In the Country of Deceit, Shashi Deshpande, Viking, Rs 399
Shashi Deshpande’s austere, affecting, new novel delights with its many-layered richness of relationships

Shashi deshpande’s new novel begins on an autumnal note, with the demolition of a family house. This is followed by the sense of a fresh start, and a season of renewal — and what this new season holds in store for Devayani, the narrator, is the subject of the novel.

In the Country of Deceit opens with Devayani and her sister Savitha looking at the empty space where once was the house of their childhood. Their parents are dead — their father as a broken, bitter man, and their mother after a long and difficult illness. The new house — “a complete reversal of the old house” — is large, spacious, filled with light. While Savitha returns with her doctor husband and children to Delhi, Devayani moves into the new house, happy to remain in their hometown Rajnur (which seems to be a fictional version of Dharwad in north Karnataka). She becomes friends with Rani, a onetime film actor who, with her husband and children, has moved back to India from the US. While Rani’s mind is quietly preoccupied with memories of her film career, Devayani spends her time teaching English and caring for her garden. Things seem uneventful enough, until she meets Ashok Chinappa, the new district superintendent of police who is older and married, with a 10-year-old daughter, and they suddenly embark on a passionate affair. He is in a highly visible post in this small town where everyone knows everyone else; she is unmarried and lives alone. Yet there is a desperate madness in their relationship. They meet furtively but repeatedly: in the car, in a friend’s house, even in her house one rainy night. Devayani feels that there is something sordid about meeting like this; but she cannot end it. “There are no boundaries for love,” she says silently in response to admonishments from her family.

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