QUEST FOR SELF-IDENTITY IN SHASHI DESHPANDE’S ROOTS AND SHADOWS (Pages 87-93) by Mrs. Anija Rani B. M in THE ENGLISH INDIA / ISSN: 2321-1172 (Online); 2347-2634 (Print)

Shashi Deshpande is best known for her close studies of middle-class female characters in domestic settings. The protagonist of the novel, Roots and Shadows which is taken for study is a young woman who has rebelled against the old matriarch, Akka and traditional joint family. Indu, left home in resentment, as a teenager to receive education in a city, is now a journalist, married to the man of her choice, to assert her freedom. Being a sensitive girl, she could not tolerate the dominations of Akka. Later on, she realizes that her so-called freedom is illusionary. After ten years, she comes back to her ancestral home, summoned by Akka and comes to know that she is made heiress to the whole property. Though she faced many mental crises in between, at last she asserts herself, as a new woman and decides to help the people who are in need with the money she received by selling the ancestral home. The novel ends with the humanistic perspective of the novelist, Shashi Deshpande which proves that she is not hard-core feminist writer, but she simply portrays, the meaning of being a woman in modern India smothered in between tradition and modernity.which proves that she is not hard-core feminist writer, but she simply portrays, the meaning of being a woman in modern India smothered in between tradition and modernity.Keywords: Quest, Self-identity, Detachment, Affirmation