writing as an act of immortality is an individual act and not an output of social quagmire: a reading of Anita Desai’s Fasting, Feasting and Khushwant Singh’s The Company of Women

The quest for immortality as the act of writing has always pushed the writer to re/ create a

World that will always be infused with his or her own smell. The God of Small Things

becomes synonymous with Arundhati Roy and Invisible Man with Ralph Ellison. The act

of writing has taken up many colours throughout the ages. It became an evocative means

of speaking up (proving ones very existence) during the American Civil Rights

Movement. It became a way to educate the masses during the different revolutions. And

in other times it became an equally effective in brainwashing. But writing has always

been the one sure way to achieve immortality. It became one human action that may not

die. And this is the human action that may not die. This human wish for eternal life, if not

for themselves but at least to their voices, their words and their books.

But what voice, what words and most importantly which portrayal of which world

deserves immortality. Would it be the portrayal of a world gone berserk? Would it be a

perfect world? Or would it be the real world with its happy/ sordid realities? Each writer

with his/ her own views of the world would draw a portray of themselves. But then no

work of art can be created in a vacuum (an oft repeated phrase). The socio- political and

economic milieu necessarily effects the work of art.

This paper Intends to read Khushwant Singh’s The Company of Women and Anita

Desai’s parallelly (for lack of a better word; ‘with’ would have been very different from

what I intend by writing ‘parallelly’). In their quest for immortality how does both the

writers portray their immediate worlds. (I have refrained from using feminist theory.)

Both were published in successive years yet symbolically in different centuries. The

socio- political and economic environments were similar in both. But the portrayal varies

different indeed.

Fasting, Feasting has been praised by the critics for being one of the ‘propounders’ of

feminist writing in Indian wring in English. The Company of Women has also got its fair

bit of attention. But mostly critics did not like his interpretation of sexuality. M. K. Naik

and Shyamala A. Narayan have noted in their book Indian English Literature: A critical

Survey, “There Is a half- hearted attempt to project a philosophy of lust, which is

declared to be superior to mere love; but it is clearly not on the same plane as D. H.

Lawrence’s apotheosis of the body and sex, because it merely trivializes both.”

This paper does not intends to judge. This paper is a cannibalistic reading of the novels

which tries to decipher the portrayal of the structure and the narrative in both of them.

This paper tries to find how different voices make up the common consciousness. Thus

proving that writing as an act of immortality is an individual act and not an output of

social quagmire.

Anita Desai’s Fasting, Feasting is as the title proclaims, a conflict between the two

opposites. Two cultures namely the Indian and the American are pitted against each

other. Desai deftly paints the Indian family with its rather sordid reality. The narrative

unveils through Uma in India and Arun in America. They are both entrapped by their

own parents, MamaPapa in their own culture and enveloping environment. They remain

nameless throughout the novel. Yet, this namelessness their universality and not their

anonymity. Anita Desai is recognized as the first Indian author writing in English who

addresses feminist themes seriously, focusing on the condition of women in India. The

woman figure is central to the narrative in the first half. Living under the demanding rule

of Mama Papa, Uma is repressed, suppressed and is imprisoned at home. The first part of

the novel tells us in a flashback as how she became a reluctant victim of entrapment at

home. The second part of the novel shows how her brother Arun, who leaves his home

for higher studies, but feels trapped by the very education that is meant to liberate him.

Desai show the Indian family in its bleakest and its best. Uma is the subject in the first

half and her repressed and suppressed life is portrayed well. The reader empathizes with

the protagonist in her wish to escape from the repressive life. The story in itself is told

from the perspective of the protagonist, Uma, who starts out as a wide-eyed child at a

convent who shows an enthusiasm for education but with the birth of her brother Arun,

Uma takes on the role of nanny. Here, one encounters the distinct preference parents have

for the male child.

Desai next explores the conventional belief that ties a woman’s worth to her physical

appearance. A woman who lacks beauty is often rushed into the first marital offer she

receives, only to pay a heavy price later on. Desai shows the challenges a single woman

faces regardless of how successful she is. By contrast, Uma’s cousin is portrayed as the

ultimate success because she is able to marry well thanks to her looks. She makes the

reader wonder how happy she truly is, when she eventually takes her own life.

Her father feels that Uma is incapable of fending for herself, as she is too clumsy,

uncoordinated and proves a failure in almost everything she does. Uma fails in school, in

the kitchen and she even fails to find anyone worthwhile to get married to.

Khushwant Singh’s The Company of Women unlike Fasting, Feasting objectifies women.

Woman is in the centre of this novel too but not as the subject rather as the object. Right

from the very beginning, in the author’s note, Singh alienates himself from the narrative.

The author excuses himself out of the novel by calling his characters as “figments of

(my) senile fantasies”. He justifies the novel as an imaginary fulfillment of his youthful

fantasies. From the very beginning Singh’s novel is pitted against Desai’s realist

depiction of the woman in an Indian family.

The Company of Women is divided into three parts. The first part and the third part is

narrated by the author while the second part is narrated by the protagonist himself,

namely Mohan Kumar. This shift in the narrative is an interesting technique used by the

author. In the first part, the author introduces the protagonist as this womanizer who gets

a divorce from his wife. The first person omniscient narrator indulges the reader in the

life of Mohan Kumar as an all pervading eye. This narrative eye changes to the narrative

I when Mohan Kumar himself become the narrator in the second part. In the third part,

the author narrates the death of Mohan Kumar due to AIDS.

While Desai shows the sordid reality, Singh indulges in the candid reality.

“‘Nigger is regarded as a very rude word by educated Americans. They say coloured or

African- Americans.’

‘That’s not the point,’ she snapped back, ‘I know you don’t call niggers that to their

faces. Behind their backs whites still call them niggers.’”

The Company of Women was published in 1999 while Fasting, Feasting was published in

2000. Desai’s portrayal is a moving tale of Uma which paints the reality of the Indian

family. The reality is dexterously painted by Desai. Women are treated as burdens that

have to be married off. Treating women as a commodity prevails in the society and Desai

show that in the novel. Singh’s novel portrays women as the very object. The content

itself reads like a list of achievement for Mohan Kumar. The various name of the women

that Mohan Kumar had had sex with forms the content. But from the very beginning the

novel is pitted as a fantastic tale of Mohan Kumar. Company of Women brings out the

hypocrisy of the society.

After having sex with Yasmeen, Mohan Kumar asks whether that is sin according to

Islam.

“‘What I did was sinful,’ she admitted.

‘You are right. But Shariat law requires two Muslim eye- witnesses to see an act

of adultery. Nobody can prove it against me. You, not being Muslim, don’t count

in a Shariat court.’”

The same milieu of the end of 20^th century and the beginning of the next is the ground for

both the novels. Fasting, Feasting shows the quagmire of the family structure for the

woman protagonist while The Company of Woman portrays the rather fantastic depiction

of the sexual relationships between Mohan Kumar and different women. In this apparent

objectification of women, what Singh does is that he puts the women in the centre. The

women portrayed are no longer hidden under the purdah but rather are outright about

their sexual desires.

Reading Singh alongside Desai is a peculiar experience yet they portray the same motives

probably but in very different ways. The world is not portrayed in the same way rather

the quest for immortality remains an individual quest. Desai proclaims the survivor

woman as the ‘hero’ of the tale while Singh designs the dying man as the ‘hero’ of his

tale.

Works cited:

Anita Desai, Fasting, Feasting. London: Vintage, 1999

Naik, M.K, Narayan, Shyamala A. Indian English Literature: a Critical Survey. New Delhi, 2004

Ravichandran. T. Entrapments at Home and Abroad in Anita Desai’s Fasting, Feasting, Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, IIT Kanpur

Singh, Khushwant. The Company of Women. New Delhi: Penguin Book, 1999

Volná, Ludmila. Anita Desai’s Fasting, Feasting and the Condition of Women, Volume 7 Issue 3 (September 2005) Article 6