Previous
Chapter 3
Themes
and Colors
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
By daybreak, Deven’s bus is approaching dreary Mirpore. Deven remembers how poets describe the dawn, but after his nightmarish evening with Nur, he concludes that poets are all liars. He groans and watches the passing scenery. Although he's exhausted, he worries that the previous night will haunt him if he falls asleep. Above all, he feels guilty for defacing Nur’s poetry, something he dearly loves. A milkman offers him chewing tobacco to clear his head, but he curtly refuses. When the bus finally pulls into the station. Deven stands to disembark, then unexpectedly locks eyes with one of his students, who is riding by on a bicycle. After waiting on the bus for a long time, Deven decides to head straight to work instead of going home to Sarla.
Deven’s disappointment in Nur mixes with his sense of guilt about becoming the representative for Nur’s hedonistic, partying friends in Imtiaz’s eyes. He finds it easier to blame himself and give up his faith in poetry than to accept the difficult truth that terrible men can produce brilliant art—and he has spent his whole life worshipping one such man. In fact, when he decides not to go home to Sarla, who is sure to be worried and disappointed, this is another version of the same principle: when faced with his actions’ effects on other people, he chooses not to look. Of course, it’s no coincidence that the consequences of these men’s denial falls on their wives and children. Ultimately, at the end of the book, Deven’s personal transformation will depend on him finally overcoming this tendency to denial—he accepts the reality of who Nur is, who he has become, and what it will mean to be the custodian of Nur’s work.
Active
Themes
That afternoon, when Deven finally makes it home, he finds Sarla chatting with their widowed neighbor Mrs. Bhalla by the front door. Mrs. Bhalla comments that her nephew saw Deven getting off the morning bus, and Deven should have sent Sarla a message. Sarla covers her hair with her sari and leads Deven inside without saying a word. Deven knows that she’s punishing him but feels that she’s right to: he deserves this dusty city, shabby house, and loveless marriage, not “the world of drama and revolving lights and feasts and furies” he encountered in Delhi.
Among Hindu women, covered hair is a traditional sign of seriousness—like mourning or piety. This is why Deven views Sarla’s covered hair as a form of punishment: she uses it to suggest that something is wrong, without saying anything. Indeed, like Mrs. Bhalla’s comment, the novel’s portrayal of Sarla shows how woman in highly patriarchal societies can use subtle, indirect tactics to assert their will and resist men’s authority because they have little power to get what they want directly. Of course, this contrasts with the way Imtiaz stood up to Nur at the end of the last chapter. Their conflict is just the kind of situation Deven fears, in which men’s unspoken dominance over women starts to fade.
Active
Themes
When Deven and Sarla married, he still thought of himself as a poet, not a teacher. Sarla, whom his family chose for him, was “plain, penny-pinching and congenitally pessimistic.” But she also dreamed of buying modern comforts like a phone, fridge, and car—none of which Deven could afford on a lecturer’s salary in a second-rate provincial town. Now, her face is stuck in a permanent scowl, for she is as disappointed in her life as Deven is in his. So as to punish her for her disappointment in him, Deven throws a tantrum every time her food isn’t perfect or she falls behind on the laundry.
Deven sits on the veranda and calls for his son, Manu, to come over with his schoolbooks. Surprisingly, Sarla repeats this request to Manu, which suggests that Deven’s “punishment period” has already ended. Manu brings over his workbooks, and Deven is dismayed to see them filled with poor handwriting and low grades. He wants to chastise Manu, but knows Sarla is listening. Instead, he asks what Manu is reading—it’s an ordinary children’s book with rhyming stories about animals. This reminds Deven of three powerful images: Nur’s disgusted, enraged face; Nur on the ground, writhing in pain; and his own father, emaciated and terminally ill, laying on the floor and reading Nur’s poems.
Active
Themes
Get the entire In Custody LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
Startled, Deven takes Manu out for a walk. They head down the road, past the neighbors’ similarly shabby houses, with their peeling paint, drying clothes, wandering chickens, and blasting radios. After his night in Delhi, for the first time, he is actually content with the life he has built for himself and his family. He is glad to have left behind the horrifying moral ambiguity of his encounter with Nur, and to return to the simple innocence of family life.
Active
Themes
Manu is enjoying his walk with Deven, too. He is talking about his schoolmaster, who has hair coming out of his ears and likes to stick pencils behind them. And Deven is actually listening—he genuinely wants to spend time with Manu, and vice versa. (Sarla only ever takes Manu out when she has errands to do.)
Active
Themes
Deven and Manu walk past the end of the road, down the clay path towards the agricultural college’s lush, fertilized fields. Deven points out a flock of parrots, and Manu sings a nursery rhyme about a parrot. Deven remembers his own father teaching him that rhyme, and he realizes that he has become a disappointment to Sarla, just like his invalid father was to his mother. The parrots land on a nearby tree and one of their feathers falls to the ground. Deven picks it up, and Manu sticks it behind his ear, like his schoolmaster. The evening feels perfect.
But everything changes when they get home. Sarla grumpily hands Deven a postcard for him—which she has obviously read. It’s from Nur, thanking Deven for “your decision to work as my secretary” and asking him to report to Delhi at once.
Active
Themes
