Space and Time in the novel, In Custody

 In a famous soliloquy in Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet speaks of the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns. A place is a particular portion of space, or space in general; a time and place. The setting of In Custody is in Mirpore and Delhi, the two cities contrast the narrative with their strange contradiction. One is famous, the other is anonymous. Delhi has identity of its own. It has a culture and identity. Unlike Mirpore, Delhi has a history attached to it. It is associated with a glorious past. It is the capital city. It is a city that is along the river Yamuna. It is related with the prime characters in the novel and is also associated with the identity of characters living in it like Nur or Deven’s practical and cunning friend, Murad, who is the publisher or Noor’s second wife who is smart enough to understand the importance of her husband’s past and wants to make money out of it. Nur has memories attached to old Delhi. A  place is clearly charged with emotion and memory. It is a “location in which individuals . . .form human relationships... places are filled with individual identities, language, references, unformulated rules’. Delhi is where Deven forms relationships of friendship(Murad, Nur), recording together with the assistant, and succeeds in seeking help of Noor’s first wife. Place adds to the individual’s identity. Nur is very much identical to Chandni Chawk in old Delhi, where he lives.

This place is old as is Nur and is crowded just like Nur is surrounded by people who give him little importance but both had a glamorous past. Mirpore is similar to Deven, moving directionless in the realm of time. Delhi presents a contrast of old and new. Deven was surprised to know that Nur enjoyed Byron and Shelley in the true spirit of Delhi by accepting and appreciating anything wondrous. Deven goes to old Delhi to interview Nur in the lanes of Chandni Chowk, which he describes as “bazaar encountered in a nightmare” (38). He continues to wander in the lanes, which had old stained buildings, shops and different stalls. The description in the novel is very apt:

“They walked past shady-looking and evil-smelling shops where herbal medicines and panaceas were being wrapped in paper packets by men who looked too ostentatiously like quacks, past booths in which astrologers and palmists and soothsayers had spread out the exotic tools of their trade...”(39)

Deven could not help noticing the open flowing gutter, a humped bull munching paper and a hospital with fading green walls. For him, it was a nightmare. What was more appalling for him was that a great poet lived in an ambience like this. He tells the boy who was guiding him that, “we must be lost. This is not the right place. It is nouse to go further. I’m not going on.” (39)

His romantic versions of the abode of the great poet are thwarted, and along with him, the readers are also made aware of the changes in old Delhi. Murad, on the other hand, symbolizes the New Delhi or the modern Delhi. He wants Deven to interview Nur so that the saleability of his journal increases. He is also like ‘chameleon’ and crafty and could easily lure Deven. He teased Deven and made fun of him. He is practical and unemotional. He has modern ideas of using recorder for the poetry. He is fast and thinks that he knows what he wants. The contrast is also shown in the modern methods of recording, through the tape, and the flow of poetry, that flows naturally, failing all the artificial means to capture the past.

Mirpore, on the other hand, fits in completely under the criteria of a non place. Non-place is the “Space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity” and is thus devoid of emotion and memory. Mirpore is a small town located on the outskirts of Delhi. Unlike most of the towns in the country, it does not have a river flowing through it (relational and identity: factors that concerns with the identity of a city or a town). Mirpore lacked the sense of history: “Although it lacked history, the town had probably existed for centuries in its most basic, most elemental form. Those shacks of tin and rags, however precarious and impermanent they looked, must have existed always, repetitively and in succeeding generations, but never fundamentally changing and in that sense enduring” (18).

The protagonist, Deven, is also very similar to Mirpore. It turned into that strip of no man’s land that lies around a prison, threatening in its desolation. He has no sense of belonging to Mirpore. He stays in Mirpore just to earn a living: “Then, after he graduated and married and came to Mirpore to teach, it became for him the impassable desert that lay between him and the capital with its lost treasures of friendships, entertainment, attractions and opportunities.” (24)

Deven lacks confidence whether he has to teach students or to interview Nur, he feels  jittery. He attributes this character of a ‘non-person’ to lack of resources. He is bullied by Murad because he is timid, pessimistic, and lacks courage. Students mock at him and would threaten him: “Meet us behind the college and see what we do to you” (200). When he is unable to answer the destitute, he swerves and gives up in the hands of fate and searches for excuses for his failure. When Murad gives him the chance to interview Nur, he had: “...nightmares in which he struggled towards an unspecified destination but was repeatedly waylaid and deflected, never in any stretch of sleep arriving at it any more than he did in waking” (31).

Deven has given up in the hands of destiny and although he lures for Delhi or for establishing a name in Urdu literature, he is unable to change his condition. He has ample excuses for it. He does not want to change. He has adapted and adjusted with Mirpore. He has become Mirpore. Even Sarla, Deven’s wife symbolizes Mirpore. She was the choice of Deven’s mother and aunts. She seemed to be the perfect bride for Deven because she was “penny-pinching and congenitally pessimistic”. She had her own aspirations as a wife but they vanished as she realized the pitiable condition of her husband. Sarla, like Deven, had given up to destiny. Against the backdrop of her novel, Anita Desai incorporates the economic and social expositions of the society. Deven is the only bread earner who is well aware that he could not fulfill Sarla’s aspirations. He pursues literature to run away from the realities of life. The communication gap between him and Sarla is bridged by their son Manu.

There are many references in the novel where time and space are strongly dependent on each other. Many incidents in the story are entwined with time and place. Time-space have a representation through past, present and future. Nur’s wife offers Deven a specific time and place, the room on the third floor where they would not be disturbed. Deven visits Nur at a time when there is no visitor. He slips through narrow wooden door and moves up the stairs. The narrow lanes of Chandni chawk, the narrow entry to Nur’s house, the crowded bus all represent the diminishing space in the modern times.

Although abstract thought could be related to time and space as separate entities, defining them apart from the emotions and values attached to them, Nur has lost his ‘good times’, charisma and glittery like Delhi. Nur says: “Before Time crushes us into dust we must record our struggle against it. We must engrave our name in the sand before the wave comes to sweep it away and make it part of the ocean” (131). The dinner at Nur’ house was similar to the dinner at Siddiqui, the Urdu lecturer, who makes up with Chotu as apprentice and calls for kebab and pilao. At home, Siddique transformed from a college lecturer to ‘a connoisseur of food and music’ (157). Siddique’s house is similar to Nur’s but nearly in ruins. Time and place coexist as the story proceeds. When Deven goes to Delhi, everything seems to go out of control- his friend, Murad tape recorder, his meeting with Nur. Strangely enough, time changes and is favorable for Deven in Mirpur, when he plans with the Urdu professor to buy a tape recorder. He gets the permission soon after. “Time has a powerful bearing on man’s life, emotions, thoughts, and experiences. It makes its presence felt on both the physical and psychic planes of human experience”. The psychology of a person changes with time and place but sometimes it does not change with time and place. Deven and Murad have been together since the times of childhood.

Deven certainly gets an inferiority complex as he encounters Murad. An association with Murad will lead to earning more money. Murad is the son of a rich businessman who wants to earn more, but he never pays Deven for his contributions for Awaaz. Shrewd Murad knows how to bully Deven. It is evident from the story that he has been doing this since their childhood. “You village pumpkin...” and ‘...haven’t you seen or heard, youdonkey...’(91). Deven reiterates: ‘Look, do not use all those animal names...’ ( 91). He could always force Deven (in past and in present) into doing things for his own profit. Deven knows this but is helpless and is not able act under the dominance of a rich Delhi publisher. Even as a lecturer Deven finds it difficult to come out of the strong influence of Murad “...still a two-cigarette man”(10).

Deven also understands that Murad has no passion for Urdu literature and poetry but it is just for the salability of his magazine Awaaz and earning money that he is publishing a new issue on Urdu poetry. Deven calls him ‘chameleon’ (34). Even Nur dislikes Muad and calls him a joker. Deven still wants to interview Nur just to be “in the presence of no other than the greatest living poet of Delhi, his hero since childhood” (34). While on the assignment of Nur’s interview, Deven becomes disillusioned about Nur and his family.

 After witnessing Nur’s house in a shambles, Deven decides to give up this task of interviewing Nur. The two wives of Nur were hell bent upon proving their supremacy: “Deven looked to see if rescue was at hand, and saw an old creature wrapped in a brown cloak, her white hair  combed about the sides of her face. The face was commanding, so straight in its lines, so military in its firmness. ‘Run away from here, bitch,’ she said in a level voice, and in a corner - Ali was heard to snigger- ‘and leave the old man alone. What more do you want from him? You have taken his name and his reputation and today even his admirers. ...go dance before the public since that is your manner of earning a living - “The younger woman who had appeared stricken by apoplexy, leapt at her with a screech. Nur’s bed lay between the two ...” (89-90).

 

Interestingly, the concept of space has been adapted by the placing of Nur’s bed, or is it Nur himself, lying trapped between the two struggling ladies (one from his past and the younger from his present). This constitutes yet another aspect of proxemics. The behavior of these two rival women projects the art of portrayal by the novelist, which hammers the hurdles on the path of Deven. Deven is caught between his anxiety to interview Nur and the plight of facing Nur’s wives. The cultural gap is evident here. Deven is alienated. “The encounter with another culture which has developed its in-built structures brings the process of individual enhancement to a standstill” Deven is pestered by Murad to visit Nur again but this time with a tape recorder. To purchase a tape recorder and record Nur’s interview, Deven had borrowed money from his college. His sincere most efforts did not bear any fruit. The Urdu lecturer, Mr. Siddiqi, who is not interested in Urdu promotion, helps him in his endeavour to purchase a tape recorder. 

To his various questions, Deven answers: “...I was fooled and cheated by everyone - the man who sold me the second hand equipment, the technician who said he could do the recording but was completely inexperienced; by Murad who said he would pay and did not, by Nur who had never told me he wanted to be paid, and by his wife, wives, all of them...” (199). Nur is a much weaker and infirm kind of a person who is fond of drinks. He vomits in the house after drinking and his wife humiliates him for drinking. He has a second wife, a dancer, who married him to earn against his name as a poet. People come to Nur’s house not to hear his poetry, but to listen to her. She is still close to Nur. After Nur’s death, she sends Nur’s bills and poems to Deven. The novel ends when Deven finally accepts the gift of Nur’s poetry from Nur’s second wife. Perhaps “that meant he was custodian of Nur’s very soul and spirit (IC 239). But this has been gained only after Nur’ death, which is again associated with the expression of time. According to Indian temporal scheme, ‘the prestige of beginning’ is the most clearly asserted in the cyclic theory of creation of the world, its differentiation through the four successive ‘yugas’, its destruction and reexamination. ‘Kala’ means both time and death. The Waste Land (1922) sums up the human condition as: ‘We who are living are now dying with a little patience.’

 

Deven wants to stay in the past and does not move from the old to new destinations. His isolation, alienation and depression are the result of his clinging to the past when everyone else has moved ahead with time. A group of widows passing over to the temple in the morning sing a song which portrays Deven’s mental condition:

“O Will you come along with us

Or stay back in the pa-ast?”

O will you come along... (132)

 

Anita Desai’s fiction has strong cultural undercurrent equipped with dualities of meaning. Desai juxtaposes traditionalism with modernism, emotion with rationalism, material with immaterial, presence with absence, attachment with detachment, self with other, fame with anonymity, and masses with classes. In the novel culture defines the way of life. Culture continuously extends its identification with space and time. The protagonist (marred by time and place) moves in search of his identity in the novel. The presentation of the culture and characters is close to the life in the twentieth century India.
As a critic named Das observed, “True to the temper of our times, there are no heroes, no big chested ideologies, and no utopias that will provide complete solutions to our problems.”