Acquaintance of Shashi Deshpande

Hello students! Welcome to our website StudyLovers4u.com. Here, we will delve into the works of Shashi Deshpande, an 86-year-old Indian English novelist who has authored several novels and children’s books.

Introduction of Shashi Deshpande

Shashi Deshpande is a distinguished contemporary Indian literature novelist in English, born in Dharwad, Karnataka, as the daughter of the renowned Kannada dramatics and Sanskrit scholar, Adya Rangachatya. Deshpande’s novels mainly focus on women belonging to the Indian middle class and their inner world. Her novels present a social world of relationships, where women search for themselves and their central relationships.

Personal Life Shashi Deshpande

Novelist, Playwright, Short-Story writer, Feminist and women writer Shashi Deshpande was born on 19 August 1938 in Dharwad, Karnataka, the second daughter of her father Adya Rangachatya and Sarada Adya. She studied in Mumbai and Bangalore and got degrees in Economics and Law. She also studied journalism at the Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai and worked as a journalist for the magazine ‘Onlooker‘ for a few months.

Shashi Deshpande married Dhirendra H. Deshpande in 1962 and moved to Bombay, where Dhirendra worked as a pathologist at G. S. Medical College. Shashi Deshpande went to London in 1968 and returned to Bangalore in 1970. She gave birth to two children named Raghu and Vikram.

Literary Career

Throughout her writing career, she has authored many short stories, nine novels, and books for children. A volume titled Writing from The Margin and Other Essays contains her essays. She published her first collection of short stories in 1978 and her first novel, The Dark Holds No Terror, in 1980. Some of her other works include If I Die Today, Come Up and Be Dead, That Long Silence, The Intrusion and Other Stories (1993), and several children’s books such as A Summar Adventure, The Hidden Treasure, The Only Witness and The Narayanpur Incident.

Major Works

• The Dark Holds No Terrors,1980
• That Long Silence,1988
• The Building Vine, 1993
• A Matter of Time, 1996

novels

• If I Die Today,1982
• Roots and Shadows,1983
• Strangers To Ourselves,2015
• Ships That Pass,2012
• Listen To Me,2018
• The Stone Women,2000
• That Last Silence,1992
• Shadow Play,2013

Short Stories

• A Man and a Woman
• The Cruelty Game
• The Miracle
• Hear Me, Sanjana

Children’s Books

• A Summer Adventure (1986)
• The Hidden Treasure (1980)
• The Only Witness (1980)
• The Narayanpur Incident (1982)

Awards

She received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1991 for her novel That Long Silence (1988). Her other novel Roots And Shadows (1983) was awarded the ‘Thirumathi Rangmmal Award’ for the best novel written and published in India for the year 1982 – 83.

Key Facts

Author Name:	Shashi Deshpande
Nick Name:	Nirupayogi
Birth:	19 Aug. 1938
Father:	Adya Rangacharya
Mather:	Sharada Adya
Writing Style:	The double perspective
Theme:	Women’s problems in the Indian context
Favourite Author:	Jane Austen

Shashi Deshpande as a Feminist Writer or as a Short Story Writer

Frankness and Boldness

Shashi Deshpande’s stories exhibit a level of frankness and boldness that is not often seen in Indo-English short fiction.

Middle-class Society

Shashi Deshpande’s female characters are portrayed as their destiny is in their own hands. Hers are the authentic, poignant tales of middle-class educated women and their exploitation in a conventional male-dominated society.

Vast range of stories

The legacy was the first book of Shashi Deshpande which was a collection of short stories, and from that book, she has published several stories. The authentic recreation of India, The outstanding feature of her stories is a distinct feature of her novels also.

Social commitment

Though no writer in India can get away from the idea of social commitment or social responsibility committed to writing has always seemed to have dubious literary values and Shashi Deshpande stands first among such types of writers in India.

No exotic

There is nothing sensational or exotic about her India no Maharajahs or snake charmers. About the grinding poverty of Indian masses never written by Shashi Deshpande.

Indian society and values

Simplicity, women’s rights, understanding and patriarchy are the centre of Shashi Deshpande’s works. She shows how traditional Indian society is biased against women, but she recognizes that it is very often women who oppress their sisters, though their values are the result of centuries of indoctrination.

Believable characters

“A Liberated Woman” is a short story, which is a story of a young women who fall in love and marries an outer caste man despite her parents’ opposition to her relationship with that man. She is intelligent and hardworking and becomes a successful doctor, but Paris breaks up because of her success. In typical Deshpande style, all of the characters are believable; the best defined Zorhans is Mai, the always Siguibisd but detached matriarch. “Blackout” was an interesting final short story by Mai, which deserved more respect from readers.

Frustrated relationship

One striking thing about her novels and short stories is the recurrence of certain themes in them, But the predicament of women – especially those who are educated and belong to the middle class – has been most prominently dealt with. Many of her characters are people who are frustrated either sexually or professionally. It is these relationships that are responsible for human bonds and bondages.

Finding self

Like Jane Austen, Shashi Deshpande’s short stories have a narrow range. Personal experiences are not used that much to functionalize that stories as well as middle-class housewife’s life stories are the main theme of her novels. Finding a space to grow in the typical man-dominant society is the major concern of Shashi Deshpande. She believes that finding oneself is the best way to live an independent life.

Physical functions

menstruation, pregnancy and procreation are normal physical functions in Shashi Deshpande’s novels. Women, she feels, must not be reduced level of breeding machine: I have a very strong feeling that until very recently in our society have been looked upon just as a ‘breeding animal’. They had no other role in life. I am strongly opposed to that type of treatment because I believe that life should have some dignity.

Dilemma in Women’s Life

Shashi Deshpande emphasizes the situation of Indian women and their social condition and she makes a new way of living life for women through her literary works and thoughts. She also criticized the behaviour of the male-dominated society of India. The Indian woman’s plight is a part of the human predicament, though her experience is significantly more intense. As such a sensible woman writer would to be read as a human being and not as a surrogate for others.

Contradictory

Shashi Deshpande’s thinking is unique from other feminist writers of India, she believes that good literature and propaganda never go together. Her works are also sympathetic and day-to-day life experience-based.

Lonely World

The depiction ofSomber and lonely world is also part of Shashi Deshpande’s novels., Muriel Wasi points out that the collections of Shashi Deshpande’s are based on the reality of Indian women’s life and their struggle, after reviewing “the intrusion and other stories.“

Thematic concern

• Her writings are complex but seamless women’s narratives that explore the lives of people,
• especially women.
• Unconsciously her writings are informed by feminism, which she finds a source of strength.
• Bits and pieces come together at odd times and places and finally merge into a sequenced whole.
• Many of her women characters learn to break free of the stereotype for instance of the mother
• and wife who remains silent and sacrifices her own needs and herself.
• marriage. It is a subject that society prefers not to discuss.
• In her shorter as well as larger fiction, she mainly dwelt on man-woman relationships within the
• ambit of family and society.
• The search for self is an outstanding characteristic of her stories as well as novels.
• She has probed into the suffocated psyche of woman to lay bare their ambitions and
• frustrations, soothe their aches and pains and activate their slumberous femininity.
• Most of her stories give voice to the predicament of women.
• But the dangers from within as without, situations despairing or destabilizing, suffering
• physical or psychic, she does not let her family disintegrate.
• In Matter of Time, she explored different dimensions of women’s experience in India.
• Her work has helped to break the silence on some of the women’s issues that were not discussed in the past and to raise people’s awareness.
• She believes that men and women write differently and that they write about different
• subjects.
• Her contribution to the world of literature is the presentation of the reality of women. She writes for women, presents their problems and lets the world know the problems that women of today are
• facing.
• The transparency of language and spontaneity of prose are the outstanding features of her
• style.

Quote by Shashi Deshpande

“Things can never be as they were. It’s
astonishing how we comment on
the change as if the change is something
remarkable. On the contrary, not to
change is unnatural, against nature.”

“Love gets diluted, hate is forgotten and Friendship and Enmity keep shifting all the time. One day, when you look back, you will ask yourself what was that all about.”

Conclusion

In the recapitulation, after analysing the biography of SHASHI DESHPANDE one can conclude that she is one of the prominent Indian English writers who published several novels, short stories and children’s books. In her works, she depicts the situation of Indian women and their struggles. Shashi Deshpande is the writer who introduces women’s situation, their rights, man-dominant society, and family relationships in her works. One can find the originality in Shashi Deshpande’s character as she presents her thoughts on paper and her explanation of every work makes her unique. All in all, Shashi Deshpande is an inspiration for modern writers because she created a path for new women writers and provided a vast subject of writing.

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