In her novel, Fasting, Banquet, Anita Desai finally achieves what many writers try and then fail to achieve. She uses a light touch, simple language, uncomplicated structure, but at the same time tackles some very important issues and makes a point.
Uma and Arun are children of Mamapapa, the seemingly indivisible common identity presented by the parents. However, these parents are nothing alike. Mom is protective, perhaps selfish and not a little indolent. Dad is a parsimonious control freak who locks the phone because someone might use it. But at least they are together. Their relationship has survived, despite the long wait for a son and his disappointment at his disability.
Uma and Arun also have a sister, Aruna. She is bright and pretty, but in her own way she is also disabled, because she is a woman. Arun’s disability is visible, but Aruna’s exists because of her society’s preconceptions about women.
Uma is not pretty, nor is she academic. He wears thick glasses and has fits. And so, in the middle-class society in which the family lives, Uma can only pursue two possible roles. Or she can marry or become a worker, almost a slave to the family. The first, of course, is the same as the second. Only the location is different. For Uma, marriage does not happen. It does, but fails before it begins, as the groom was already married and simply wanted to collect another dowry. The arranged marriages of Uma’s sister and her cousin also fail. Initially well starred, both end tragically.
The first part of Fasting, Feasting suggests a domestic drama, a slightly comical family trying to cope with its own cultural minority status within the vastness of India. It takes time for the tragic elements of the story to emerge. But when they do, they also disappoint, because only the two disabled characters, Uma and Arun, finally show any honesty or compassion, everyone else is just plain selfish, even those who commit suicide to end the pain. For women, it seems, even achievement is nothing more than an asset to help them in their craft. When offered a place at Oxford, a girl’s duty precludes acceptance and necessity frames the letter as evidence of her higher eligibility. So what seemed like a nice family story about the idiosyncrasies of culture turns into a tragedy, and a tragedy for all women. The ugly and unremarkable Uma is the only apparent survivor, and that’s only because she’s not even a competitor. She exists in the remnants of life that she is allowed.
But what about Arun, the disabled boy? Well, he’s a pretty bright boy. Attend college in the US AND an institution with status in Massachusetts. But what are you going to do on vacation when the university is closed? We can’t afford to carry his all the way home, concludes the parsimonious dad.
So Arun is staying with the Pattons, an all-American nuclear family, a kind of American Dream, mom, dad, two kids, one of each. But dad is a laconic guy. A beer from the fridge keeps him quiet. The son has all kinds of ambitions, and yet none of them realistic. Mom is an emotional mess. She longs for something in her confusion, but has no idea what it could be. And her daughter is bulimic. Happy families.
So through Arun’s eyes, and to some extent as a result of her culturally challenging presence, Anita Desai presents a picture of middle-class American life that is completely dysfunctional. But it is again women who are most deeply affected. Mom does all the shopping and cooks to feed the ungrateful men and the daughter who can’t eat. She fantasizes about Arun’s cultural authenticity, sees in him qualities she craves. The daughter is a complete head case. She is fat and wants to be thin, eat too fast, stuff candy until she vomits, perhaps a slave to a male-generated concept of feminine perfection. And Arun is a witness to all this. Eventually, in his deformity, he is the only presence that is not obsessed with himself.
The title is important. Fasting, feasting presents seeming opposites, two contrasting, albeit unbalanced, scenarios, India and the US It offers two warped observers, Uma and Arun. He unearths two contrasting cultures and discovers that women are slaves in both. Opposites are therefore ultimately similar, hardly opposites.