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Anita Desai is one of India’s best novelists in English. Anita Desai was born on 24th June, 1937, in Mussoorie, near Dehradun. Anita Desai’s mother was a German Christian and her father was a Bengali Indian. This mixed parentage of complex origin gives Anita Desai the advantage of looking at life from different perspectives. She was educated in Delhi. She married on 13-12-1958 to Ashwin Desai – a Gujarati businessman. Anita Desai is a multilingual. She has lived in many cities like Culcatta, Mumbai, Chandigarh, New Delhi and Pune. Her first novel was Cry the Peacock (1963). She has written more than a dozen novels. She is considered to be a leading feminist voice amongst the Indian women novelists. Ludmila Volna opines.”

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. Unlike Nayantara Sahgal and Kamala Markandeya, for example, who respond primarily to the external social and political circumstances of their female characters, Desai concentrates on the exploration of the psychological condition of the oppressed heroines (Volna, 2).

Anita Desai knows the plight of women in Indian society and has portrayed it effectively in all her novels. India being a patriarchal society it has male dominance and people are obsessed with having a male child. The female gender is an oppressed and discriminated lot. It happens because of the false sense of male ego. In her novel Anita Desai depicts women characters not only superfluously, but as made of flesh and blood, having their respective strengths and weaknesses also portraying women characters who are governed by a sense of compromise, sacrifice and surrender rather than, complete revolt against the system for the sake of physical and emotional liberty.

Desai is often regarded as a feminist writer but she does not like being labeled as a feminist. In an interview in 1979 she stated, “I find it impossible to whip up any interest in a mass of women marching forward under the banner of feminism. Only the individual, the solitary being, is of true interest” (quoted in Mann 1995, 173). She has also pointed out that the purpose of her writing is not to make societal statements: “My novels are not reflection of Indian society, politics or character. They are my private attempt to seize upon the raw material of life” (quoted in Singh,“Indian Women”, 85).

The women who are idealized, praised high and made a divinity in scriptures are abused and exploited by society in practice. In this novel Anita Desai has presented the grim reality of our society. On the one hand Anita Desai writes of pure housewives, working women, social workers and on the other hand sisters, wives, daughters, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law and aunts. Her novels are basically female oriented. She probes into their problems, be it of a mother, a daughter, a sister or a wife. She describes woman as a victim in a patriarchal, patriarchal, and father-dominated Indian family. In India women are dependent upon male members of their family, be it the father, the brother, the husband, or the son. After independence the Indian women became conscious about their suppressed position though she is an ‘Other’ thing that they did not make much effort to pull themselves out of this subjugation.

Fasting, Feasting (2000), so far Desai’s latest novel, is, above all, a work whose main concern is the condition of women in India and is related to women in general. To deal with the situation of women in India, however, it is impossible to stay simply with what is termed “feminism” in the Western sense (Volna, 2).

Desai in this novel looks gently but without sentimentality at an Indian family that, despite Western influence, is bound by Eastern traditions. The title Fasting Feasting(2000), also suggest that implies, the novel is divided into two parts. At the heart of Part One, set in India, is Uma, the eldest of three children, the overprotected daughter who finds herself starved for a life. Plain, myopic and perhaps dim, Uma gives up school and marriage, finding herself in her 40s looking after her demanding if well-meaning parents. Uma's younger, prettier sister marries quickly to escape the same fate, but seems dissatisfied. The book deals with two different cultures. First part of the book highlights the Indian traditions, cultures and mostly the place of a woman in an Indian family. It’s an excellent job in describing the Indian family to every single detail of existence. Though this type of families still exists in India.

Part One is about Uma, a child woman growing old on the veranda with Mama Papa (her parents evolved into one controlling entity). She is pulled from the convent school in the early grades to help at home when the long-desired boy child Arun arrives. It is she who years later must box up the tea and shawl to warm her brother, studying in America. Plain and myopic, Uma hides behind her spectacles and boxes up her dreams as carefully as her collection of gilt edged Christmas cards carefully keeping them both without quite knowing what to do with either. First part deals with family intrigue through socio-cultural and spiritual experience in India, the second, with familial existentialism in America. There is a comparison between the traditional lifestyle of India and it unpicks to the materialistic scenario of the west as contrasting cultures which shows that women are enslaved in both.

Part Two is set in Massachusetts during the summer between college terms when Arun is bunking with an American family. It is an overwhelming experience, but if America is a feast in the bounty displayed in the supermarkets and on the suburban grills, Arun cannot partake. Arun’s well-meaning hostess, Mrs. Patton, ignores her meat-loving husband and bulimic daughter and focuses on Arun, swamping him with raw vegetables and dry lentils.

Fasting, Feasting is a story of a lawyer’s family consisting on husband and wife, two daughters and a son. The story moves around the plight of an unattractive, not so intelligent elder daughter, a girl child, who is forced to live a life of subjugation-first in her parents’ home and later in her-in-laws’ She starts her story with a busy domestic scene, as the parents -- who have such a fused authority that they are often referred to simply as Mama Papa -- fussily ask whether daughter Uma has given orders to the cook and prepared a package for son Arun, who is studying in America.

ON the veranda overlooking the garden, the drive and the gate, they sit together on the creakingsofa-swing, suspended from its iron frame, dangling their legs so that the slippers on their feethang loose. Before them, a low round table is covered with a faded cloth, embroidered in thecentre with flowers. Behind them, a pedestal fan blows warm air at the backs of their heads andnecks.

The cane mats, which hang from the arches of the veranda to keep out the sun and dust, are

rolled up now. Pigeons sit upon the rolls, conversing tenderly, picking at ticks, fluttering.

Pigeon droppings splatter the stone tiles below and feathers float torpidly through the air.

The parents sit, rhythmically swinging, back and forth. They could be asleep, dozing - their

eyes are hooded - but sometimes they speak.

'We are having fritters for tea today. Will that be enough? Or do you want sweets as well?'

'Yes, yes, yes - there must be sweets - must be sweets, too. Tell cook. Tell cook at once.'

'Uma! Uma!'

'Uma must tell cook-' '

E, Uma!'

Uma comes to the door where she stands fretting. 'Why are you shouting?'

'Go and tell cook-'

'But you told me to do up the parcel so it's ready when Justice Dutt's son comes to take it.

I'm tying it up now.'

'Yes, yes, yes, make up the parcel - must be ready, must be ready when justice Dutt's son

comes. What are we sending Arun? What are we sending him?'

'Tea. Shawl-'

'Shawl? Shawl?'

'Yes, the shawl Mama bought-'

'Mama bought? Mama bought?'

Uma twists her shoulders in impatience. 'That brown shawl Mama bought in Kashmir

Emporium for Arun, Papa.'

'Brown shawl from Kashmir Emporium?'

'Yes, Papa, yes. In case Arun is cold in America. Let me go and finish packing it now or it

won't be ready when justice Dutt's son comes for it. Then we'll have to send it by post.'

'Post? Post? No, no, no. Very costly, too costly. No point in that if justice Dutt's son is

going to America. Get the parcel ready for him to take. Get it ready, Uma.'

'First go and tell cook, Uma. Tell cook fritters will not be enough. Papa wants sweets.'

'Sweets also’ (Desai,1)?

In the character of Uma, Anita Desai has presented a very dismal picture of India. Within her own family, she is treated no better than a servant, always carrying orders of parents and helping in running about household, even though there is a cook. Uma is a poor girl, neglected in the family and denied education.

This elder daughter name is Uma.Uma is the protagonist. Uma is a gray-haired spinster living under Mom Dad's demanding rule She is a simple girl with a mystical bent, suffocates in a patriarchal system of arranged marriages. She has neither the looks, intelligence nor self-confidence to attempt a career, an option her mother and father have vetoed in any case.In this novel there is never a mention about her looks and complexion so we do not know whether she is unattractive but situations prove so.

Uma's life is full of childhood laughter and pain which she herself cannot realize, there are women around her who would want to segregate her and crush her in to the same hidden dark corners of life that they have seen, that too with a revenge, but she though accepts it as her fate , her influence, her willpower and her passion escalates her to have her own escapades in brief intervals. Uma is an icon of all women who succumbs but has a will to survive on their own little dreams of freedom. Interestingly parents are not named in the novel; it exposes a typical middle class Indian ruling over the family. Uma’s father is an anglophile, a middle class man going to club and playing tennis who has only two desires- one is for a son which gets fulfilled and the other is to earn dowry for the son. He wants to fulfill his dreams through his only son. Uma’s mother, who is a housewife, has just experienced two emotions, the burden of two daughters, and pride of having a son. Her parents remind us many of similar set up at home who want to govern whole life of their children.

Uma is repressed, suppressed and imprisoned at home. We see that Uma’s father had so much craze that even before the second child is born, it is named Arun. But he becomes dejected when a female child is born, and named Aruna instead Arun. Late in life, Uma’s mother becomes pregnant again, which is rather embarrassing. Now again he hopes for a son, this time God fulfills his desire. His wife delivers a baby boy after suffering so much for the boy. This news of boy bursts him with happiness and he is named Arun. Though he was weak and unpromising but Parents were happy because he was a boy. They feel proud on the birth of a boy-“The whole family came to a standstill. Around Mama’s bed, in the hospital, peering at this wonder. Even it Aruna did say, so red – so ugly before she was nudged into silence and Uma approved incapable of holding something so fragile and precious , they were acutely aware of thewonderof it” (Desai, 16-17). Uma’s father bursts with enthusian at the birth of a son.

Arriving home, he sprang out of the car, raced into the house and shouted the news to whoever was there to hear, servants, elderly relatives, all gathered at the door, and then saw the most astounding sight of their lives – Papa leaping over three chairs in the hall, one after the other, like a boy playing leap frog,… “a boy!” he screamed, “a boy! Arun, Arun at last”(Desai, 18)!

After the birth of her brother, it is Uma who starts suffering.She had to sholder the responsibilities and do the manual work for which she was too tender. Anita knows the plight of women in Indian Society and has portrayed it effectively in her novels. India being a patriarchal society it has male dominance and people are obsessed with having male child.Now when Uma’s mother comes to home, weak, exhausted and short tempered-

She tried to teach Uma the correct way of folding nappies, of preparing watered milk, of rocking the screaming infant to sleep when he was covered with prickly heat as with a burn. Uma unfortunately, was her clumsy, undependable self, dropping and breaking things, frightendly pulling away from her much too small too precious and too fragile brother (Desai, 17-18).

Then Uma protests: ‘I have to go and do my homework’ she told her mother I have got to get my sums done and then write the composition. ‘Leave all that’, mama snapped at her’. … Mama had never taken seriously the need to do any schoolwork nor having gone to school herself, does Uma’s mother say, we used to have a tutor she said airily when the girls asked her how it was possible that she had not gone to school. He used to come to the house to teach us- a little singing –a little Hmm - she became vague. ‘We used to run away and hide from him’, she admitted with a giggle. So Uma tried to explain that if she did not get her homework done she would be sent to Mother Agnes with a note. But we are not sending you to Mother Agnes or to school again, mama said(Desai, 18).

“The convent school for her is streaked with golden promise” (Desai, 20) she always goes early to school and they search an excuse to stay on there for a longer time. It was a place for her where she could take a breath of relief. At her home, her condition is not better than a servant. She is an unpaid servant for her self-centered parents. So she wanted to spend her time more in her school- “There were the wretched weekends when she was plucked back into the trivialities of her home, which seemed a denial, a negation of life as it ought to be, somber and splendid, and then the endless summer vacation when the heat reduced ever that pointless existence to further vacuity” (Desai, 21).

After the birth of her brother she could not continue her study. She does not get proper time for her study and as a result she fails in exam, then her mother compels her to stop her study. Saying this that she is not very good at studies, her schooling is stopped.

As a result after the birth of her brother, Aruna and Uma were compelled to quit her academic. Her mother thinks that it is essential to learn the art of baby sitting and household affairs because that is future of every Indian girl. In our patriarchal set-up, masculine and feminine traits are not different but are valued differently. As care, empathy and nurturing have been considered as feminine virtues. As a traditional women she also thinks that to learn the art of household ways is very necessary for her. Being a girl, her duty is to live for others and take care of others’ needs. Though when Arun grows up, tutors are appointed for him though he had no interest in study and great care is taken of him. His father wants him to eat meat, but he does not like it. In spite of this he used to bring meat for him. He desires to make him an athlete but after school, he gets so exhausted to do it. Against Papa’s ideals, Arun is characterized by physical weakness: as a child, he catches all the possible infectious diseases from mumps to measles. He also shows a reluctance to eat meat, which Papa finds incomprehensible. Neither is he interested in sports: if he could choose, he would rather stay in his room reading comics rather than go and play outdoors. Instead of accepting Arun as he is, Papa tries to “promote” Arun’s masculinity by pressuring him to study and exercise. Since Arun’s childhood, Papa makes every effort to give his son the best education he can.

In India, girls are trained in household skills at an early age. By childhood, they are prepared to be ‘ideal’ women. That is why her mother asks her to take care of her baby brother and help her in many cores of the baby. Though, Uma wants to continue her education, but she finds herself unable to continue her schooling. She thinks that her father will try to understand her and he will support her but he also disappointments her. After stopping her schooling, at her home, there is an oppressive atmosphere, she is imprisoned at home. To grow up as a girl is different from growing up as a boy. Today also we find ‘rejecting a girl child and craving for a male child.’ The desire for a male child is manifest in words like ‘the birth of a girl grant it elsewhere, here grant a boy’ and the birth of a girl is looked upon ‘with resignation, if not sorrow.’