Theme Of The Wild River By Arun Joshi

Arun Joshi is a novelist who, more strongly than most, has brought to his work that detachment from the everyday, while still acknowledging its existence, which is perhaps india's particular gift to the literature of the world. The rising up into the transcendental is a trait that has increasingly marked out his novels from his first, the foreigner—where the young hero, after experiencing life and love in America, is, back in Delhi, at last persuaded by a humble office worker that sometimes detachment lies in actually getting involved—on up to the city and the river, which takes place wholly in an imaginary land.
To venture as a writer into such territory it is necessary to be equipped with the means to make the everyday credible and sharply
Joshi, in his search for a way to describe the meaning of things, has now come to a world akin to those of science fiction or perhaps to the mystical poetry of blake writing of "golgonooza the spiritual fourfold london eternal." but all the while there are digs or sly hints at the current ills of indian society and, by implication, of all societies everywhere. And in the final pages, where the wild river sweeps over the whole complex city, there is, again, sounded that faint note of hope. The question is not of success or failure, an old yogi tells his disciple; the question is of
Part I of the novel thus explores the growth and development of Sindi's relationship with Babu and June Blyth. He has occasion to meet them on account of his duties in the foreign students" office. Disarmingly frank in his encounters with both, Sinai Buds both Babu and June appealing in different ways. While Babu with his striking good looks and naivety arouses all his protective instincts, it is June who destroys all his defences and his philosophy of non- involvement and detachment cultivated onaccount of his earlier experiences
Part I of the novel serves as an introduction to the circle in which Sinai had moved while in the U. S A. However his capacity to feel alone is overwhelming and it is his loneliness- which surfaces in Part I, is strengthened in Part II and in a way resolved in Part III- that reaches out to us in all its poignancy. For instance, at the party hosted annually for the foreign students, Sindi Oberoi observes, "It is remarkable how you can be in a crowded room like that and still feel lonely, like you were sitting in your own