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Shashi Deshpande’s writings never fail to reach out and touch the deepest corners of readers’ hearts.
Shashi Deshpande was born in 1938 at Dharwad district, Karnataka. Her father Shriranga was a celebrated writer and dramatist. Well educated Deshpande, with three degrees in various fields such as Economics, Law and Journalism published her first works in the year 1970. From then on she has been continuously writing in varied genres including fiction, children’s books and short stories. Her most important works are That Long Silence, The Dark Holds No Terrors, The Binding Vine, A Matter Of Time and In The Country Of Deceit.
Her writings are simple and often focus on issues concerning middle class women whose lives are entrenched in sorrow, suppression and dilemma. Her stories are cathartic in the sense that they voice the lives of so many suffering women who have no say in this world. “I never decided that I was going to become a writer, it was never a conscious decision,” she says but we are all only too relieved and thankful to have such a gem of a writer.
The book That Long Silence garnered her with the Sahitya Akademi and Nanjangud Thirumalamba awards. She is also a recipient of the prestigious Padma Shri award.
Why we find her inspiring:
– For raising concern for the drudgery of millions of middle class women in India through her fiction
– For being such a versatile and motivated writer throughout
Suggested Reading:
http://www.accenture.com/Microsites/vaahini/centre-stage/Pages/a-passion-for-words.aspx
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/finding-ghosts-in-people-heads-shashi-deshpande-ships-that-pass/1/212933.html
*Photo credit: The Hindu.
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hi, you article says shashi deshpande was born in 1978. she was born in 1938.
Thanks Shobha – corrected.
When it comes to being a woman, sacrifice of ambitions and personal self is a prerequisite of the patriarchal tradition. Jaya becomes the ‘perfect wife’ but we are not perfect beings and so she loses sight of the girl she once was and becomes merely a ‘wife’.
She dreams of happiness within her family which is elusive for there is no real communication present. They are just people living together but not bonding together. She ends up hating her father who taught her to believe she was meant to be someone. Instead she becomes the content housewife – a facade which collaspses once trouble comes knocking.
The silence is not her silence towards her husband – her unvoiced complaints. It is the soul tearing and devousing silence of a human being so caught up in societal norms that he/she is unable to hear ‘that inner voice’.
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