Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in In Custody, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory and the Passage of Time
Ambition and Failure
Family, Gender, and Indian Tradition
Beauty vs. Utility
Indian Identity and Pluralism
Summary
Analysis
Deven Sharma, a Hindi literature lecturer in the small Indian city of Mirpore, is buying cigarettes outside the college where he teaches when a brash old friend, Murad, surprises him by tapping him on the shoulder. Deven is glad to see Murad, but also apprehensive. He agrees to buy Murad lunch after his next class. As they smoke, Murad mocks Deven for buying just two cigarettes. Deven explains that his wife (Sarla) doesn’t like him smoking and drinking. Murad loudly asks if they’ll drink with lunch. Worried that students will hear, Deven asks Murad to leave. Offended, Murad tells Deven to skip class and complains that he came several hours from Delhi to see him. Deven tells Murad to wait outside, then he dashes off to his classroom and tries to collect himself.
Deven’s meeting with Murad in this opening scene sets up the novel’s central conflict: Deven struggles to find meaning in his life because he does not know how to integrate his past, present, and future. His personal troubles also serve as a metaphor for India’s struggle with national identity in the years after independence. In this passage, the contrast between Deven and Murad is immediately apparent. Deven is a meek, conservative, honest dreamer who has long since given up on his dreams of literary life to settle down, start a family, and take a stable but unglamorous teaching job. Murad is boisterous and decisive, and he’s unburdened by family, financial troubles, or any sense of responsibility to others.
Themes
As he prepares for his class, Deven tries to figure out why Murad’s visit is bothering him. They were close friends as children: Murad was wealthy, and Deven was poor and willing to do favors for him. Even now, Deven barely has any money left to buy Murad lunch. And Murad has plenty: his father is a rich carpet dealer who bought Awaaz, the literary magazine that he now runs. In fact, he published Deven’s book review and poem, but he never sent the payment. Deven momentarily wonders if maybe Murad has come to pay up, but then he chastises himself for getting his hopes up and turns to his class. As usual, he mutters poetry to himself while looking at the door. (This is why his students find him boring.) He asks if they’ve done the reading, and they laugh.
Deven and Murad’s childhood friendship helps explain their dynamic throughout the novel: Murad has long taken advantage of Deven, and Deven has long since gotten used to it. Indeed, Deven’s attempt to stand up to Murad is a central aspect of his struggle to overcome his cowardice and take control over his own future. Moreover, their different class backgrounds help explain why they took such different paths in life, despite their shared passion for Urdu language and literature. Murad is clearly more enthusiastic about his job than Deven is—even if Murad’s failure to pay Deven for his work suggests that he might not seriously care about keeping the Urdu literary and scholarly tradition alive.
Themes
At lunch, Murad complains that Mirpore’s “village fare” doesn’t compare to the food in Delhi. Fortunately, it’s loud enough that nobody overhears him—Deven has taken him to a bustling local restaurant near the bus station, as he can’t afford a fancy, air-conditioned restaurant. Understanding this, Murad complains that India doesn’t pay its teachers enough or show them the respect they deserve. With uncharacteristic boldness, Deven says that his situation might change if he got paid for his articles. Scowling, Murad complains that running his magazine is expensive, and its subject, Urdu literature, isn’t popular anymore.
Murad’s arrogant, unpredictable behavior makes it increasingly clear that he has come to get something from Deven, and not just to reminisce about old times. His comments about Mirpore’s food are a shallow way of pulling rank by pointing out that he comes from the capital. And his phony complaints about the expenses involved in running a magazine are an obvious attempt to distract from Deven’s legitimate claim to the money the magazine owes him. Deven tries and fails to stand up to Murad—but this foreshadows a crucial moment in the novel’s second-to-last chapter, when he finally succeeds.
Themes
Deven agrees that it’s important to keep the Urdu literary tradition alive. Murad laments that Urdu was once the language of royalty and government but is now dying and being replaced by Hindi, the “language of peasants.” Deven says he wishes he could work for Murad’s journal, but he has to provide for himself and his wife Sarla. So, Hindi will remain his profession and Urdu just a hobby. Murad angrily comments that Deven should be as dedicated to Urdu as he is, and then he asks if Deven will write something for his upcoming issue on Urdu poetry. Deven melts with pride: Urdu is his mother tongue and “his first love.”
The foundation of Deven and Murad’s bond is their shared love for Urdu, whose one-time prominence and quick decline in postcolonial India are familiar subjects to any South Asian reader. Still, the Hindi-Urdu controversy can be difficult for uninitiated readers to understand because, on the one hand, Hindi and Urdu are almost exactly the same language, but on the other, they have significant political consequences and intense personal meaning for their speakers. Murad deliberately explains his dedication to Urdu in terms that associate Deven with Hindi, thereby putting him down. The crucial fact that Murad is Muslim, but Deven is Hindu, adds insult to injury. But Deven points out that his job as a Hindi teacher is just further proof of Urdu’s decline—if there were opportunities in Urdu, after all, he would be teaching it.
Themes
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Deven asks if Murad will print his poems. But Murad says no: “Who wants to read your poems?” Murad will only print poetry by the absolute best Urdu poets, such as the legendary Nur (whom Murad nominates for the Nobel Prize every year). Old and frail, Nur has stopped working, but Murad is determined to wait until he writes something new. In the meantime, Murad wants Deven to write a feature about Nur. In fact, Deven wrote a whole book about Nur, but nobody has ever been willing to publish it; he asks if Murad will, and Murad says absolutely not. Murad tells Deven to find Nur at his home in Delhi’s Chandni Chowk, interview him, and ask him for some new work. Deven remembers that Nur is famously reclusive and doesn’t like visitors, but he agrees.
Desai introduces the core of the novel’s plot: Deven’s quest to meet, interview, and understand his idol, Nur. In the process, Murad reveals that he really did have an ulterior motive for visiting Deven—and his lack of candor suggests that there are many more twists and turns to come. Indeed, it raises the question of whether he is really sending Deven to interview Nur in order to save Urdu—or just because he sees financial opportunity in it. This question will only grow more and more pressing over the course of the novel. After all, Murad’s refusal to publish Deven’s work is baffling because it suggests that he doesn’t actually care very much about Urdu’s future—after all, it's impossible to save a language by refusing to publish new writers.
Themes
