‘Where Shall We Go This Summer?’ is the fourth novel by Anita Desai that was published in 1975. It is considered to be the shortest existentialist novel. Anita Desai is a diaspora writer from India. She has been thrice short-listed for the Booker Prize for her literary excellence. Anita Desai has introduced psychological novels into Indian- English Literature. She has always expressed her deep interest in unfurling women's psyche in her writings basically fiction. Where Shall We Go This Summer? is a woman-oriented novel where the novelist deals with the disturbed psyche of the female protagonist Sita. The story also highlights the increasing gulf between the life of modern-day technopolis and conservative village life. The differences between the two often create a very different culture and breeding grounds for people and affect how they behave and what things they value.
Characters of Where Shall We Go This Summer?
Sita is a 45-year-old married woman, mother of four kids and expecting her fifth child. She is a hyper-sensitive neurotic woman who is fed up with giving birth to children and raising them. Her husband Raman is 10 years older than her. While he is a dedicated family man and an honest husband, he is not as emotionally attached to his family as Sita. Raman is a modern man who devotes most of his time to his business. Raman too doesn’t wish to have another child. When Raman questions her if she wants an abortion Sita says, “I mean I want to keep it-----I don’t want it to be born.” Raman realizes her internal turmoil and the fact that she is irritated with her other four kids. Karan is Sita’s younger son and Menaka is her younger daughter. The family lives in Bombay. While Raman and all their four kids are accustomed to the busy urban life, Sita finds it difficult to adjust to the modern way of living and wishes to return to her island village Manori. Raman is against her wish to move to Manori as he realizes there will not be any nursing or healthcare facility there to aid her delivery. Sita’s father was a freedom fighter and her mother was a housewife who died when she was still a child. Jivan is Sita’s younger brother.
Summary of Where Shall We Go This Summer?
The main character of the novel is Sita, a forty-five-year-old married woman. She lives in the busy city of Bombay with her husband and four children. She spent her childhood in Manori, an island village and she misses the free environment and simplicity of the village life. She was married to Raman when she was 19 years old while Raman was 29 years old at that time. Sita’s father was a businessman and a freedom fighter and Sita was very much inspired by her father. Some people of Manori believed that her father had miraculous curing abilities and he was always ready to help the people of the village. Sita’s younger brother Jivan and she were leading a carefree life when a lethal flood devoured the village in which Sita lost her father and brother. She was rescued by Raman, a 29-year-old young man. Raman was the son of a friend of Sita’s father. He recovered her and took her to his home in Bombay where they married. It was not an arranged marriage, nor it was a love marriage. Sita was nineteen years old then and Raman, who saved her life, felt pity and a surge of lust for her and married her. Sita found it difficult to live with her in-laws and thus, Raman decided to shift to another city and since then, they have been living together in Bombay. Gradually, the family developed and they now have four children. Sita still misses her father and brother. Sita and Raman are the two different poles where there is no attraction but repulsion always. Raman is an ordinary man who has a practical approach to life. But Sita is a woman who gets disturbed easily and fails to adjust to her family and society. Sita wishes special care and pampering from Raman like her father did. Raman who is pragmatic in his approach fails to understand her. He is more busy with his business and financial responsibilities. Sita fails to understand her husband and this leads to a change in her behaviour. She notices that her children too are too materialistic and financially success-oriented and begins disliking her children for being like their father. When she realizes that she is pregnant for the fifth time, some strange feelings strike within her. Now she feels too irritated by her four children and husband and wishes to move away from her family.
When Sita informs Raman about her pregnancy, he gets astonished and somewhat irritated and questions why she didn’t take care and avoided the pregnancy. He asks her if she wants an abortion Sita says, “I mean I want to keep it-----I don’t want it to be born.” Raman realizes that Sita is disturbed and tries to soothe her. But when Sita says that she wishes to go back to Manori, her village, and wishes to give birth to her fifth child there, Raman opposes her and says that she will find it difficult to get proper medical care in the village. This further frustrates Sita as she strongly wishes to go back to Manori, away from her family. Raman asks her if she is expecting some miracle on the island. Sita replies that she is sure of that, on the island of her childhood. Sita recalls from her childhood memories how her father used to treat those people from the mainland. People called his treatments a ‘miracle cure’. Sita remembers how one day a fisherwoman came running and flung at his feet saying that her boils had been cured. Sita recalls how another fisherwoman Phoolmaya conceived and brought so many gifts to her father. Once he had cured a child bitten by a scorpion, the mother of the child said to the villagers that he had done magic. The villagers believed that he knew magic for taking death out of all creatures. All the strange experiences and sensations on the island made Sita think that there was a miracle on the island.
Internally, Sita is disturbed by the materialistic and busy lifestyle of the metropolitan. When Raman insists that delivering the baby in Bombay under proper medical care would be a better choice and going back to Manori would be madness, she tells her husband: "What I am doing is trying to escape from the madness here, escape to a place where it might be possible to be sane again...”. Though she rebels against the birth of the fifth child, she has certain longing in her heart which she misses entirely. She wants to protect her unborn child against the cruel atmosphere in which she is living. In a freak of madness, she aims for an abortion and flies to the Island.
She remembers the days she spent with her husband's parents after marriage. There she felt like a square peg in a round hole. The sub-human atmosphere in the house made her inward-looking and placed her in a suffocating existence. She failed to adapt herself to society. She moved into a small flat and lived alone with her husband and children. Her life there is hardly better, her privacy is disturbed, she finds her existence at stake, and she struggles with the monotony of life.
She is pained to see in the normal life of the household some act of unthinking violence: her boys fighting a duel like their heroes in the films, Menaka wantonly rippling buds off a plant or shedding her paintings, the youngest, Karan, demolishing his toys with Karate blows, Raman stolidly munching his breakfast while she battles with a popgun to frighten away the crows while they are bent upon feasting on a fallen eagle. Each act is more horrible than the other and makes her shrink into herself. It frightens her and appalls her with its cruelty. The violent news in the papers, the endless fights in the block of flats, and the streets outside sicken her and she longs to protect herself and her unborn child from them. There are other incidents which haunt her and she cannot forget those incidents. One of them is the ayahs fighting like cats. While they fight, the children play beside them but these ayahs remain unaware of the crying and frightened children in their midst. Sita describes this scene to her husband and says that all this represents the myriad faces of a mad and violent society.
There is another situation that brings her into contrast with her husband: Sita sees a whole crowd of crows attacking an eagle. The eagle was perhaps wounded or else too young to fly. The crows mock at it and tear it into pieces with their beaks. Sita tries to scare away the crows with her son’s toy gun and keeps a watch over the eagle until the night falls. She identifies herself with the proud and defiant eagle because this situation objectifies the conflict in her own life. The eagle does not survive. Her husband’s reaction to the death of the eagle is in sharp contrast to Sita’s.
Sita begins thinking that her children failed to get the same morals that she got from her father and decides to go back to her village with her younger son Karan and daughter Maneka.
After reaching there, she is sure that Manori will definitely bless her with some miracle. But to her utter surprise, Manori is no longer the island of her childhood. It fails to attract her the way it did earlier. Still, she has not lost hope. Sita tries to adjust to the limited resources and facilities she has found on the island. But her children find it quite impossible and they show their displeasure. The monsoon has made their life much more miserable on the island. The children accuse her of every mishap and misfortune. They are waiting for their mother to realize that life exists in their house in Bombay city and her so-called ‘escape’ to the island that is madness.
Meanwhile, Sita comes to know more about her father from the elder people of the village. Many people believed that he was an honest freedom fighter and a miraculous man, while some doubted him. Some people believed that he was a conman who fooled common people. Sita learns that he mother left her father when she and her brother were too young because she came to know about the extra-marital affairs of Sita’s father. All these rumors further break Sita, yet she maintains that Manori will offer some miracles to her. She feels a better life in Manori where the sea, the palm trees, and the house are her companions. They are so lively that sometimes they speak to her. She assures her unborn child “I’ll keep you safe inside.” Suddenly the news of Raman’s arrival on the island makes Sita feel one violent pulsation of grief inside her. Sita refuses to go back to Bombay first. She has many reasons not to return to the mainland. Finally, she realizes that she can’t escape from the reality and decides to go back with her husband. While packing for their return journey, Sita’s mind is occupied with different thoughts as she begins thinking of rearing her fifth child in a better manner. She realizes that Raman, her husband has saved her life not once, but twice.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of Indian English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
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