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
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.
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.
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 views the intellectual world of art and ideas, where he lives most of his life, as inherently superior to the common world of domestic work and consumption, where Sarla lives hers. They seem unable to communicate between their two worlds, so much so that they don’t even try to bridge the gap. They take their unhappiness out on each other instead of coming together to build a more satisfying life for themselves—while they pity each other, they also secretly relish in letting the other down. This is why, although Deven feels sorry for falling short of Sarla’s expectations, he has no intention of changing for her sake—nor does she for him.
Themes
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.
Sarla and Deven’s argument ends before it ever really begins, and Deven turns his attention to the family member he actually cares about: his young son Manu. The novel links this scene of them reading together—most likely from the famous Panchatantra, a well-known Sanskrit book of fables—to Deven’s precious few memories of his own father, who died when he was young. Crucially, Deven’s love for Urdu poetry is in part a stand-in for his love for his father (who taught him about it). But he is reading a Sanskrit text with his son, which again points to Hindi and Hindu culture’s rising prominence in modern India. Indeed, the rest of this chapter makes it clear that Deven’s relationships with his father and his son are really foils for one another: Deven wants to give his son the love, belonging, and moral guidance that he never got from his father (except through poetry.)
Themes
Get the entire In Custody LitChart as a printable PDF.
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.
Mirpore seemed dreary and uninspiring when the novel first described it at the beginning of Chapter Two. But now, Deven’s unassuming, working-class Indian neighborhood seems like a kind of paradise, far removed from the evils of the city. Indeed, Deven’s constant references to the previous night reveal the other main reason he wants to spend quality time with Manu: he doesn’t want to be like Nur, whose relationship with his son is clearly awful. (After all, Nur woke up his son in the middle of the night with the intention of forcing him to sing for a crowd of drunk poets—but ended up collapsing on the floor and throwing up in front of him instead.)
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.)
Even though their conversation goes no deeper than small talk about school, Deven and Manu both feel genuinely wanted and valued. Notably, this is completely different from the way they feel around Sarla, which again underlines how men and women’s worlds are completely separate in many traditional Indian families.
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.
Deven’s moment of connection with his son shows him that he may be pursuing happiness in the wrong place: family life might actually be more rewarding than literary greatness.
Themes
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.
The novel’s recurring cycles of crisis continue: as soon as Deven decides that he doesn’t need literary fame to feel satisfied, Nur pops back up in his life. Needless to say, Deven never offered to be Nur’s “secretary.” Murad has clearly pulled some tricks behind his back.
Themes
