Cry, the Peacock (1963) by Anitha Desai

About the author:

Anita Desai is a prominent Indian author, born on June 24, 1937, in Mussoorie, India. Her mother was German, and her father was Bengali. This mixed cultural heritage influenced her writing, with themes of cross-cultural interactions and identity being central in many of her works. She grew up speaking German at home, Hindi with friends, and English at school, giving her a unique linguistic and cultural perspective. She began writing in English at an early age, with her first story published when she was just nine years old. She later became a professor of writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States.

Major Works:

Indian Novelist, mother of Kiran Desai. shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times (in 1980, 1984, 1999). In 1958, she collaborated with P. Lal and founded the publishing firm Writers Workshop.

1.     Cry, the Peacock 1963: Her 1^st novel. Maya, daughter of a rich Brahmin. When she was child, An Astrologer told that after 4 years of marriage she or her husband would die. Due to the fear, she losses her balance of Mind, and kills her husband. This novel depicts the inner psychological dilemma of Maya. It is a psychological exploration of a woman’s inner turmoil and descent into madness, set against the backdrop of a traditional Indian marriage. The novel focuses on themes of loneliness, obsession, and the struggle for emotional connection.

2.     Voices in the City (1965)- Story of 3 siblings Amla, Nirode and Monisha. It is based on the life of the middle-class intellectuals in Calcutta, Voices in the City is an unforgettable story of a bohemian brother and his two sisters caught in the cross-currents of changing social values

3.     Bye Bye Blackbird (1971)- black bird means immigrant, It is in 3 parts: Arrival, Discovery and Recognition. Adit and Dev are main characters who arrives England for studies. About the Racism of England, who calls Indians ‘wog’.

4.     Where shall we go this Summer (1975)- 4^th novel- Sita is the protagonist, pregnant for the fifth time, feels frustrated in four walls. It is an intense story of a sensitive young wife torn between the desire to abandon the boredom and hypocrisy of her middle class and ostensibly comfortable existence, and the realisation that the bonds that bind her to it cannot easily be broken.

5.     Fire on the Mountain (1977): She received a Sahitya Academy Award in 1978 for this novel. Backdrop of Shimla Hills. Anita Desai depicts the psyche of Nanda Kaul, who has withdrawn herself from all movements and echoes. Initially, she had led a perturbed busy life as the Vice-Chancellor's wife, looking after several children and grandchildren and arranging for interminable get-togethers. Nanda Kaul withdraws to a secluded house in the mountains to escape her family and societal obligations. The themes of loneliness, retreat from the world, and emotional repression are central.

6.     Clear Light of Day (1980) her most autobiographical work. A deeply introspective novel that examines the relationships within a family over time, set against the backdrop of post-partition India. The narrative shifts between past and present, revealing tensions, regrets, and unspoken emotions

7.     Village by the Sea: an Indian family story (1983)- This children's novel won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. It tells the story of two children, Hari and Lila, who struggle to support their family in a small Indian village.

8.     In Custody (1984)- A Booker Prize-nominated novel, focus on decline of Urdu language, Deven Sharma, Hindi professor; and Nur Shajahan Badi- Urdu poet laments for decline of Urdu.

9.     Baumgartner’s Bombay (1988)- Baumgartner is a German Jewish boy who came to India.

10. Fasting, Feasting (1999)- This novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It explores the contrasts between life in India and the U.S. through the experiences of unmarried lady Uma, a woman trapped in traditional expectations and familial responsibilities.
11. The Zigzag Way (2004)- set in 20^th century Mexico.

 

Themes in her Work:

• Identity and Alienation: Many of her characters grapple with a sense of displacement or alienation, often torn between tradition and modernity.
• Female Experience: Desai frequently explores the lives of women, particularly their emotional worlds and the constraints they face due to societal expectations.
• Cultural Change: She highlights the conflicts and contrasts between Indian traditions and Western influences, as well as the tensions between rural and urban life.

Awards and Recognition:

• Sahitya Akademi Award (1978) for Fire on the Mountain.
• Booker Prize nominations for Clear Light of the Day(1980), In Custody (1984) and Fasting, Feasting (1999).
• Padma Bhushan, one of India's highest civilian awards, for her contribution to literature.

Legacy: 

Anita Desai is considered one of the most important contemporary Indian authors writing in English. Her works have been translated into numerous languages, and she has inspired many writers both in India and abroad. Her daughter, Kiran Desai, is also a well-known writer, having won the Booker Prize for The Inheritance of Loss in 2006.

 

Cry, the Peacock (1963)- Introduction

Cry, the Peacock (1963) is the debut novel by Anita Desai and the winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1963. It is the story of a young girl, Maya, obsessed by a childhood prophecy of disaster. It is divided into three sections: a short introduction and conclusion in objective, third-person narrative, and a long subjective middle section narrated by the neurotic heroine, Maya. In Maya’s narrative, Desai employs stream of consciousness to fill in details of Maya’s past and to chronicle the progressive deterioration of both Maya’s relationship with her husband, Gautama, and her own mental poise and sanity. In the climax, Maya, a slave to the fate she has feared, kills Gautama in accordance with the prophecy of an astrologer. The novel ends with her total mental collapse.

Maya is the sensitive, poetic, intuitive, and unstable type of personality that appears consistently in Desai’s fiction. She is extremely sensitive to the beauty around her—the flowers and fruits in the garden, the trees and plants, the sky and the seasons, her pets and other animals— in brief, the whole gamut of nature. Gautama, her husband, is her opposite: He is insensitive to transient beauty; a pure rationalist, he is concerned only with absolutes.

The characters’ names themselves epitomize their irreconcilability: Maya means “illusion,” and Gautama is the name of the Buddha, who was able to rend the veil of maya. Thus, while Maya revels in the world of the senses, Gautama rejects it entirely.

According to the astrologer’s prophecy, one of them must die. Maya decides to kill Gautama because, in her view, he has rejected all that makes life worth living; hence, to her, he is already “dead.” Unable to resolve her conflict with Gautama, Maya pushes him from a terrace, thereby terminating her struggle.

Plot Summary:

The novel is set in an unnamed Indian city and revolves around Maya, the wife of Gautama, a rational and detached lawyer. The story opens with Maya mourning the death of her beloved pet dog, Toto, which becomes symbolic of her emotional instability and loneliness.  Maya was surrounded by childhood prophecy of disaster. The astrologer had predicted that either she or her husband would die within four years of their marriage, a prophecy that haunts her throughout the novel.

She was alone at home with only her father who was a lawyer with her after the death of her mother and her brother having gone to America to carve his own independent destiny. She got all the attention from her father. After her marriage, she expected the same from her husband who also was a lawyer. But being a busy man, he failed to meet her demands. The excessive love Maya got from her father made her have a feeling that the world is a toy especially made for her, painted in her favorite colors and set moving according to her tunes. Seeing her morbidity, her husband warns her of turning neurotic and blames her father for spoiling her.

Although the reason for Maya’s neurosis is not her father but persistent obsession of the prediction by the albino astrologer of death either for her or her husband within four years of their marriage. The terrifying words of the prediction, like the drumbeats of the mad demon of Kathakali ballets, ring in her ears and unnerve her. She knows that she is haunted by a black and evil shadow, her fate and the time has come. And four years it is now. It was no. it was now to be either Gautama or she.

The loving attention of her father makes Maya oblivious of the deadly shadow, but as her husband fails to satisfy her intense longing for love and life, she is left to the solitude and silence of the house which prey upon her. She muses over her husband’s lack of love for her and once, she told him straight to his face that how she wanted love and he did not understand. Temperamentally there is no compatibility between Maya and Gautama. Maya has romantic love for the beautiful, the colorful and the sensuous but Gautama is not romantic and has no use for flowers. The gap of communication between them leaves her lonely to brood over the morbid thoughts of the astrologer’s prophecy. Her attempts to divert herself by visits to her friend Leila and Pom or Mrs. Lal’s party or the restaurant and the cabaret, prove powerless to dispel the creeping terror. The visit of Gautama’s mother and sister Nila brings a brief respite to her and she enjoys her busy life in their company. But once they are gone she finds herself alone with her horrors and nightmares.

Throughout the novel, Maya struggles with her conflicting emotions. As her mental state deteriorates, Maya’s thoughts become more chaotic and hallucinatory. In one particularly symbolic scene, Maya watches a peacock’s frenzied dance in the garden and sees it as a metaphor for her own life—a dance of love and death. The peacock, crying out in despair and desire, becomes a powerful symbol of Maya’s own tormented soul.

Maya is so much disturbed by the prophecy that she always think about the prophecy accompanied by a peacocks cry. Listening to the cry of peacock in the rainy season made her realize that she should never sleep in peace. She knew she was going insane. Maya suffers from headaches and experiences rages of rebellion and terror. As she move towards insanity, she sees the vision of rats, snakes, lizards and iguanas creeping over her. Her dark house appeared like a tomb to her. In an interval of sanity, an idea struck her that since the astrologer predicted death to either of them, it may be Gautama not she whose life is threatened. Then she decides to kill him.

One usual day Gautama was much lost in his work, she asks him to accompany her to the roof of their house to enjoy cool air. He agreed and accompanied her to the roof lost in his own thoughts. Passing out of the room, Maya catches sight of bronze Siva dancing and prays to the Lord of Dance to protect them. Climbing the stairs she finds her cat suddenly speeding past them in a state of great alarm. They walk towards the terrace end. As Gautama move in front of her, she in a fit of frenzy pushes him over the parapet to pass through an immensity of air down to the very bottom, thereby terminating her struggle. It remains in the end for Gautama’s mother and sister to take away completely insane Maya from the scene of tragedy of the house of her father.

After Gautama’s death, Maya is left alone, completely overwhelmed by guilt and madness. She reflects on what she has done, but instead of finding relief or freedom, she feels utterly lost. The prophecy has been fulfilled, but Maya is now trapped in a cycle of despair and self-destruction.

Characters:

1. Maya: Maya is the protagonist of the novel, a young, sensitive, and emotionally fragile woman. She is consumed by loneliness, and her emotional needs are not met by her rational, detached husband. Throughout the novel, Maya’s psychological instability intensifies as she becomes obsessed with an astrologer’s prophecy that foretells death in her marriage. Maya’s heightened sensitivity, obsession with death, and alienation from her husband push her towards a mental breakdown. Her character reflects the themes of psychological conflict, marital discord, and a woman's suffocation in a patriarchal society. Maya is the sensitive, poetic, intuitive, and extremely sensitive to the beauty around her—the flowers and fruits in the garden, the trees and plants, the sky and the seasons, her pets and other animals—in brief, the whole gamut of nature. Gautama, her husband, is her opposite: He is insensitive to transient beauty; a pure rationalist, he is concerned only with absolutes
2. Gautama: Gautama is Maya’s husband, a practical and emotionally distant lawyer. He represents rationality, intellectualism, and detachment, standing in stark contrast to Maya’s emotional and sensitive nature. His inability to understand Maya’s emotional needs contributes to her increasing sense of isolation and mental deterioration. Gautama’s character is central to the marital discord in the novel, as his focus on reason and his lack of emotional engagement drive Maya to madness. His eventual death, caused by Maya, is the novel’s tragic climax.
3. Maya’s Father: Maya’s father plays a significant role in shaping her character. He is a loving and indulgent figure in Maya’s life, having raised her with affection and over-protection. Her close bond with him and his nurturing nature created a strong emotional dependence, which sets up Maya's unrealistic expectations for her marriage. Maya seeks from Gautama the same kind of love and care she received from her father, which she does not get, leading to her psychological breakdown. Her father’s indulgence in her childhood leaves her emotionally unprepared for the realities of marriage.
4. The Astrologer: The astrologer is a minor but pivotal character who appears in flashbacks. He predicts early in Maya’s life that either she or her husband will die within the first four years of their marriage. This prophecy plays a central role in Maya’s mental unraveling. Maya becomes obsessed with the idea of impending death, and her fixation on the prophecy ultimately drives her to murder Gautama. The astrologer represents the traditional and fatalistic beliefs that influence Maya’s psychological state.
5. Toto (The Dog): Toto, Maya’s pet dog, serves as a symbol of her emotional fragility and her deep sensitivity to loss. At the beginning of the novel, Toto’s death is a significant trigger for Maya’s psychological unraveling. The loss of the dog sets off a chain of introspection and obsession with death, ultimately leading to her madness. Toto’s death symbolizes the beginning of Maya’s sense of loss and abandonment, mirroring her emotional state in her marriage.

Story Progression:

1. Maya’s Childhood and the Prophecy: The narrative weaves between Maya’s present life with Gautama and her childhood memories. Raised in an affluent and sheltered household, Maya’s father doted on her, giving her a sense of pampered isolation. However, her childhood was marked by a fateful prophecy by an astrologer. He predicted that either she or her husband would die in the fourth year of their marriage. This prophecy haunts Maya throughout the novel, subtly influencing her actions and thoughts.
2. Marriage to Gautama: Maya's marriage to Gautama is fraught with emotional tension and disconnection. Gautama is practical, intellectual, and detached, always absorbed in philosophical discourses and legal matters. His cold rationality contrasts sharply with Maya’s emotional sensitivity, leading to a deep, unbridgeable chasm between them. She yearns for affection, intimacy, and understanding—elements missing from her marriage. As she desperately seeks his attention, he remains distant and indifferent, failing to comprehend her emotional needs.
3. Growing Obsession and Descent into Madness: Maya’s mental state gradually deteriorates under the strain of this emotional neglect. She becomes obsessed with the prophecy, which magnifies her fears and anxieties. The novel portrays her inner turmoil through vivid and lyrical descriptions of her thoughts and perceptions. She is haunted by the idea of death, experiencing hallucinations and paranoid fantasies. Her paranoia reaches its peak as she starts to see omens of death everywhere—in nature, in her surroundings, and in her interactions with people.
4. Nature as a Symbolic Reflection: Throughout the novel, Desai uses symbols from nature to reflect Maya’s state of mind. The blazing sun, oppressive heat, and the cacophony of birds mirror her agitation and sense of impending doom. The image of the peacock, a recurrent motif, becomes central to the narrative. Maya identifies with the peacock’s cry, which is described as a call for companionship and a lament for separation. The peacock’s dance is linked to its tragic ritual of mating, which ends with one partner’s death—a reflection of Maya’s own plight.
5. The Climactic Tragedy: As Maya’s obsession with the prophecy grows, she becomes convinced that Gautama is the one destined to die. Torn between love, hate, and her mental instability, she oscillates between wanting to save him and seeing his death as inevitable. In a climactic moment, Maya's delusions overpower her, and she pushes Gautama off the balcony of their home, killing him. This act is the culmination of her obsessive fear, loneliness, and alienation.
6. Aftermath and Conclusion: The novel ends with Maya completely unraveling, retreating into insanity. After Gautama’s death, she is consumed by guilt and terror, realizing that she has not escaped the prophecy but has fulfilled it in a horrific way. The final scenes depict her wandering aimlessly, disconnected from reality, lost in her own world of despair and madness.

Themes and Symbols:

1.    Loneliness and Alienation: Maya’s isolation, both emotional and psychological, is a central theme. She feels completely disconnected from her husband and her surroundings, which amplifies her loneliness and leads to her eventual breakdown.

2.   Madness: Desai uses Maya’s psychological deterioration to explore the theme of madness, emphasizing how isolation, suppressed emotions, and the clash between rationality and sensitivity can lead to mental disintegration.

3.     The Prophecy: The prophecy acts as a powerful symbol of fate and doom, controlling Maya’s life and actions. It serves as a psychological trigger for her obsessive fears and ultimately leads to tragedy.

4.      Peacocks and Nature: The peacock’s cry, a symbol of longing and mourning, parallels Maya’s own cries for connection and understanding. The imagery of nature throughout the novel is reflective of Maya’s inner state—lush and vibrant at times, but oppressive and chaotic as her madness intensifies.

Anita Desai’s Fiction- Analysis

Anita Desai’s novels reveal certain recurring patterns in plots, settings, and characterizations. The plots of her novels fuse two opposing propensities—one toward the gothic mystery and the other toward the philosophical novel. The gothic orientation, which Desai probably derived from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847), is evident in varying degrees in all her novels.

Fire on the Mountain, the novel that comes closest to being purely a psychological thriller, ends with a half-insane, reptilelike child setting fire to the forest surrounding her house; in Cry, the Peacock, Maya, the neurotic heroine, kills her husband, thereby fulfilling the prophecy of an albino sorcerer; in Voices in the City, Monisha, an unsettled, manic-depressive housewife, pours kerosene over herself and burns herself to death.

On the other hand, most of Desai’s novels also contain a deep-rooted, philosophical concern about the meaning of life. From Maya to Matteo, most of Desai’s protagonists, dissatisfied with their routine existence, search for a more meaningful life.

Desai’s novels also evolve a typical setting or “world” of their own. Most are set in the city, which comes to represent the undesirable, unimaginative reality; most also have a romantic counterpoint to the city in a hill station or an island that seems to represent the remote, romantic, ideal but is revealed to be an unreal or unsatisfying delusion. At the hearts of the novels are usually big, old houses with several verandas, green shutters, gardens, servants, and pets.

The garden is extremely important in Desai’s world because her characters show an unusual sensitivity to it. Trees, creepers, tendrils, flowers, fruits, seasons, pets—the concerns of the so-called woman’s world—are more vividly perceived in Desai’s novels than anywhere else in Indian English fiction.

Desai’s protagonists can be divided into essentially two types: One type possesses a neurotic, hypersensitive, artistic sensibility; the other is cynical, tough, and acerbic. Maya, Monisha, Sarah, Sita, Tara, and Matteo belong to the first category, while Nirode, Amla, Dev, Nanda, Bim, and Sophie belong to the second.

In Baumgartner’s Bombay, Desai goes back to her parental heritage as she zeroes in on a German Jew who seeks refuge in India. Journey to Ithaca is much like Baumgartner’s Bombay in that it also approaches India through Europeans who are attracted to the mystic India.

Desai’s novels since the mid-1990’s have continued to explore a concern with imagery built on places, cities that affect her characters who are uprooted or alienated, living away from their homelands and disturbed by their own inner conflicts.

In Fasting, Feasting, Desai contrasts the American and Indian cultures as well as male and female roles, as Arun leaves India to study in Massachusetts while his sister Uma lives in a small provincial city in India.

In The Zigzag Way, Desai departs from her familiar territories, setting her story of self-discovery in twentieth century Mexico.

Famous Lines:

Ø  “Death lurked in those spaces where no one ventured—at least not during the heat of the day.”

Ø  “I was not mad. Perhaps I was the only one who had the courage to face it, and to admit it.”

Ø  “He was as indifferent to life as he was to death.”(refers to Gautama)

Ø  “Oh God, let me die, but spare me the madness.”

Ø  “The peacocks cry. But it is not we who will die.”

Ø  “Alone, alone, I am utterly alone!”

Ø  “What a strain it is to be married, all the time to have to think of someone else.”

Ø  “All that I wanted was love. All that I wanted was to give, to give, and to give, to give it to someone who would simply take it.”