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 stops going to Delhi, and Sarla starts mocking him, asking if his mistress threw him out. When he insists that it was just work, she goes to the kitchen and yells out the window at Manu or the neighbor, since she can’t yell at him. He realizes he should have pretended he was having an affair—but, like all his good ideas, this comes far too late. He takes solace in cigarettes—and then starts to chastise himself for choosing solace over drive, ambition, and art. He feels like a failure: nobody will publish his poems or his book on Nur, not even Murad, and nobody respects him. He’s spineless and empty, he thinks, just like his father. He even failed to interview Nur.
Consumed by shame and feelings of failure, Deven retreats into himself. Clearly, this is a recurring pattern in his life: he fails to act because he is afraid to get out of his comfort zone. This is why he doesn’t say no to Murad, stick around at Nur’s house, or reconcile with Sarla. Meanwhile, Sarla’s feelings about Deven’s trips to Delhi show how wide the gulf between them really is: she either doesn’t understand his obsession with Nur or doesn’t believe that he’s important enough to actually interview the man. Notably, the fact that she can’t directly express her anger with him shows how deeply traditional Indian gender roles limit women’s power over their lives.
Themes
Sarla watches Deven hunched over in self-loathing and thinks that, unlike men, women don’t have the time to “play at being dead while still alive.” Deven recalls reciting Nur’s poetry back to him; he felt like a parent speaking to a child. Then, Sarla brings him a postcard from Nur, who writes that Imtiaz inspired him to compose a new poem cycle about women’s suffering.
Sarla’s poignant comment highlights the way that India’s strict gender roles often deny women the freedom and luxury of an intellectual life. Women are in charge of sustaining the rest of the family—or keeping all the men, elders, and children fed, clothed, and rested. So, they cannot easily pause to think: others are constantly making demands on them. (In Nur’s household, Imtiaz has the opportunity to write poetry only because Safiya is busy taking care of the cooking and cleaning.) Nur’s postcard, which announces that he can empathize with women, only underlines Deven’s inability to do the same.
Themes
It’s early summer, and Deven struggles to sleep in the heat. He gets up and goes to the courtyard, where he watches the stars, smokes, and thinks about how he feels trapped in his marriage, family, and job. He thought Nur would help him escape, but it turns out that Nur is just as trapped. A train whistles by, but this only gives Deven false hope of freedom. He tries to sleep again, but then he hears Mrs. Bhalla and her friends walking to the temple, singing: “O will you come along with us / Or stay back in the pa-ast?”
Mrs. Bhalla’s song underlines Deven’s feeling of stagnation. In fact, it seems to be addressed directly at his dilemma: he has to choose between the past and the future—not only between the life he has lived so far and the better future he dreams about, but also between Urdu poetry and Hindu literature, and between his commitment to his work and his commitment to his family.
Themes
One day, Deven decides to go visit Siddiqui at his large but dilapidated villa in the bazaar, where he lives alone. Like a stray dog, Deven squeezes through a hole in the broken gate and hobbles up to the porch. There are no lights or curtains, most of the doors look boarded up, and the kitchen roof has caved in. Siddiqui just orders food from the bazaar. He sends his servant boy Chotu for rum and dinner, and then he explains that Chotu is a talented singer and will perform for them. Over dinner, they discuss literature, history, and politics in Urdu.
Siddiqui’s collapsing old house is significant for at least three reasons. First, it symbolizes Urdu’s decline—Siddiqui owns it because he’s a minor descendant of a minor Muslim royal, and much like that old royal order, it is literally falling apart. Second, given the first portion of this chapter’s focus on Sarla’s perspective and the mostly invisible work that she puts into maintaining her and Deven’s house, Siddiqui’s collapsing villa represents the degraded lives that men would live in the absence of women’s labor. And finally, it is a foil for Nur’s house, which is also old, grand, falling apart, and located in a bazaar.
Themes
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Deven brings up Urdu poetry, hoping to discuss Nur, but instead, Siddiqui starts talking about how Chotu will sing for them. Then, Siddiqui’s friends show up and start playing cards. Deven is horrified that the evening is starting to resemble Nur’s parties. Siddiqui starts recklessly losing money to Chotu at poker, and Deven quits the game.
Siddiqui’s hedonism and nonchalance about serious topics also make him resemble Nur in Deven’s eyes: he seems to care more about enjoying himself than about Urdu’s death or India’s future. This raises the distressing possibility that Nur isn’t the exception: perhaps most writers and poets don’t really care about the ideas they write about and the causes they claim to champion.
Themes
A few hours later, his head spinning from the rum, Deven decides to go home. On his way out, he mentions Nur, and Siddiqui asks him for the tape. Deven mumbles that he doesn’t have a tape because Nur's wife asked him for money, and he doesn’t have any. Siddiqui coldly says that the college paid for the tape recorder, so it owns the tape, and Deven has to figure out how to make it. Deven collapses; bawling on the ground, he asks what he can possibly do. Siddiqui proposes asking the college for money and offers to do it, because Deven is “incapable.” He tells Deven to leave and runs back to his house.
After reminding Deven of Nur for most of the evening, Siddiqui suddenly starts to resemble Murad: he grows cold, looks down on Deven, and seems to enjoy pointing out his shortcomings and making him suffer. At the same time, Siddiqui has a point when he says that it’s Deven’s job to figure out how to make the recording, and at the end of the conversation, he ultimately does step in to help Deven. Thus, it’s difficult to tell whether Siddiqui is really malicious, or Deven just has unrealistic expectations of him.
Themes
Later, Deven wonders why he let Siddiqui take power over his interview. In fact, he also constantly lets Murad control him. He wretches from sickness, but when Sarla brings him an herbal infusion from the bazaar, he realizes that he was just panicking. He wonders how other people find the discipline to organize their lives and the courage to accomplish great things. Just then, a telegram arrives from Murad, who blames Deven for delaying the next issue of Awaaz and demands to know when he will start recording Nur.
Deven continues to blame others’ strength for his own weakness. Siddiqui didn’t just take over from him, like Murad does. Instead, Deven insisted on giving Siddiqui his power, because he didn’t believe he could competently wield it. But even though Deven appeals to be falling closer and closer to rock bottom, at least he’s finally admitting that his fundamental problem isn’t just his boring life and powerlessness, but rather his lack of discipline, willpower, and responsibility. In other words, he’s starting to achieve some moral clarity about what he needs to change in order to succeed.
Themes
Siddiqui approaches Deven at the college canteen and calls him a lucky man. Deven assumes Siddiqui is mocking him, but actually, Siddiqui has convinced the registrar (Mr. Rai) to dedicate more funds to their project. Deven is astonished: he doesn’t even think he deserves people’s help, and he wonders if Siddiqui, Nur, and Murad are actually setting up a trap for him. Siddiqui explains that the library has agreed to fund the project as a way to build expertise in new audio-visual education methods.
Things start to go right for Deven, but this doesn’t mean that all is well. As he pointed out in the last scene, the real problem is that he has no control over his own life—even positive developments, like this one, are merely things that happen to him. His suspicion that others may be trapping him is actually wiser than he realizes—while readers will never entirely learn if it’s correct, it does foreshadow the end of the novel in a meaningful way. And the library’s explanation for releasing the funds shows that the college cares more about new technology than about Deven’s research.
Themes
Deven still has to deal with two naysayers: Trivedi, the vile head of the Hindi department, and Sarla. The pious Trivedi scowls and acts outraged when Deven requests a week’s vacation to research Urdu, but he ends up giving it to him (while threatening to fire him and throwing an inkpot at him). When Deven tells Sarla that he’ll be spending the vacation working in Delhi, instead of at her family’s home, she expresses her outrage more quietly, letting a bowl of yogurt spill on the table and asking how she could possibly explain it to her parents. Deven says it doesn’t matter: since her parents are illiterate, they can’t possibly understand his research anyway.
Finally emboldened, Deven stands up for himself and his research, even though it means spending the summer away from his family. Trivedi’s reaction to him shows how deeply engrained the politics of Hindi and Urdu are in India. The languages are a proxy for the constant communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims, and many members of the Hindu majority (like Trivedi) view Urdu as treasonous and anti-Indian (even though it’s still an official language in many parts of the country). Meanwhile, Sarla continues to express her outrage with Deven’s behavior in indirect ways, because traditional patriarchal norms don’t allow her to directly confront him.
Themes
