Fasting,feasting: A book review

This novel "fasting, feasting" appeared in year 1999 and was also shortlisted for the coveted Booker prize in England. This is written by the celebrated writer Anita Desai."Fasting and feasting "is Anita's 11th book. She has been called as one the finest contemporary writer working in English.She lives in Cambridge, where she teaches writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In this latest novel Anita Desai compares life in rural India with suburban America.
When I started reading this novel it was a sheer curiosity about this writer. Fasting, Feasting certainly is a dichotomous novel -- in style and substance.

The story is very simple: parents, their first daughter Uma whi is the main character is still unmarried and they are caring for them, other daughter Aruna who is pretty, ambitious and smart, but eventually also a victim of her choices is already married and away; a son Arun in whom parents put all their dreams and hopes.Arun is in USA, who is also a sensitive and unhappy, trying to find his way in the midst of all the expectations under which he is weighted down. It can be clearly seen that this book is in two parts. First part describing Uma's life in India and the second part of her brother Arun days in America.

She starts her story with a busy domestic scene, as the parents -- who have such a fused authority that they are often referred to simply as Mama Papa -- fussily ask whether daughter Uma has given orders to the cook and prepared a package for son Arun, who is studying in America.

This elder daughter name is Uma.Uma is the protagonist. Uma is a gray-haired spinster living under Mom Dad's demanding rule She is a simple girl with a mystical bent, suffocates in a patriarchal system of arranged marriages. She has neither the looks, intelligence nor self-confidence to attempt a career, an option her mother and father have vetoed in any case.In this novel there is never a mention about her looks and complexion so we do not know whether she is unattractive but situations prove so.

Uma's life is full of childhood laughter and pain which she herself cannot realize, there are women around her who would want to segregate her and crush her in to the same hidden dark corners of life that they have seen, that too with a revenge, but she though accepts it as her fate , her influence, her willpower and her passion escalates her to have her own escapades in brief intervals .Uma is an icon of all women who succumbs but has a will to survive on their own little dreams of freedom.

The arranged marriages produce their own painful comedy. According to Uma, her mom sent her photograph around to everyone who advertised , but it was always returned with the comment that sorry "We are looking for someone taller, fairer, and more educated. They had to face an unsuccessful engagement due to the  dowry system. Certainly, Aruna's (Uma's younger sister) marriage is a fascinating victory, taking her straight to flashy, glamourous and of course a metropolitan life in Bombay.

When Arun his younger savior brother was born ,Uma as the eldest  daughter,was given all the responsibilities of looking after him.Uma was taken out from the school just to change his clothes, his diapers and to look after him seriously who later grows up in an Alien land and find himself thinking about her. Then she is auctioned off as a bride to the highest bidder.

Arun, a dutiful but a gloomy son , who is forced to study day and night to qualify for a superior university and gradually he feels trapped by the very education meant to liberate him . His desire to be alone was also not fulfilled to the extent he wants "Fasting, Feasting," the story unexpectedly shifts to present-tense Boston, where depressing Arun is spending his own imprisoned summer accommodation with an American family, the Pattons.In the US he finds the world of excesses of everything like of food, of body and of non-interference parental and otherwise

Through Arun's eyes we look the Patton family - a "barbecuing", dissatisfied father, a panicky, vague, aspirant vegetarian mother, a body-obsessed, jock son and a bulimic, neurotic daughter. All of them go through some form of corruption - of will, of fun, of passion and of love. In one gloomy minute, Arun recognizes in the Pattons' bulimic daughter an account of his own unhappy sister Uma, and the shock provokes a reflection on these two frustrated women.

Uma, subdued by the stress of the household and growing up with her own thoughts of desires and requirements, was married thrice is abandoned mercilessly by older men. Uma remains impassive and naive, she accepts her fate, and she is brought back to her home when the last of the grooms fail her. Uma remains with her parents and serves them and others.

"Fasting and feasting" is not of story but of comparison. The book is obviously well written and poignant. This novel is beautiful in its own privileges. Everything centers on food and in a nutshell "Fasting, Feasting takes food as a metaphor for affecting sustenance.