Anita Desai’s “The Farewell Party” and Small Town India

Abstract

The Farewell Party is organized by Bina and her husband Raman prior to leaving their small town on transfer to the metropolitan Bombay. It is not a party thrown for
them by others to bid good-bye. By suppressing the name of the town, Anita Desai has tried to universalize such parties and the lives of the Anglicized upper-middle class Indians living in the smaller towns that dot our nation. The sprawling barbed-wire lawn which provides the setting would be conspicuous by its absence in the metro, but the barbs of society would be perhaps more sophisticated and stinging. Bina drinks freely to confirm liberated attitudes and tries to show off because she knows once they leave there would be no gossip to bother her ears. Her eldest child was a spastic and therefore she tries to devote her time for the general welfare at the ‘local hospital’.