The Voices In The City Analysis

The post- independence period in the recent Indian history corresponds suitably with the ‘nodal period’, when a number of Indian writers of fiction in English try to explore and manifest Indian reality. In these writers, we do not find either the commitment of the earlier period or even the amused narration of the trials of middle class, trying to unite the past traditional outlook with the fast emerging realities of the modern living conditions. In this effort, the writers of the post independence phase move inward. They get more and more psychologically intended and try to assess the sociological effect on the psyche of their characters. Fortunately, this movement from the outward gross realities to inward complexities found as its mouthpiece
The idea of freedom in life is initiative in the subjective novel, which eventually emerges as the recurrent theme. The novel is the stream of consciousness technique delineates the struggle of the people with brutal forces. It also focuses on human relationship and their freedom of life in its real but inner perspective. It depicts the disintegration of Nirode’s and Monisha’s lives caused by imbalances in family ties. Nirode a young man of twenty five years admits himself that he is a ‘congenital failure’ in the ‘heartless and soulless pandemonium’ and is an indomitable pessimist in the’ devil city’. Though he calls himself a journalist , he is still the anonymous and shabby clerk on a newspaper. But the dismal truth is that all he does is to cut long stripes of newspaper and paste and file them. He feels that it is impossible to work under any man , by his orders, at a specific time, at a meaningless job. He feels that it is ridiculous to waste his entire energy, time, life , intelligence on ‘something that does not matter’. He believes that it is better not to live at all rather than to live a life meaningless. He regrets that life has not begun for him yet. He aspires to become a writer and all he wants he says decisively are ‘three drinks a night and a room of his own’. Though, he reminiscences of his childhood and of his mother at Kalimpong, he recalls with disgust his mother’s attraction for their neighbour , the flirtatious Major Chadha, which he believes has deprived him of his mother’s love towards him. He suffers from such contempt on his mother that he refuses to sign the forms when his mother is open to willing a bank account on his name. With this, his habit of Withdrawal , withdrawal of love and resistance has grown stronger that he is not willing to accept love. He feels these attachments to life are a mess and a