A Portrayal of Indian Modernities in Anita Desai‟s a Journey to Ithaca

Recently, Modernity in Indian English novels as well as novelists are of scrupulous interest. As an epitome of Indian modernity, Anita Desai plays a central role in Indian fiction field. Generally, tradition refers to beliefs, customs and cultural practices that pass from one generation to another with their origin in some distant past. Modernity refers to contemporary behavior or way of doing things which can be viewed as fresh, new and modern. However, Indian culture is a blend of traditional values and the modern spirit. Tradition and modernity prevail side by side in India. Modernity is not altogether new in India. It prevailed since pre-colonial era to the present. Anita Desai's A Journey to Ithaca serves as a very good example for portraying Indian Modernity. Hindu traditions that are prevalent from past times are not totally homogenous; some of them have imbibed the spirit of modernity and have abolished several social evils that characterized them. However the modern society cannot break completely from old traditions. No society can do that. Indian society continues to live like two facets of a coin, that is, traditional and modern. What seems to have happened is we have accepted modernity in our professional work but we continue to be traditional in our lives. Modernity connotes „a certain type of culture whose quality is determined by rationality, the liberal spirit in its broadest sense, plurality of opinions and centers on decision making, autonomy on various fields of experience, secular ethics and respect for the private world of individual.‟ As Deshpande points out, social movements in human history are responsible for shaping the world order into an image that holds at present. Especially colonization has been one of the starkest forms of reshaping in India. It has altered the way we think and function, and have provided us with ideological frameworks and intellectual tools we apply while dealing any situation. Most of the Indian novels in English focus on this, starting from the trio writers, namely Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao and R.K Narayan. This paper focuses on the Indian modernities represented by Anita Desai.