Nanda Kaul and Raka

Desai: Fire on the Mountain

In this course, Professor Ruvani Ranasinha (King’s College, London) explores Anita Desai’s Fire on the Mountain. In the first lecture, we think about intergenerational relations in the novel, focusing in particular on the characters of Nanda Kaul and Raka. After that, in the second lecture, we think about the character of Ila Das. In the third lecture, we think about the novel’s various settings – Nanda Kaul’s house and the Pasteur Institute, in particular – before turning in the fourth and final lecture to consider the representation of women in the novel.

Nanda Kaul and Raka

In this lecture, we think about the relationship between Nanda Kaul and Raka, focusing in particular on: (i) Nanda Kaul’s decision to isolate herself from wide society, and her reasons for doing so; (ii) Nanda Kaul’s attitude to other members of her family – her daughter (Asha), her granddaughter (Tara) and her great granddaughter (Raka); (iii) Nanda Kaul’s earlier life as a wife and mother; (iv) Nanda Kaul’s personality – especially her taciturnity; (v) Nanda Kaul’s initial reaction to Raka’s arrival at the house; (vi) the similarities between Nanda Kaul and Raka’s characters – their self-sufficiency, their secrecy, etc.; (vii) the difference between Nanda Kaul and Raka’s characters; (viii) the extent to which Nanda Kaul and Raka experience the same environment (Kasauli) differently from one another; (ix) the extent which Nanda Kaul’s attitude towards Raka changes over the course of the novel; and (x) the (false) stories that Nanda Kaul tells of her childhood in Kashmir.