Alienated psyche: An iconic study of the socio-political consciousness in Anita Desai’s voices in the city Available to Purchase

Anita Desai is indeed the most renowned of the contemporary Indian women novelists. She evaluates the theme of existential aspect in particular in her writings. They reveal the confrontation of man with his self and the question of his existence. Desai appears on the literary scene with a new voice and adds a new dimension to the achievement of Indian women writers in English Fiction. In Voices in the City the city that stifles the voices, sears the hearts, frustrates the efforts, foils the aspirations of the people inhabiting it has a gigantic demoniac multi-coloured fearful aspects with something inscrutable about it. It becomes part of the immanent will, the malignant forces of the universe. The city Calcutta becomes the symbol of materialistic pursuits and cosmic alienation. The novel portrays the hard-sorrow effects of the urban over an Indian family. In this text most of the story is rendered in the third person through the voices of Nirode, Monisha, and Amla who have come to the monstrous city of Calcutta in quest for identity. All of them are caught in the cross-currents of existential dilemma and suffer from alienation. All their efforts for escape lead them nowhere. Their disintegration and dissolution seems to be inevitable. This paper is to examine the socio-political consciousness in the characters depicted by Anita Desai in her novel.