Page 1 of 8
European Journal of Business &
Social Sciences
Available at https://ejbss.org/
ISSN: 2235-767X
Volume 07 Issue 03
March 2019
Available online: https://ejbss.org/ P a g e | 258
Calcutta and the Cosmopolitan mirage
in Anita Desai’s Voices in the City
Manali Balhara
LADY SHRI RAM COLLEGE FOR WOMEN, DELHI UNIVERSITY
HOME ADDRESS- 25A/22, LAXMI NAGAR, ROHTAK CITY, HARYANA STATE
PHONE NUMBER- 8448635937
THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN WRITTEN ON MY OWN WITHOUT ANY EXTERNAL GUIDANCE.
“This city of yours, it conspires against all who wish to enjoy it...”i
:
Calcutta and the Cosmopolitan mirage in Anita Desai’s Voices in the City.
MANALI BALHARA
Abstract:
Sociologists and Historians have defined City as a space that enhances and privileges
unanticipated encounters, as Janaki Nair says “it calls on its citizens to be able to respond
humanely to those who are not linked to us [the city residents] in a familial, ethnic, and
nationalist or caste affiliations.”
ii
Perhaps the task of defining City is arduous because of the flux
it remains in, that strings from its aspect of accommodating people from different areas, say
hinterland or across the seas or may be from the very adjacent town that is actually not so
different culturally, historically, and economically but seems to be different when encountered.
But how does a City qualify as being a cosmopolitan and to what definition(s) of
Cosmopolitanism does it adhere to? This paper would be an attempt to find answers to these
questions by plotting Anita Desai’s novel Voices in the City (1965) within the trajectory of
exploring the ‘Calcuttaness’ of Calcutta and its Cosmopolitanism (with an aim to find out if it is
a cosmopolitan).
Keywords- City, Calcutta, Cosmopolitan, Anita Desai’s Voices in the City.
Page 2 of 8
European Journal of Business &
Social Sciences
Available at https://ejbss.org/
ISSN: 2235-767X
Volume 07 Issue 03
March 2019
Available online: https://ejbss.org/ P a g e | 259
The million dollar question that arises is what is Cosmopolitanism? Gerard Delanty sees it as
“the reflexive transformation of cultural models and the raising of voice”iii through
Communication, discussion and to not get cocooned into its own shell. Whereas the social
theorist and critic Ashish Nandy relates Cosmopolitanism to the City through “cultural
pluralism” and critiques the fierce battles witnessed in the Indian Cities over who may be defined
as the “sons of the soil”
iv
.
While giving a realistic portrayal of the city of Calcutta and its decadent culture that imposes
a destructive influence on the minds of the protagonists, Anita Desai delivers a quandary in
which her characters are fenced and made to face ‘symbolic violence’ deployed by their own
city, thus, feeling homesick at ‘home’. On the other hand, Desai’s Bye-Bye Blackbird (1971)
catches the tortured state (both intellectual and emotional) of educated and well-off Indian
immigrants in the foreign land that makes them yearn for their roots, their very own city of
Calcutta. As A.V. Krishna Rao notes:
“Anita Desai eminently succeeds in dramatizing the individual human relationships
against the backdrop of a Cosmopolitan consciousness.”
The themes in Desai’s works appeal universally such as those of maladjustment,
detachment, isolation but the essence lies in author’s grappling these themes with the individual
and the force exhibited by an individual to restore integrity amidst chaos. In an interview with
Yashodhara Dalmia, Desai says:
“Ones pre-occupation can only be a perpetual search- for value, for dare I say it- truth.
I think of the world as an iceberg- the one-tenth visible above the surface of the
water is what we call reality, but the nine-tenths that are submerged, make up the
truth, and that is what one is trying to explore.”
Calcutta being posited as a character in the novel gives both creative and destructive
impulses that pave the way for its acceptance and rejection by the protagonists and other minor
characters. Symbolic of corrupt commercial life and dehumanizing in its portrayal, Calcutta
becomes a manifestation of disintegration. With nothing to offer, it is painted thus:
“The rickshaw coolie, the street swapper, the tanner, the beggar child with his limbs
cut-off at the joints, the refugees who litters the platforms... They share one face,
one expression of tiredness, such overwhelming tiredness that even bitterness is
merely passive and hopelessness makes the hand extend only feebly, then drop back
without disappointment.”v
Along with being westernized, Calcutta was considered a hub of intellectuals and a centre of
Indian culture but it has reduced to a “monster [monstrous] city”vi that is densely populated and
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Page 3 of 8
European Journal of Business &
Social Sciences
Available at https://ejbss.org/
ISSN: 2235-767X
Volume 07 Issue 03
March 2019
Available online: https://ejbss.org/ P a g e | 260
offers minimal opportunities to the young minds. This echoes a violence that is ‘suspended’ in
the symbolic form and accounts for the problem of “new form(s) of violence” addressed by
Delanty in his essay. These undefined, newer forms of violence are unhistorical and ‘socially
misrecognized’
1
and covert that can only be given a shape through the existence of the very
minutest of ‘public spheres’ in every possible space (or place). This is represented by the city of
Calcutta which becomes a hunter in the process of inflicting violence on its inhabitants. This
infliction is considered normative in its conformation with the societal roles which are the
resultants of social transition- “a phase in which the older elements are not altogether dead, and
the emergent ones not fully evolved.”
vii
1Pierre Bourdieu in The Forms of Capital, states “capital presents itself in three different guises:
economic, social, and cultural. Economic capital, according to him, is directly changeable into
money and institutionalized in the forms of property rights. Cultural capital is institutionalized in
the forms of educational qualifications and art. Social capital comprises social obligations which
manifest in the form of a title of nobility. However, Symbolic capital is the manifestation of each
of the above forms of capital in their naturalized form. It is situated within the economy of
generosity and gift.” Bourdieu calls it as “the most valuable form of accumulation in society.”
Desai sets the stage for three siblings in Voices in the City; Nirode, Monisha and Amla, who
do not connect to their current city. Nirode is a journalist by profession but not successful in his
endeavours. Tagged as a “congenital failure”, he considers himself unlucky for not given the
opportunity to study abroad, unlike his younger brother Arun and mourns his living in Calcutta.
The “devil city” frightens Nirode with its ‘unnamed terrors’:
“He shuddered and, walking swiftly, was almost afraid of the dark of Calcutta, its
warmth that clung to one with a moist, perspiring embrace, rich with the odors
of open gutters and tuberose garlands.”viii
His magazine “Voice” fails to establish any communication/association between him and the
world. He fails to find any means to refurbish his connection to his very own city and the world
outside. His rudderless life does not bring his bohemian character in accord with the bohemian
character of the city highlighted by fashion, booze, jazz, artsy culture displayed by its
inhabitants. He is inclined towards the destructive impulses of pseudo-intellectualism with
nothing to hold on to.
The very subject matter of an Indian writing in “other’s” language or in the language of the
Colonizers, that is, English here and being accepted and appreciated worldwide enhances
Cosmopolitanism by raising the ‘voice’ through the pen. This ‘voice’ is heard and given a
