Incorporating Otherness: Food Imagery in Anita Desai’s In Custody

Abstract

This paper focuses on the recurrence of food imagery in Desai’s In Custody where the motif fulfils functions exceeding the literal, the referential, or even the social dimension acknowledged by E. M. Forster. Although in this novel food and the sharing of meals do index otherness in terms of the various characters’ community, their creed and gender, Desai’s use of the motif is only superficially realistic as she integrates within it a wider reflection upon the nature of art and its enigmatic, grotesque relation to the body in which it is originated.