patients. He was a widower with two
children, spoke flawless English and was well versed with Literature. Besides
medicine, his other loves were literature and music. On the other hand, Leela
neither spoke nor knew anything on literature and music. Though Leela belongs
to a different caste, Joe falls head over heels in love with her. She did not believe
in caste and the two are married. Despite the vast difference in their inherent
natures, to Madhu, the two had a wonderful relationship. The narrator of the
novel Madhu, her life story is different. Madhu, waking up aftera nightmare,
discloses to her husband Som a secret that she had slept with anotherman when
she was fifteen. Som is unable to come to terms with her act. The relationship
between the two begins to disintegrate. Madhu fails to comprehend Som. With
his typical male psychology Som holds on to this lone act of sex forgetting the
fact that he himself has had a full-fledged relation with a married woman before
marriage. This incident brings a rift in their relationship which is later patched
up after the death of their son. Compared to the earlier novels, Small Remedies
has been wrought on a wider canvas. Taking into account the Indian composite
culture, the structure of the novel encompasses the plurality and diversity of this
culture. In this particular novel her characters male and female are drawn from
different communities and professions. She gives an honest and realistic
portrayal of a Maharashtrian Brahmin family. Here, an Anthony Gonsalves, a
Hamidabai and Joe are all, in a sense, part of Madhu's extended family.
Deshpande's main concern is not the Hindustani classical music, but the gross
gender discrimination prevailing not only in society but in the field of classical
music as well.

Small Remedies is a saga of women emancipation. The novel is about the

'making' of a writer and a social worker. Here, Deshpande envisages a hopeful
future for women in their "shared experienced as women.’ Madhu, Savitri Bai
Indorekar, and Leela learn to know themselves and in the company of female
folks they achieve their social as well as spiritual identities. These women attain
solicitude and ‘sense of self' through their occupations and skills and continue to
defy the servility imposed on them by men. ’ For Savitri Bai Indorekar, in her
music lies the aesthetic dimension of the erotic as well as her spiritual salvation.
Extremely devoted to her practice she left her in laws' house and moved to
Bhavanipur with her lover and Tabala master Ghulam Saab. Savitri Bai
rearranges her domestic life without her kith and kin and confronts dilemmas in
life of her own. Madhu's aunt Leela is another non-conformist who participated
in the '42 Quit India Movement, and was responsible for daring deeds. Leela is a
widow, who marries a Christian man and works for the upliftment of the women
of the lower strata. Madhu narrates Leela's suffering and angst in her effort to
create a space in a male stratified system: I know that Leda was, certainly, a
person who accepted wholly the consequences of her actions. In her work, too,
though she was sidelined after years of working for the party, though she never
reached the top of the hierarchy, while men who'd worked under her got there,
she never complained. . . . Munni, the daughter of this famous mother, professed
to hate music. Ruthlessly, discarded by Savitribai in her subsequent climb to
respectability, this girl is the most vivid character in the novel. Twelve-year-old
Munni could enact entire Hindi films, repeating songs, dances and dialogues
exactly, fabricated stories about her and did things forbidden to other children.
Looking back, Madhu now sees Munni's unashamed lies as an attempt to make
sense of her insecure existence, to create a life-story to suit her dream, as
Savitribai is now doing for the benefit of her biographer. If Small Remedies is a
book about writing a book, on the reflections of the impossibility of ever
capturing in words the truth about any life, it is also about how the enterprise can
take on a life of its own. This book shows societal ambivalence towards women's
changing roles. Madhu's desire to write an honest and true biography of Bai
helps her in overcoming her sense of loss after the death of her son Aditya and
her husband's distrust for yielding to a stranger in a moment of strong impulse.
Arduous mental upheaval reveals her weakness and her strengths. Madhu leaves
 her home to come to terms in theher identity and desire. " It is true that
Deshpande presents a very conventional idea of feminism. Within the four walls
of domesticity, she presents a certain image of middle class ethos; still one can
read here the theme of resistance. Deshpande recognizes the importance of
interaction among different generations of women. She emphasizes that women's
strength lies in their acknowledgement of their desires not only sexual but
creative as well. Deshpande's work exemplifies that women need to be assertive
in order to regain their mental equipoise and individuality.

3.11 Conclusion

Deshpande deals with the modern women's rebellion against the rule of male
dictators of the society. Her poetry is full of apparent sensuality. Deshpande's poetry
differs from other poets in terms of conventions, experimentation, spirit, values and
sensibility. Her major concerns in poetry can be divided into different categories like of
man-women portrayals in term of their marital and sexual relationships, concept of death,
sense of alienation and frustration, identity crisis, recognition, and urge for feminine
sensibilities. Gauri Deshpande has written poems frankly discussing love and sexuality.
Thus, while reveling in the physical act, Gauri Deshpande expresses her contempt and
distaste for sexual pleasure. Her poetry, as a result, gets suffused with personal anguish
and dilemma and the psychological matrix of her experience makes her swim deep in the
sea of pessimism and dispiritedness. Gauri Deshpande is absolutely lyric poet and the
capsule verse is her fort.

The marital relationship seems to be a setback in the live of Gauri Deshpande

because the husband is typically patriarchal in her viewpoints. Besides marriage, the
other cause of discontentment is kitchen drudgery which has often been condemned by
this poet. Gauri Deshpande belongs to the 'confessionalist' mode of Indian poetry in
English. If the "love" poems relate her to the erotic poets of our tradition, the "death"
poems speak for the feminist in her. It is exhilarating that of late Gauri Deshpande has a
luxuriant flowering of fiction in her first language, Marathi. However, Marathi's gain
mustn't spell a loss to Indian English poetry. She communicates through nature and is
 able to bridge a gap among women's self. Nature which is not structured on social taboos
facilitates her to hopefully answer and respond to the feminine sensibility and quest for
identity. In fact, the entire poetic journey of Gauri Deshpande was along long and
windsome streets of memories, of moments actually lived. Her poems successfully
delivered crux of journey on the experiential level, through the thick and thin of life,
through shadows of despondency, dullness and fatigue but eventually blessed with
nothing but fortitude.

In void space of confessional poets in Indian English, the contribution of Gauri

Deshpande is considered noteworthy to learn confessional mode of writing and
expressing through literary work. And that was great feeling for her in her experience and
that was the striking features and nothing else. And she was just cling with that particular
feeling.

References

(1) Beniwal, Anup. Identity, Experience, Aesthetic: Indian Women‘s Poetry in English,
Occasional Papers, 1999; 71-95.
(2) Chavan, Sunanda P. Modern Indian English Women Poets: An Overview.
Perspective on Indian Poetry in English, Ed. M. K. Naik. New Delhi: Abhinav,
1984; 190-207
(3) De Souza, Eunice. Kamala Das, Gauri Deshpande, Mamta Kalia.
Contemporary Indian Poetry in English, Ed. Saleem Peeradina. Delhi:
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(4) Ibid, Page No. 32
(5) Ibid, Page No. 39
(6) Dwivedi, A. N. ed. Papers on Indian Writing in English, 2nd ed. Vol.1. New Delhi:
Atlantic, 2001.
(7) Ibid, Page No. 106
(8) Ibid, Page No. 112
(9) Ibid, Page No. 56
(10) Muthal, Mamta M. Love Thy Self‘: The Empowerment of Women in Gauri
Deshpande‘s Fiction. Articulating Gender: An Anthology Presented to Professor
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(11) Naik, M. K. A History of Indian English Literature, New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi,
1982
(12) Ibid, Page No. 59
(13) Ibid, Page No. 30
(14) Echo and Voice in Indian Poetry in English. Contemporary Indian English
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(15) Saha, Subhas Chandra. The Discourse of Subversion in Women‘s Poetry in

English, Modern Indian Poetry in English: Critical Studies, Ed. Nila Shah and
Pramod K. Nayar. New Delhi: Creative, 2000. 31-41.
(16) Sanyal, Jharna. I m Writing with My Life‘: Women‘s Voice in Modern Indian
Poetry in English. Women about Women in Indian Literature in English, Charu
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(17) Singh, Kanwar Dinesh. Feminism and Postfeminism: The Context of Modern
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(18) Ahmed, Irshad. Kamala Das :The Poetic Pilgrimage, New Delhi:Creative Books, 2005.
Page No. 29-30
(19) Arora, Sudhir K. “Exploring the Self: A Note on Kamala Das’s Poetry. ” Sarangi
Page No. 66-86.
(20) Ibid, Page No. 103
(21) Chakravarty, Joya. “Manifestations of Kamala Das’s Poems in her
Autobiography- My Story,” Contemporary Indian Writings in English. Ed.
Jaydipsinh Dodiya. New Delhi:Atlantic Publishers, 1998. Page No. 1-8.