Give a case study of Anita Desai about career, social and cultural

Give a case study of Anita Desai about career, social and cultural context.

Ans.

Anita Desai was born in 1937 in Mussoorie, north of Delhi to a Bengali father and a German mother. She was raised in the Old Delhi province during the transformation of India from colony to independence. Islam and Hindu were major religions and she spoke a number of languages including German at home, English at school and Urdu which was the dominant language spoken almost everywhere in the community where she lived. (Prasad, 2011) As a child, she had noticed the difference in her family from other families in her community in terms of close bondage to the state, town and even caste Although her mother dressed and even cooked Indian foods, she still felt like an outsider. especially at school. Unfortunately, her father died in 1955 and the family relocated to Calcutta.

She carried on with her studies in Queen Mary’s School in Delhi before graduating with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Delhi in 1957. After marrying Ashvin Desai, the couple raised four children and move to Mumbai where she describes her marriage as domestic in nature. Her earlier inspiration in writing carried along in her life as a parent and a college lecturer. In an interview with Barnes, she admitted her love for writing and the use of English language despite the fact that she had knowledge of other languages like German (Barnes, 2014). Her description to the use of English language was more of a bond that naturally held her intact with the language and she had never stopped to think about her choice of language. According to her, the urge and the enthusiasm to put together her thoughts on real life issues in India was also her motivation. (Barnes, 2014)

Career: The early start of writing by Anita formed a strong foundation for her career in the literature world. The motivations started right from the family members and extended far deep in the books she frequently read and loved. Her devotion swept clean the way to maneuver in the world she liked a lot. In her interview with Barnes, Anita also points that the early authors from British books like Thomas Hardy and D. H. Lawrence influenced her a lot in her writing. (Barnes, 2014) Later, she also discovered Russian authors like Dostoyevsky who opened her sense of imagination and introduced to her another interesting part of literature she had not realized before. In order of make her dream come true, Desai studied literature at the university level and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Literature. (Barnes, 2014) This vividly created more opportunities for her career to prosper and get exposure to the outside world through teaching.

Ahmad (2010) gives a well elaborated explanation of Anita’s schooling in an English based missionary school. The author points out that the fact that Anita attended that specific institution shaped her future literary career as a novelist and a short stories writer. (Ahmad, 2010) This is depicted in her closely autobiographical book, Clear Light of Day, where she entails deep fictions in relation to her knowledge of academic, social and personal background. The book has since been helpful to the feminist movement in India: by enlightening the women on the need to respond to any form of activities against them in the society. The novel was later shortlisted in the Man Booker Prize Awards in 1980, though did not win the award. (Ahmad, 2010) That was just one step for her because two years earlier she had won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, an award which made her work more public and greatly inspired her.

Prasad (2011) reveals her career achievements throughout her life including her teaching career which has made her to serve in different positions in distinguished educational institutions in many countries. Amongst the awards she has bagged includes the Sahitya Akademi Award for her book Fire on the Mountain and the Guardian Prize for children’s fiction for, village by the sea. Past Writers In-Residence (2013) also shows that Anita’s work earned a screenplay by the Merchant Ivory Productions and the Padma Sri Award prize by the Government of India. She was also awarded the Moravia Prize for Literature (1983) and the Neil Gunn Prize for International Literature by the Scottish Arts Council (2000). The article further explores other career achievements such as serving in the position of the Elizabeth Drew visiting professor at Smith College, the Gilder Sleeves Professor at Barnard University and later as the Purington Professor of English at Holyoke College (Past Writers In-Residence, 2013)

In addition, she served as the John E. Burchard Professor of writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and is a regular contributor to the New York Books Review. She was also awarded the Benson Medal of Royal Society of Literature in 2003. (Past Writers In-Residence, 2013) Despite the career successes Desai has achieved, there are quite a number of problems that she has faced as a female writer. In the early years of independence and modern civilization, the dominant writers were men. Gender discrimination against women highly prevailed as the women were regarded as instruments of luxury and thus suffered in silence. According to Choubey (2009). female writers have faced stiff competition and criticism from their counterpart male writers due to their modern, more conservative and flexible adaptions to humanity than men. Included amongst Indian writers is Desai who faced the challenge to transform women in India through literature.

Social and cultural context: Anita Desai has been a prolific writer especially in the post-independence period in India. Her literature works have been critical all over the years with the aim of unfolding the truth in the society especially for women. The social and cultural contexts of her novels are projected depending on the time she wrote the novel and the place where she was. In all these circumstances, she was still able to view the culture of India from an external point of analysis. Chauhan (2013) explores her novel. A Clear Day of Light, where Desai explicitly focuses on the suppression that was dominant in India society during that period. The time at which the novel was written presents a culture where family bonding and the power struggle in Indian communities presented a challenge. (Chauhan, 2013) Even in her own life, she had suffered the cultural exclusion of their family from the ret of the community.

In another novel, Fire on the Mountain, Desai portrays the intellectual issues that affect the community during the time where the character in the novel was forced to live in an isolated place where violence was dominant and poverty full of uncertainty and hopelessness of the future. In this particular novel, the author shows how social life was full of tainted experiences in real life situations even though most of her work was fictitious. (Khobragade, 2009) The cultural misunderstandings and the blending of the three cultures from the west, east and the indigenous communities resulted in a mix up that was full of fear and people were mostly concerned with their families only. A reflection from that novel is depicted in her life where she finds that people were more concerned with their own families and her mother tried to blend in the Indian culture.

Post-colonial period presented a series of events in India. Given that the historic events were majorly political in nature, both social and cultural settings were heavily affected. The female authors also had a strong opposition from male counterparts who constantly criticized their work with the aim to extend oppression of women in society. After a long period of time. Desai, alongside other female writers finally rooted themselves in the literature field in India and waged a more competitive literature race in the country. In addition to the recognition of the efforts of women in India, the support from different bodies in the country helped elevate the situation to fair grounds in the country. (Ahmad, 2010) The work of Desai played a major role in inspiring other young Indian female writers who felt the urge to come up and talk about the issues affecting them in their communities and marriage life.

A reference to the novel, Custody, presents a metaphor in understanding the concept of literature work rather than marking it as a simple historical past event. (Mennozi, 2014) Desai elaborates that the people in India lacked something that mattered a lot when it came to literature work; understanding true literature and its roles in the society. Mennozi (2014) also compares her work with other authors who had also published their work during the period Desai had published her novel. In the analysis, Desai’s work is found to provide a more fictitious view of the novel yet it depicts the real situation in the Indian society. Her assessment of the context is widespread and despite the fact that she has also travelled in other countries, she still has the concern of the world view on India and she tries to eliminate some of the stereotyped assumptions on India. (Mennozi, 2014)