UNVEILING THE MYSTERIES OF HUMAN MIND IN SHASHIDESHPANDE’S COME UP AND BE DEAD

The Padmashri awardee Shashi Deshpande is a popular name in the arena of Indian English Literature. She has penned around eleven novels and That Long Silence has won her Sahitya Academy Award. ShashiDeshpande'sCome Up and Be Dead is a suspense thriller which revolves round the serial murders in the school campus.It stands apart from the rest of her feministic novels. ShashiDeshpande is very successful in her attempt as a thriller novelist as the novel contains all the core of thriller and evokes suspense, excitement, curiosity and high tension.At first it is the death of MridulaDutta of 10th which wasn't a natural death but a suicide. Everybody in the school was pretty sure that the reason was her being pregnant. The head mistress of the old, exclusive girl's school was disturbed as it was causing a bad reputation.The reason for all the murders is interrelated and the truth behind it is trading school girls in sex racket and the chief of it turns of to be the head of the School Varma. Child sexual abuse is a contemporary social issue and Deshpande not only mirrors it in this novel but educates the reader. The trafficking of children involves the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of children for the purpose of exploitation. Commercial sexual exploitationof children can take many forms, including forcing a child into prostitution.