His withdrawal into himself is rationalized by his family as a reaction to Anuja’s brazen misstep. Although outraged by her behaviour, her parents take her back and help her recover.īut for Tanay, there is neither redemption nor empathy, even from those closest to him, which makes his suffering all the more acute. Anuja’s desire to live as a free-spirited young woman is noted by society, with support or disapproval, for what it really is. Yet, in spite of their shared disenchantment with the family, Tanay and Anuja have very different battles to fight. Rather, it is caused by a psychic revolution, one that grants them a knowledge of the person each of them truly is. “Our house was big enough for middle-class dreams," Anuja wryly observes, “but not for privacy."īut the journey of Tanay and Anuja from the confines of their home into the world is not merely dictated by the need to be financially independent. Like the love they have lost, they learn to cultivate an “accomplished solitude", to make loneliness easy on themselves, an achievement of sorts for siblings who have grown up in a house surrounded by parents and neighbours. As their testimonies reveal, brother and sister are also entirely unaware of, if not wilfully oblivious to, each other’s inner turmoil.Īt the end of their reckonings, Tanay and Anuja are left with no choice but to displace themselves from the comfort of the nest.
He brings into the sterile lives of the Joshi children the allure of music and painting, apart from a psychosexual chemistry, which leaves them changed and grappling with a sudden recognition of their apartness from the rest of the family.
He “might have been born the day he came to stay with us," Anuja says, “for he never talked about his past". Like the irresistible stranger in Theorem, the young tenant renting from the Joshis is a mystery. The incursion of the radical into the cosy, if claustrophobic, middle-class domesticity of the Joshi family is not as dramatic, though its aftermath is no less disruptive. View Full Image Cobalt Blue: Translated by Jerry Pinto, Hamish Hamilton, 228 pages, Rs399
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