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
The college where Deven teaches gets its annual cleaning just before its yearly board meeting. The board members hustle inside and assemble in the conference room while the staff waits outside. After the meeting, everyone drinks tea on the sports field under a marquee. The Principal and his wife meet the board, and the staff, like Deven, anxiously wonder if they’ll get a chance to meet the administrators. Deven freezes when realizes that the Principal is standing behind him, but fortunately, the man continues on by.
Deven returns to the ordinary routine of academic life in Mirpore. The yearly meeting shows how dull and unfulfilling Deven’s job is, particularly compared to his adventures in Delhi, and underlines how powerless and irrelevant he feels at work. His relationship with the administration is based on his fear of losing his job or funding—the college leadership clearly does not care who he is, why he is passionate about poetry, or what kind of research he is doing.
Themes
Instead, Deven runs into Abid Siddiqui, the chair and sole member of the college’s Urdu department. Most small colleges wouldn’t offer Urdu, but Lala Ram Lal College was partially funded with a donation from the same fleeing Mughal royal who built Mirpore’s mosque, and his family ensured that the university would teach Urdu. Since almost nobody studies it, Siddiqui spends much of his time wandering aimlessly around the college. He and Deven joke about the occasion’s formality and Urdu’s irrelevance. Siddiqui notes that one famous Urdu poet has moved to Beirut and jokes that Urdu is “only grown for export now.”
Siddiqui’s career is a tongue-in-cheek testament to Urdu’s decline: it’s clear that, if the college weren’t contractually obligated to keep him on the payroll, it would fire him and shutter the whole department in an instant. Like Nur’s desperate rant to Deven at the end of the last chapter, the details of Siddiqui’s career suggest that Deven’s dream of revitalizing Urdu in India is an impossible fantasy, not a realistic goal. Even Siddiqui doesn’t dream of doing it. Readers may wonder whether Deven has seriously thought through this idea or whether he just clings to it so that he can feel like he is fulfilling his late father’s wishes and has some alternative to his dull everyday life.
Themes
But Deven declares that Urdu is still alive in India, too, and he mentions that Murad’s Awaaz magazine will soon put out an issue with never-before published poems by Nur. Siddiqui is impressed, and then Deven quietly reveals that he’s the one interviewing Nur. He explains that he’s already visited Nur’s house several times and might even end up writing Nur’s biography. Siddiqui scarcely believes Deven and asks if Nur has really been coming to Mirpore. Deven clarifies that he has been going to Delhi. “Stranger things have happened,” Siddiqui admits, and Deven promises to prove that he’s telling the truth.
In a rare moment of confidence and pride, Deven brags to Siddiqui about his research—but carefully fails to mention how poorly it is going, or how he has learned all sorts of unsavory details about Nur’s lifestyle. While this conversation gives him a brief taste of the success and social status that he expects to achieve through his research, it also reminds him that Siddiqui is one of the very few people in the whole world who actually care about what he is doing.
Themes
Siddiqui suggests that Deven add some fiction into Nur’s biography for flair. Offended, Deven explains that he’s going to tape record Nur’s words directly. Noting Siddiqui’s curiosity, Deven tells him the whole story of his plans and adventures with Nur, from start to finish. He says he hopes that he can help revitalize Urdu literature, and that eventually every university in India will have a copy of the tapes. Siddiqui jokes that scholars will be able to call up famous poets’ voices the way they can songbirds’ calls, and Deven quips that they should ask the Principal to invest in recording equipment.
Siddiqui's proposal to embellish Nur's biography strikes Deven as scandalous because it shows that Siddiqui doesn't care about scholarly ethics or truly respect Nur's work. In contrast, Deven presents tape recording as a way to capture the objective truth about Nur's life and work—such technology promises to give the humanities the exactitude of science (and possibly earn them the respect they deserve from people like college administrators). Of course, Deven's prediction speaks volumes about the kinds of knowledge that modernizing, independent India values.
Themes
Get the entire In Custody LitChart as a printable PDF.
Deven and Siddiqui agree that they should try and approach “Mr. Jackal”—by whom they mean the registrar, Mr. Rai. They find him under the marquee, near the Principal, and he informs them that the college’s whole budget is being cut. Deven knows nothing about the college administration, except that the sciences get plenty of funding and the humanities get none. So even though the Urdu department has no power, Deven lets Siddiqui do the talking. While Rai and Siddiqui reminisce about Lucknow, where they both went to university, a Hindi lecturer named Jayadev grabs Deven and drags him over to the rest of the department, where they ask what kind of mistress he is going to meet in Delhi on Sundays. After escaping this group, Deven comes face-to-face with Sarla, who scowls and says she wants to go home.
Jackals are scavenger animals who largely feed on trash, carcasses, and whatever else they can find. So, by comparing Mr. Rai to a jackal, Deven and Siddiqui point out that he has a successful career and high status despite doing no original work of his own—instead, he merely manages and benefits from people who actually do the work. Then, the novel ironically juxtaposes Deven and Siddiqui's comments about modern universities' bias toward the sciences with the scene of Siddiqui convincing Rai to give Deven funding—which is clear evidence of how the skills taught in the humanities (like rhetoric and persuasion) have important real-life applications. Meanwhile, Jayadev and the Hindi department's penchant for gossip suggests that they are not serious scholars, which reinforces Deven's perception that north India's true intellectual legacy belongs to Urdu, not Hindi.
Themes
The next day, during class, a student passes Deven a note in Urdu, asking him to visit Mr. Rai’s office at noon. The note’s looping, sweeping calligraphy reminds him of all the unpredictable ups and downs that Nur has created in his life over the last few weeks. At noon, Mr. Rai’s office is empty, and the indifferent doorman reports that he is in a meeting. But later that afternoon, Deven finds Rai in his office, and Rai hands him a form giving him permission to spend a small fortune on recording equipment. He’s astonished, and he can’t wait to delve back into Nur’s “world of poetry and art.” He recites a line from one of Nur’s poems about the spring.
Even Deven is astonished to see his research project actually come together—he is so used to failure that success feels like a rare prize. Curiously, in this passage, the handwritten Urdu note appears personal, meaningful, and passionate to him, while the man who actually funds his research, Mr. Rai, seems cold and impersonal. Put differently, Deven has a more meaningful relationship with the written word than he does with actual living people, which reflects his love for literature and completely unfulfilling social life in Mirpore.
Themes
At a Delhi electronics shop, Deven watches Murad closely, convinced that he will try to make a “shady deal” with the shopkeeper, Mr. Jain. After all, Murad told Deven that the university’s grant will only cover the worst possible recorder—but when they reached the shop, he started asking to see the newest models. Mr. Jain jokes about Murad’s rich family, and then Murad admits that he already arranged to buy a secondhand recorder from Jain’s nephew.
Deven once again recognizes Murad’s inconsistent, “shady” behavior, but he chooses not to stop it. Whether readers find his inaction confusing, pitiful, or frustrating, they are likely to conclude that he has to overcome it if he wants to make any progress in his personal and professional life. Indeed, as Murad himself pointed out, perhaps Deven keeps failing because he refuses to take matters into his own hands, so he lets other people walk all over him. (And perhaps this is exactly why Murad is his friend.)
Themes
Deven angrily tries to leave, but before he can, Jain’s nephew Chiku comes in with an old Japanese recorder in a box. Deven complains that Japanese goods are low-quality, then he turns away while Murad examines the device and promises Deven that it’s the right choice. Deven admits that he knows nothing about gadgets, and Mr. Jain explains that Chiku has studied electronics and will help. Murad agrees that Deven could use “a technical assistant” and promises that Chiku will just come when and where he’s needed to operate the machine.
Deven reluctantly agrees to Murad and Jain’s proposal, even though he knows they’re scamming him. It’s not yet clear, but this is actually the fateful moment that determines the whole course of Deven’s research and ultimately sets up the novel’s conclusion. It’s significant that the recorder comes from Japan: by the 1980s, India’s planned socialist economy had grown little since independence, while capitalist Japan was Asia’s most technologically and economically advanced society. This makes it all the more clear that the tape recorder represents modernity—and India’s struggle to integrate it with the traditional past that Nur represents.
Themes
