Character sketch of Deven

 Deven is the protagonist of the novel ‘In Custody’ by Anita Desai.

 He resided at Mirpore and was a Hindi professor at Lala Ram Lal College.

 In chapter two, Anita Desai gives the description of Mirpore. It lacked a ‘river’ and

the village had ‘an artificial tank’ with no water but with a layer of ‘bright green

scum’. River represents the flow of life which lacked not only in the village but also

in the life of Deven.

 He was a smoker.

 He looked down upon women and considered them inferior.

1. Through the novel ‘In Custody’, Anita Desai portrays the situation of women

in the patriarchal society.

2. Deven had an arrange marriage with Sarla. Like every girl and a bride, she had

aspirations and dreams. She dreamt of stepping out of a car with bag full of

groceries, filling them into a refrigerator and then ringing up her friends from

a telephone. But none of these dreams were fulfilled. Instead of showing

sympathy to and loving his wife, he did not treat her respectfully.

3. He protested against her disappointments by taking ‘his revenge upon her for

harboring it’ by throwing away dishes that were not cooked to his liking and

tearing up clothes she had not washed properly.

4. Deven received two letters. Though he recognized the handwriting of his wife,

he left it unopened and read the letter received from Nur. This shows that he

ignored and neglected her.

5. The next morning when he reached home, he saw that his wife has returned.

He asked her why she did not inform him that she was returning that day.

Sarla pointed at the unopened letter and accused him.

complete control over the family. There was a change in his attitude as he

realized that Sarla too is the victim of the society. Deven wanted to share his

disappointments with Sarla but he thought “how else he could tell her he

shared all her disappointments and woe?” He could not make the move as he

considered himself superior to her and did not want to show his emotions.

Anita Desai writes, “But he could not make that move: it would have

permanently undermined his position of power over her, a position that was as

important to her as to him: if she ceased to believe in it, what would there be

for her to do, where would she go?” (pg. 221)

7. Imtiaz Begum, the younger wife of Nur was going to recite poetry on her

birthday. Deven thought that she was not worth listening to and compared her

to a monkey. He felt that women are not meant to recite poetry and are only

meant for household work.

8. He thought that she could be barred from the society because of the way she is

dressed.

9. Deven uses animal imagery to describe Imtiaz Begum. He thought that her

hair was hung over her shoulders like ‘two rats’ tails’ and she had ‘reptilian

hands’. This shows that he saw Imtiaz not as a human being.

10. In the last chapter of the novel, Imtiaz wrote a letter to Deven. She mentioned

that the reason he left the mehfil when she was singing her verse was that he

could not tolerate a woman sing and match the gifts of men. Moreover, she

asked him if he was not guilty to assume that a male has a right to ‘brains,

talent, reputation and achievement’ whereas a woman is condemned to find

satisfaction ‘in being maligned, mocked, ignored and neglected’.

imposed by patriarchal society. She struggled and sent her poems to Deven in

order to show that women too are good poets and writers like men. Like

Deven, many men looked down upon women and treated them disrespectfully.

 Deven created many illusions in his mind and tried to live with these illusions until he

faced the reality.

1. Deven considered Nur, the famous Urdu poet as his ‘hero’. He thought that Nur

resided at a very good place. But when he was on his journey to his home, he saw

that the place where he lived i.e., Chandni Chowk was like a maze and crowded.

“He knew he could not be near the poet’s residence in this pullulating honeycomb

of commerce.” (pg. 33)

2. When he was asked by Murad to interview him, he imagined that he was living

“either surrounded by elderly, sage and dignified litterateurs or else entirely alone,

in divine isolation.” (pg. 49) When Deven went to meet him, he saw the reality

wherein the clowns and jugglers were around him or he with them.

3. In his youth, he had the illusion of having ‘free-will’ but he realized that it was a

trap. He thought that marriage, family and job had placed him in a cage.

4. His friendship with Nur gave him an illusion that the door of his trap was opened

and he could escape into a wider world and find freedom. But this wider world

was an illusion too. He felt like trapped animal in a cage who was not able to find

freedom and fresh air to breathe.

 In the novel, Deven faced existential crisis in his life.

1. In chapter 1, the following line, “lie low and remain invisible”, introduces the

idea of existentialism in the character of Deven. Deven is shown as the protagonist

hefty meal, even when he could barely make ends meet on his own salary. 

2. He questions his purpose of existence, as he believes himself to be someone

“small and insignificant” in Mirpore. He is unable to provide or become a good

husband to Sarla, a good father to his Manu, or a good Hindi professor. He had to

leave his dream childhood love of learning the Urdu language and take up

teaching in Hindi because the latter served as a better financial investment, plus

had more scope as compared to Urdu language. 

3. His life has become a series of self and non-self-imposed limitations, which he

had no choice but to adhere to. He had faced more disappointments than

fulfilments. Due to this, and his estranged marriage with Sarla, Mirpore had

become “a trap” or “a cruel prison” where Deven felt like a “caged animal in the

zoo.” Hence, when Murad offered him to go to Delhi to interview Nur, he agreed

to it. He saw that as a chance of escaping his limitations, finally doing something

for the language he loved so much since his childhood. His quest of interviewing

Nur gave him a sense of living and purpose to his life. 

4. The idea of a “superior being” is proposed through Deven’s characteristics, where

he puts the people on an illusionary pedestal. Like the characters of Nur, Murad,

or ‘an ideal student’ listening to his class, he prefers to live in his illusions, which

in a way, nurture his existential crisis and make him powerless enough to succumb

to the situations around him. 

5. However, when he begins the interview of Nur, we can see a marked change in his

personality. In chapter 6, through the lines- “he has been allotted a role in his

life”- Deven finally seems to realise his role as a ‘custodian’ of Urdu language. He
 starts seeing himself as someone important, on whom the revival and safeguarding

of a language depends upon. 

6. This development can be further seen in chapter 9, where he screams at Murad,

who is impatient at Nur for reciting his poetry for the interviews. He screams at

him and says, “Poets cannot be rushed”, which impresses Murad, thus

highlighting how he started asserting role as the custodian of Urdu language. 

7. Even in chapter 11, we can see another existential crisis, when becomes frustrated

as he realises that his efforts have all been in vain. He isn't able to support his wife

and child, or be a good lecturer or even revive the crumbling Urdu department in

his University. His annoyance is further aggravated when he wants to empathize

with his wife, Sarla, but is unable to do so, because he doesn't want her to think of

him as being equal to her. 

8. Out of this sheer frustration and outrage, he goes out for a walk, in the last

chapter, during very late hours of night. The metaphor of him continuing to walk

after he pulls out the thorn from his foot becomes symbolic of his complete

development, where he vows to face every problem in his life head-on, and finally

becomes the true custodian of Urdu language after Nur himself.

 Language Politics 

1. The character of Deven is symbolic of language politics of post-partition India.

With a major movement of Muslims to Pakistan, Urdu as a language had begun to

crumble down. Even Congress leadership had given preference to Hindu over

Urdu, in post-colonial India, by delegating the language as the ‘official language’

with reference to its Devanagri script. 

Deven’s first love has always been Urdu language since childhood, but in order to

secure his livelihood, he has to teach Hindi in the college. 

3. Hindi is shown as a language with better scopes and areas of recognition in the

novel. Even Nur says that all the awards are given to famous Hindi writers and

poets, while the Urdu writers are side-lined and marginalised. This statement

highlights how the grandeur of Urdu language is losing over time. Even Siddiqui,

Urdu professor says that his haveli would soon turn into dust, just like the Urdu

language itself. 

4. Even Deven is shown to be in conflict between the two languages. When

recording a session with Nur, he is mocked for being a professor of Hindi. He

finds himself unable to retaliate because on one hand, Urdu has been the language

which he had loved and enjoyed with his father. It was the reason why he had

such a deep relationship with his father. But on the other hand, Hindi language

was the one providing him with means of sustenance, his livelihood and job. He is

shown to be torn between the language he loves and the language which makes

him earn. 

5. Furthermore, on extending the language politics, the same idea can be applied to

Hindi and English language, where English, being a global language has

overshadowed the former language, due to its connectivity, wider scope of

engagements and more employment opportunities, in a post-colonial world. 

6. Thus, the languages have been reduced to the means of earning livelihood, instead

of seeing them as custodian of traditions, history, past, customs and literature.

To sum up, all through his childhood and youth he had known only one way to deal with life

and that was to ‘lie low and remain invisible’. But by the end of the novel, there is the
development of Deven wherein he was ready to take a stand for himself and follow his own

path. In the initial chapters of the novel, Deven felt like he is stuck in a trap but by the end of

the novel, he finds a purpose to live in his life i.e., to take efforts, face obstacles to preserve

the Urdu culture and be the true custodian of Urdu language.