ANITA DESAI AND ARUN JOSHI’S VIEWS ON EXISTENTIAL DILEMMA

Abstract:

The prime objective of this research article is to explore nuances and various phases and facets of existential anguish and dilemma experienced by various characters of Anita Desai and Arun Joshi’s fiction. Though the modern concerns like the existential situation of man and the East-West Encounter form almost the backbone of the fiction of Anita Desai and Arun Joshi, it is necessary to note that they display in their fiction to no less degree what could be described as ‘contemporary consciousness’. In fact both existentialism and the spiritual quest are themselves contemporary matters.But the contemporary consciousness which includes the social, economic, even the geographical awareness, lends a genuine kind of solidity to their fiction which otherwise could have turned the novels into willed fantasies. Though Anita Desai’s first novel, Cry, The Peacock (1963) is essentially focused on the psychosis of Maya the protagonist, the landscaping of the story is remarkable; the sense of place is unmistakable.Many husband the successful lawyer, is not merely a solid foil to the mercurial wife but a man of the world and a man of dignity who knows life and also his Gita very well. The Age of R. K. Narayan’s novels and of Raja Rao’s Kanthapura and numerous other novels of the Gandhian age now seems to belong to the archives of history... Anita Desai, and also Arun Joshi have closed the old chapter and opened a new gloomy chapter in the history of post-Independence India. Though they are not ‘midnight’s children’, Anita Desai was born in 1937 and Arun Joshi in 1939, they have entered into the dark tunnel of Indian history. The dream of a glorious dawn has melted and they are in the scorching heat of a new age of unsavory fact.