This is a first from Shashi Deshpande, author of eight novels, including the Sahitya Akademi-winning That Long Silence. Her ninth is a love story. Actually, readers of Deshpande won?t be terribly surprised because she has written in many forms and genres ? short story, non-fiction, children?s books, crime novels and so forth. What?s more, we have met the young Devayani in an earlier novel, a crime novel, Come Up and Be Dead. But as the author herself acknowledges, this is no sequel.
We are re-introduced to Devayani at her new home in the small town of Rajnur. The house has been built after demolishing her parents? home, and you immediately sense that many old demons will be buried and Devayani will get a new beginning. She gets it in the form of love ? and for some time even dares everyone who warns her against it with John Donne?s famous lines: ?For god?s sake hold your tongue and let me love.?
With everyone trying to marry her off, Devayani falls in love with Ashok Chinappa, the new district superintendent of police of Rajnur, who promises love and honesty but no future. As Devayani travels the treacherous road to love, she ends up asking a string of questions to herself: ?Why did I do it? Why did I enter the country of deceit? What took me into it? I hesitate to use the word love but what other word is there?? There are no easy answers and Devayani doesn?t even try to search for them. She knows she can?t expect anything of Ashok but can?t help recalling what an astrologer had told her mom. ?I would marry early, he said. It would be easy, it would happen just like that, he said, clicking his fingers. It would be a happy marriage and I would have four … Just like that. You fraud, I thought again. You fat fraud.?
And though this is Deshpande?s first love story, most of her novels have been exploring various ideas of love. Think The Dark Holds no Terrors, where Sarita flees to her ailing father?s bedside to escape marital rape. So, we are in familiar Deshpande territory In The Country of Deceit, which is also about love, loss and the essential loneliness of being. But there?s another take away too. Deshpande has often said that she is curious about people and the world around them, and through her novels we get a glimpse not only into the lives of ordinary people but also their milieu, their culture, language, social norms and so forth. We got all this and more in her ninth outing, never mind a few clich?s about love and sex.
