While childhood can often be an idyllic time, it is not without its rollercoaster of emotions and fears. In “Games at Twilight,” the protagonist, Ravi, constantly teeters between a sense of security and one of fear. As he plays a game of hide and seek, he yearns to rejoin his siblings and cousins in the sun, all the while growing more and more nervous in the dark and mysterious shed in which he chooses to hide. Through this wavering, Desai sets up two opposing environments that illustrate the same point: for children, safety is derived primarily from a sense of familiarity, in contrast to fear, which is prompted chiefly by the unknown.
The “dark” and “spooky” shed in which Ravi hides becomes a deep source of fear for Ravi, as he does not know what could be lurking inside it. The darkness and strangeness of the shed sets up the idea that Ravi isn’t afraid of any particular thing, but rather by the sheer unknowability of what could hurt him. Desai writes how Ravi is afraid to be in the shed, which smells of animals but also “less recognizable horrors.” The fact that there is so little light—it only gets in through the “cracks along the door”—also incites fear. Both of these ideas illustrate how the shed is scary not necessarily for any specific reason other than that it is unfamiliar to Ravi, meaning that he doesn’t know what perils might exist within it. At first, Ravi is too afraid to move in the shed, as he is worried that he might touch something he didn’t want to touch. When he feels something tickle the back of his neck, he has to wait a long time before mustering the courage to see what it might be. When he feels it is a spider, he immediately squashes it. The spider is not terrifying to him; instead, it is the feeling of not knowing “how many more creatures were watching him, waiting to reach out and touch him.” Thus, Desai establishes again the sense that not knowing what lies in the shed is more upsetting than the reality of what is actually in there. This idea becomes even more salient when Ravi encounters things that are more familiar. When he is able to see slightly better, he recognizes an old bathtub that had been discarded, and he sits inside it, feeling comforted by the fact that the object is familiar to him. Similarly, when he hears Raghu—an older boy who is the seeker in the game—bang on the shed with a stick, this actually makes him feel “protected.” Even though Raghu is trying to intimidate him, knowing that someone from his family is out there gives Ravi a sense of safety in the midst of an unknown environment.
Desai contrasts the fear prompted by the shed with the security of the world outside it. Through symbols like sunlight or the veranda (which acts as the children’s home base for their game), Desai continues to correlate the idea of familiarity and clarity with safety. In contrast to the dark unknown of the shed, Ravi longs for “the sun, the light, the free spaces of the garden and the familiarity of his brothers, sisters, and cousins.” Being able to see (and therefore know what lies in his surroundings) and being with people whom he knows affords him this sense of safety. Even though at any point he could return to them, the simple fact of being separated from that familiarity is scary for Ravi. And as the sunlight fades, he grows more and more worried about remaining in the shed, strengthening the idea that the light adds a sense of security and comfort when it is present. The veranda itself is another reinforcement of this idea that familiarity equates with safety. A white pillar on the veranda serves as the children’s home base, the thing that confers safety in the game on the person who touches it. It is no coincidence, then, that this location is part of the family’s house, as it represents a returning to the familiarity of home and family. When Ravi can’t take remain in the shed anymore and realizes that he has to return to the veranda, he streaks to it as fast as he can, crying with despair at having waited so long but also gaining a sense of relief at returning safely. Together, these two primary environments of the story prove Desai’s argument that fear is borne of a sense of the unknown, while safety is conferred by what is known and familiar.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Safety vs. Fear ThemeTracker
Safety vs. Fear Quotes in Games at Twilight
“Please, ma, please,” they begged. “We’ll play in the veranda and porch—we won’t go a step out of the porch.”
“You will, I know you will, and then—”
“No—we won’t, we won’t,” they wailed so horrendously that she actually let down the bolt of the front door so that they burst out like seeds from a crackling, over-ripe pod into the veranda, with such wild, maniacal yells that she retreated to her bath and the shower of talcum powder and the fresh sari that were to help her face the summer evening.
Ravi shook, then shivered with delight, with self-congratulation. Also with fear. It was dark, spooky in the shed. It had a muffled smell, as of graves. Ravi had once got locked into the linen cupboard and sat there weeping for half an hour before he was rescued. But at least that had been a familiar place, and even smelt pleasantly of starch, laundry and, reassuringly, of his mother. But the shed smelt of rats, ant hills, dust and spider webs. Also of less definable, less recognisable horrors. And it was dark.
He hunched himself into a ball so as not to bump into anything, touch or feel anything. What might there not be to touch him and feel him as he stood there, trying to see in the dark? Something cold, or slimy—like a snake. Snakes! He leapt up as Raghu whacked the wall with his stick—then, quickly realising what it was, felt almost relieved to hear Raghu, hear his stick. It made him feel protected.
He contemplated slipping out of the shed and into the fray. He wondered if it would not be better to be captured by Raghu and be returned to the milling crowd as long as he could be in the sun, the light, the free spaces of the garden and the familiarity of his brothers, sisters and cousins. It would be evening soon.
With a whimper he burst through the crack, fell on his knees, got up and stumbled on stiff, benumbed legs across the shadowy yard, crying heartily by the time he reached the veranda so that when he flung himself at the white pillar and bawled, “Den! Den! Den!” his voice broke with rage and pity at the disgrace of it all and he felt himself flooded with tears and misery.
