In Custody

by

Anita Desai

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Family, Gender, and Indian Tradition Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Memory and the Passage of Time Theme Icon
Ambition and Failure Theme Icon
Family, Gender, and Indian Tradition Theme Icon
Beauty vs. Utility Theme Icon
Indian Identity and Pluralism Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in In Custody, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family, Gender, and Indian Tradition Theme Icon

In Custody’s three central characters are all men—in fact, Desai claims that she originally planned to “write in the male voice and just keep out all female characters.” She eventually changed her mind, but only because she realized that she needed significant female characters in order to make her point: in much of India, men and women live in almost completely separate worlds, to the point that they have trouble communicating across the divide and understanding one another’s lives. Further, Desai shows that the severe power imbalances between men and women in traditional families seriously limit women’s opportunities and breed conflict, resentment, and even violence. These dynamics are clear in the two families at the center of the novel: Deven, Sarla, and their son Manu in Mirpore; and Nur, his two wives Imtiaz and Safiya, and his and Imtiaz’s unnamed son in Delhi. Long before the novel starts, Deven and Sarla’s has marriage collapsed into quiet resentment. Sarla hates that Deven is lazy and barely earns enough money to buy food. Meanwhile, Deven hates Sarla’s “plain, penny-pinching and congenitally pessimistic” ways, not realizing (or not wanting to admit) that they are reactions to her destitution and powerlessness. Sarla scarcely leaves the house, and to avoid her, Deven scarcely enters it; neither knows what the other does all day, and their conversations are all arguments. And Deven refuses to reconcile because “it would have permanently undermined his position of power over her.” In other words, they both realize that traditional gender roles create a power dynamic that divides them, but Deven chooses this power over unity.

Nur’s family’s situation is worse—especially because Imtiaz and Nur are jealous of each another’s poetry. For instance, when Imtiaz performs her work before a huge, cheering audience, Nur walks out, and then he and Deven angrily insist that Imtiaz is no good. Their tone makes it clear that they view her as a threat: they feel that the only thing worse than failing is being upstaged by one’s wife, because it means losing the power and privilege that they have in the family just by virtue of being men. In fact, when Imtiaz sends Deven her poems at the end of the novel, he refuses to even read them. He won’t consider that maybe the brilliant Urdu poetry he has been looking for all along is right in front of him—just because it comes from a woman. In this way, Deven weaponizes the deep-set sexism in traditional Indian society to keep Urdu poetry gender-segregated, undermining his own quest to revive it and crushing Imtiaz’s dreams.

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Family, Gender, and Indian Tradition ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Family, Gender, and Indian Tradition appears in each chapter of In Custody. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Family, Gender, and Indian Tradition Quotes in In Custody

Below you will find the important quotes in In Custody related to the theme of Family, Gender, and Indian Tradition.
Chapter 3 Quotes

Deven never quite believed what happened next. He was so confused and shattered by it that he did not know what it was that shattered him, just as the victim of an accident sees and hears the pane of glass smash or sheet of metal buckle but cannot tell what did it—rock, bullet or vehicle. The truth was that he did not really want ever to think back to that scene. If his mind wandered inadvertently towards it, it immediately sensed disaster and veered away into safer regions.

Related Characters: Deven Sharma, Nur , Imtiaz
Page Number: 56
Explanation and Analysis:

“He was a poet, a scholar—but is he now? Look at him!” She pointed dramatically at Nur who was huddled, whimpering, on the mattress, holding his knees to his chest and rocking from side to side in agony. “Do you call that a poet, or even a man? All of you—you followers of his—you have reduced him to that, making him eat and drink like some animal, like a pig, laughing at your jokes, singing your crude songs, when he should be at work, or resting to prepare himself for work—”

Related Characters: Imtiaz (speaker), Deven Sharma, Nur , Sarla
Page Number: 58
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

She was the daughter of a friend of [Deven’s] aunt’s, she lived on the same street as that family, they had observed her for years and found her suitable in every way: plain, penny-pinching and congenitally pessimistic. What they had not suspected was that Sarla, as a girl and as a new bride, had aspirations, too; they had not understood because within the grim boundaries of their own penurious lives they had never entertained anything so abstract. […] She dreamt the magazine dream of marriage: herself, stepping out of a car with a plastic shopping bag full of groceries and filling them into the gleaming refrigerator, then rushing to the telephone placed on a lace doily upon a three-legged table and excitedly ringing up her friends to invite them to see a picture show with her and her husband who was beaming at her from behind a flowered curtain.

Related Characters: Deven Sharma, Sarla
Page Number: 67
Explanation and Analysis:

Although each understood the secret truth about the other, it did not bring about any closeness of spirit, any comradeship, because they also sensed that two victims ought to avoid each other, not yoke together their joint disappointments. A victim does not look to help from another victim; he looks for a redeemer. At least Deven had his poetry; she had nothing, and so there was an added accusation and bitterness in her look.

Related Characters: Deven Sharma, Sarla
Page Number: 68
Explanation and Analysis:

The flock of parrots wheeled around, perhaps on finding the fields bare of grain, and returned to the tree above their heads, screaming and quarrelling as they settled amongst the thorns. One brilliant feather of spring green fluttered down through the air and fell at their feet in the grey clay. Deven bent to pick it up and presented it to his son who stuck it behind his ear in imitation of his schoolteacher with the pencil. “Look, now I’m masterji,” he screamed excitedly.

Yes, that was the climax of that brief halcyon passage. It was as if the evening star shone through at that moment, casting a small pale illumination upon Deven’s flattened grey world.

Related Characters: Deven Sharma (speaker), Manu (speaker), Nur , Deven’s Father
Related Symbols: Parrots and Jackals
Page Number: 74
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

Who was she? Why should her birthday be celebrated in this manner? How could she claim monopoly of the stage with her raucous singing that now afflicted their ears, her stagey recitation of melodramatic and third-rate verse when the true poet, the great poet, sat huddled and silent, ignored and uncelebrated, Deven asked himself, determinedly not listening with more than a fraction of his attention. She was not worth listening to, he would not listen to her, he had not come to listen to her, he grumbled to himself, and scowled at the spectators who were bobbing their heads, swaying from side to side, beating time with their hands on their knees, giving forth loud exclamations of wonder and appreciation—like puppets, he thought, or trained monkeys.

Related Characters: Deven Sharma, Nur , Imtiaz
Page Number: 83-84
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

“You do not deceive me even if you have thrown dust in his poor weak eyes. I have made my inquiries—I have found out about you, I know your kind—jackals from the so-called universities that are really asylums for failures, trained to feed upon our carcasses. Now you have grown impatient, you can’t even wait till we die—you come to tear at our living flesh—”

Related Characters: Imtiaz (speaker), Deven Sharma, Nur
Related Symbols: Parrots and Jackals
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

Peering through a crack in the kitchen door, Sarla watched, thinking: is he dead? is he alive? without concern, only with irritation. It was only men who could play at being dead while still alive; such idleness was luxury in her opinion. Now if she were to start playing such tricks, where would they all be? Who would take Manu to school and cook lunch for them?

Related Characters: Sarla (speaker), Deven Sharma, Manu , Imtiaz
Page Number: 138-139
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

Deven did not have the courage. He did not have the time. He did not have the will or the wherewithal to deal with this new presence, one he had been happy to ignore earlier and relegate to the grotesque world of hysterics, termagants, viragos, the demented and the outcast. It was not for the timid and circumspect to enter that world on a mission of mercy or rescue. If he were to venture into it, what he learnt would destroy him as a moment of lucidity can destroy the merciful delusions of a madman. He could not allow that.

Related Characters: Deven Sharma, Nur , Sarla , Imtiaz
Page Number: 217
Explanation and Analysis: