Anita Desai
Anita Desai
Full Name and Common Aliases
Anita Desai was born on June 24, 1937, in Mussoorie, India. Her common aliases include A. Desai.
Birth and Death Dates
Born: June 24, 1937
Died: December 20, 2018 (aged 81)
Nationality and Profession(s)
Anita Desai was an Indian novelist, short story writer, and essayist. She is best known for her novels that explore the lives of Indians in India and abroad.
Early Life and Background
Anita Desai was born to a family of modest means. Her father, Srichand Verma, was a lawyer who later became a judge, while her mother, Rukmini Verma, was a homemaker. Desai's early life was marked by the tensions between her parents' cultural values and their struggles to adapt to changing circumstances in post-independence India.
Desai grew up in Mussoorie, a hill station in northern India, where she spent most of her childhood. She developed a love for reading at an early age and was especially drawn to English literature. Despite the constraints of her family's financial situation, Desai's parents encouraged her love of learning and supported her education.
Major Accomplishments
Anita Desai's writing career spanned over five decades. She published her first novel, The Village by the Well, in 1957. However, it was her second novel, Cry, the Peacock (1963), that brought her international recognition and critical acclaim.
Desai went on to write several successful novels, including Where Shall We Go? This Time? (1970), In Custody (1984), and Baumgartner's Bombay (1988). Her writing often explored themes of identity, culture, and the human condition.
Notable Works or Actions
Some of Anita Desai's notable works include:
Cry, the Peacock: A novel that explores the lives of Indians living in England.
The Village by the Well: A novel set in a small Indian village during World War II.
* In Custody: A novel that won the Sahitya Akademi Award for English literature.
Impact and Legacy
Anita Desai's writing has had a significant impact on Indian literature. Her novels have been translated into many languages, including French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Chinese. She was awarded several prestigious literary awards, including the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Padma Bhushan, and the Padma Vibhushan.
Desai's writing has also had a profound impact on readers worldwide. Her novels offer nuanced portrayals of Indian culture and society, as well as explorations of themes that are universally relevant.
Why They Are Widely Quoted or Remembered
Anita Desai is widely quoted and remembered for her insightful and evocative portrayal of the human condition. Her writing has been praised for its lyricism, nuance, and depth. She is often cited as one of India's most important writers in English.
Desai's legacy extends beyond her literary contributions. She was also an advocate for women's rights and education. Throughout her life, she worked tirelessly to promote the importance of reading and writing, particularly among women and children.
As a writer, Desai's work continues to be widely read and studied around the world. Her novels offer powerful explorations of identity, culture, and human relationships, making her one of the most important voices in Indian literature today.
Quotes by Anita Desai
What a sense of possession, of confidence, it gave one to have pockets, to shove one’s fists into them, as if in simply owning pockets one owned riches, owned independence.
Do you know anyone who would – secretly, sincerely, in his innermost self – really prefer to return to childhood?
At first she mistook them for sheets of pink crepe paper that someone had crumpled and carelessly flung down the hillside, perhaps after another astonishing party at the club. A moment later she remembered her great-grandmother’s words and saw that they were hosts of wild pink zephyranthes that had come up in the night after the first fall of rain.
It seemed to her that the dullness and the boredom of her childhood, her youth, were stored here in the room under the worn dusty red rugs, in the bloated brassware, amongst the dried grasses in the swollen vases, behind the yellowed photographs in the oval frames-everything, everything that she had so hated as a child and that was still preserved here as if this were the storeroom of some dull, uninviting provincial museum.
Greenness hangs, drips and sways from every branch and twig and frond in the surging luxuriance of July.
Reality is merely one-tenth visible section of the iceberg that one sees above the surface of the ocean – art remaining nine-tenths of it that lies below the surface. That is why it is more near Truth than Reality itself. Art does not merely reflect Reality – it enlarges it.
Now I understand why you do not wish to marry. You have dedicated your life to others – to your sick brother and your aged aunt and your little brother who will be dependent on you all his life. You have sacrificed your own life for them.
Although it was shadowy and dark, Bim could see as well as by the clear light of day that she felt only love and yearning for them all, and if there were hurts, these gashes in her side that bled, then it was only because her love was imperfect and did not encompass them thoroughly enough, and because it had flaws and inadequacies and did not extend to all equally.
When I am writing, I focus one hundred percent on my writing. Then, by the time I’m half way through the book, I’m already thinking about the ending.
The book begins and ends with the visits to give the impression of a tunnel into their ancestors and family history. I believe in going backwards into the past – I felt I was digging a tunnel back to the past.