English · Chapter 8
Study notes aligned to the official NEB syllabus.
Anita Desai (born 1937 in Mussoorie, India) is one of the most respected Indian novelists writing in English. The daughter of a Bengali father and a German mother, she grew up in Delhi and has been shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize (for Clear Light of Day, In Custody and Fasting, Feasting) and won the Sahitya Akademi Award for Fire on the Mountain. "A Devoted Son" is a short story from her 1978 collection Games at Twilight and Other Stories. It is a realistic domestic story set in a small Indian town, and it asks an uncomfortable question: what happens when a son's sense of duty, backed by modern medical knowledge, begins to control the very father he is trying to protect?
The story opens on the morning the examination results appear in the newspapers. Rakesh scans them, can hardly believe what he sees, and goes straight to the veranda where his father, Varma, is sipping his morning tea. He bends down and touches his father's feet. He has stood first in the medical examination, first not merely in his division but in the whole country. Varma is overwhelmed with pride, and the news spreads through the neighbourhood at once. Sweets are distributed, relatives and neighbours crowd in to congratulate the family, and Varma tells everyone that the first thing his brilliant son did was to come and touch his feet. The neighbours are impressed less by the marks than by the modesty of the boy. The success is all the more remarkable because nobody in this modest family has achieved anything like it before.