Well-known English author Anita Desai, who was born in this hill station, celebrates her 77th birthday on June 24. On this joyful occasion it is indeed a great honour for the Doon valley and Mussoorie for being closely connected to the lives of this graceful writer and her family members.
Mussoorie has always had a close connection with writing and writers. Desai was born in this hill town on June 24, 1937 to D. N. Mazumdar, a Bengali businessman, and Toni Nime, a German expatriate. Her brother, D.N.Mazumdar, an old Dehradun resident, lives in the valley and so does her sister. On the occasion of her birthday, they always miss her and think of their childhood spent in Mussoorie.
Anita was educated at Miranda House,Delhi University. She published her first novel, Cry The Peacock, in 1963. She considers Clear light Of Day (1980) her most autobiographical work . In 1984 she published “In Custody”- about an Urdu poet in his declining days - which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Her novels include Fire on the Mountain (1977), which won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, and Clear light of Day (1980), In Custody (1984) and Fasting, Feasting (1999), each of which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In Custody was made into a film by Merchant Ivory productions. Her children's book The Village by the Sea (1982), won the Guardian Children's Fiction Award. Desai later adapted In Custody as a screenplay, which Ismail Merchant and James Ivory produced as a motion picture in 1993.
Desai’s appearance on the literary scene in 1963 with the publication of “Cry, The Peacock” led to a shift in women’s spaces. Before this, women’s inner space had never been the pivot around which the narratives revolved. Desai is known for her sensitive portrayal of the inner life of her female characters.
Desai maintains that her primary goal is to discover "the truth that is nine-tenths of the iceberg that lies submerged beneath the one-tenth visible portion we call Reality.”
Desai considers herself lucky for having not left India until late in her life, because she feels that she has been drifting away from it ever since: "I can't really write of it with the same intensity and familiarity that I once had." Yet she cannot feel at home in any other place or society. In 2011 , in her work “ The Artist of Disappearance” ,she recreated the atmosphere of the Mussoorie of yore ..
Seven years after the last novel (The Zig Zag Way), Desai returned in 2011with three gem-like novellas in this collection . The title novella “The Artist of Disappearance” is the one which is based in Mussoorie and brings back the memories of days when the British soldiers came to the “gay” hill station to relax and also of the days, much later, when limestone mining ravaged the beautiful hill town.
Haunting, mysterious, written with an almost fable-like intensity, the work is another inimitable creation from Desai who spent many a summer in the Mussoorie hills in her younger days.
Talking to The Pioneer , D.N.Mazumdar, Desai’s brother, said that the impressions left by the hill station on their young minds was deep and strong. “Our family’s association with the town has been very old. Anita was born there and also, we all spent our long summer vacations later,staying often at Connaught Castle , a hotel opposite the State Bank of India .Even later, our children studied at Woodstock.”
Their father, D.N.Mazumdar,was from Dhaka.When he went to Germany for his doctorate, he had met a German girl – Toni Nime-whom he married. The couple had four children.Three girls –Anita, Roma and Indira. “I was the only boy surrounded by my sisters. We all have been very close to each other all our lives,” says Mazumdar,known fondly as Dinu, who has been living in the Doon valley for the past two decades.
Writes Desai, “Mussoorie had never been as gay as now, nor its salubrious climate so needed for the health and recreation of the British soldiers on leave from the war fronts in Burma, Malaya and Singapore, and it was incumbent on the ladies of Mussoorie to provide them with the fun and relaxation that was their due.”
Desai is one of India’s foremost writers. She has written sixteen works of fiction, including Clear light of Day (1980), In Custody (1984) and Fasting, Feasting (1999), all shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Desai currently divides her time between USA and Mexico.