About Anita Desai
Anita Desai, born Anita Mazumdar (born 24 June 1937) is an Indian novelist and the Emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a writer she has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times. She received a Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the…
Poetry & Stories
Quotes
India is a curious place that still preserves the past, religions, and its history. No matter how modern India becomes, it is still very much an old country.I aim to tell the truth about any subject, not a romance or fantasy, not avoid the truth.
Clear Light of Day
“With her inner eye she saw how her own house and its particular history linked and contained her as well as her whole family with all their separate histories and experiences — not binding them within some dead and airless cell but giving them the soil in which to send down their roots, and food to make them grow and spread, reach out to new experiences and new lives, but always drawing from the same soil, the same secret darkness. That soil contained all time, past and future, in it. It was dark with time, rich with time. It was where her deepest self lived, and the deepest selves of her sister and brothers and all those who shared that time with her.”“Her eyes opened at this sight against her will and she looked around the room almost in fear. But it was dark and shadowy, shaded by the bamboo screen at the door, the damp rush mats at the windows, the old heavy curtains and the spotted, peeling walls, and in their shade she saw how she loved him, loved Raja and Tara and all of them who had lived in this house with her. There could be no love more deep and full and wide than this one, she knew. No other love had started so far back in time and had had so much time in which to grow and spread. They were really all parts of her, inseparable, so many aspects of her as she was of them, so that the anger or the disappointment she felt in them was only the anger and disappointment she felt at herself. Whatever hurt they felt, she felt. Whatever diminished them, diminished her. What attacked them, attacked her. Nor was there anyone else on earth whom she was willing to forgive more readily or completely, or defend more instinctively and instantly. She could hardly believe, at that moment, that she would Iive on after they did or they would continue after she had ended. If such an unimaginable phenomenon could take place, then surely they would remain flawed, damaged for life. The wholeness of the pattern, its perfection, would be gone.
About Anita Desai
Film:In 1993, her novel In Custody was adapted by Merchant Ivory Productions into an English film by the same name, directed by Ismail Merchant, with a screenplay by Shahrukh Husain.[11] It won the 1994 President of India Gold Medal for Best Picture and stars Shashi Kapoor, Shabana Azmi and Om Puri.
Books:
The Artist of Disappearance (2011)
The Zigzag Way (2004)
Diamond Dust and Other Stories (2000)
Fasting, Feasting (1999)
Journey to Ithaca (1995)
Baumgartner's Bombay (1988)
In Custody (1984)
The Village by the Sea (1982)
Clear Light of Day (1980)
Games at Twilight (1978)
Fire on the Mountain (1977)
Cat on a Houseboat (1976)
Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975)
The Peacock Garden (1974)
Bye-bye Blackbird (1971)
Voices in the City (1965)
Cry, The Peacock (1963)
Anita Desai: Quick Answers
Who is Anita Desai?
Anita Desai, born Anita Mazumdar (born 24 June 1937) is an Indian novelist and the Emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
When was Anita Desai born?
Anita Desai was born on 24 June 1937. Associated place: Mussoorie, India.
Where can I read Anita Desai's poetry?
Kavishala has 2 poems and stories by Anita Desai, free to read on this page, along with selected quotes you can share.
Poems & Stories by Anita Desai
Quotes
India is a curious place that still preserves the past, religions, and its history. No matter how modern India becomes, it is still very much an old country.I aim to tell the truth about any subject, not a romance or fantasy, not avoid the truth.
Clear Light of Day
“With her inner eye she saw how her own house and its particular history linked and contained her as well as her whole family with all their separate histories and experiences — not binding them within some dead and airless cell but giving them the soil in which to send down their roots, and food to make them grow and spread, reach out to new experiences and new lives, but always drawing from the same soil, the same secret darkness. That soil contained all time, past and future, in it. It was dark with time, rich with time. It was where her deepest self lived, and the deepest selves of her sister and brothers and all those who shared that time with her.”“Her eyes opened at this sight against her will and she looked around the room almost in fear. But it was dark and shadowy, shaded by the bamboo screen at the door, the damp rush mats at the windows, the old heavy curtains and the spotted, peeling walls, and in their shade she saw how she loved him, loved Raja and Tara and all of them who had lived in this house with her. There could be no love more deep and full and wide than this one, she knew. No other love had started so far back in time and had had so much time in which to grow and spread. They were really all parts of her, inseparable, so many aspects of her as she was of them, so that the anger or the disappointment she felt in them was only the anger and disappointment she felt at herself. Whatever hurt they felt, she felt. Whatever diminished them, diminished her. What attacked them, attacked her. Nor was there anyone else on earth whom she was willing to forgive more readily or completely, or defend more instinctively and instantly. She could hardly believe, at that moment, that she would Iive on after they did or they would continue after she had ended. If such an unimaginable phenomenon could take place, then surely they would remain flawed, damaged for life. The wholeness of the pattern, its perfection, would be gone.
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