Unlike most of the modern writers who misinterpret man’s true condition by accepting a bitterness about absurd existence, Anita Desai holds the view that the writer must perpetually fight for the true depiction of man’s condition and the mystery about it. During the execution of her process of exploration of this mystery, Anita Desai calls for a fresh approach to reality, holds life as a sacred asset and seeks to communicate its richness, power and mystery through ideas that contradict the formidable stances of alienation and absurdity. Ordinary life, feels Anita Desai, has always been man’s true condition and that its exclusion from art is a step toward inauthenticity and error. Art, for Anita Desai, seems to be a purgation of consciousness having something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. It seems that for Anita Desai the great imperative for art is to dissociate itself from theoretical abstractions and ingenious explanations of reality and try to restore the magic or enhancement of life which is innate in every human being. The obstacles attending the realisation of such a vision in art constitute for Anita Desai the essence of the problem of affirmation above and beyond particular stances of world-views. Though Anita Desai is conscious of the fact that man is basically a stranger and an exile in this world, she does not hold the view that man’s exile is without remedy. Rather she has the hope of a promised land of steady wisdom of life which involves her belief that man must face his trap-situation lucidly and he must not brood over the sense of the absurd.
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