Published Paper Details:

In Where Shall We Go This Summer? Anita Desai has probed the theme of marital discord which stems from the fact that the protagonist Sita and her husband Raman live at different planes of existence. Sita seems to live at a psychological and an existential level while Raman does not go beyond day to day material life. Sita's journey to the island is impelled not only by the desire to free herself from her husband but from an entire civilization of which he is the representative. But unlike Monisha, the heroine of the novel Voices in the City, who fails in life due to her negative stance, Sita comes out to be a character of a mature sensibility that succeeds in overcoming the disaster of life and death. Where Shall We Go This Summer? incorporates two journeys: one is an immediate escape from surrounding; the other is towards the future. Sita's stay at Manori is a return to the past which she hopes will make her present significant. Sita, pregnant will her fifth child starts feeling that life is nothing but uncertainty and wonders if she is going to perform an act of creation in giving birth to her child or the destruction of what is now, in her belly, perfect in her protection. Confused, she flees to Manori, to the haven that was her father's island, a place of magic and glamour and mystery, in the hope of finding a solution to the questions of her agitated mind.