That Long Silence is a novel written by famous Indian novelist Shashi Deshpande, originally published on 1988. Shashi Deshpande was awarded with Sahitya Akademi Award for novel “That Long Silence”. Apart from this Shashi Deshpande is also awarded with Padma Shri Award in 2009.
That Long Silence By Shashi Deshpande
Summary of That Long Silence By Shashi Deshpande
The story of novel begins with Jaya, a very intelligent and hardworking girl from middle class family. Jaya is characterized as super intelligent, talented and mature girl. She has all the qualities which a true girl possesses but still her old grandmother doesn’t like her.
Jaya’s grandmother is an old thinking woman who believes that women should always be quiet, shy and their skills should be lies in cooking food. She believes that girl should never argue with other, and girls should never raise their voice no matter what.
Jaya has started hiding her emotions because of society pressure on her. She is an intelligent girl and understands everything perfectly, she knows that no one cares about her intelligence and skills. Jaya knows that people only wants to see her as calm and shy girl. Therefore, She started living quiet life. Jaya loved writing and wanted to be successful writer.
She used to do writing in her free time but people had problem with her writing skills too. There is only one person who supported Jaya and that is her loving father. As the time passes, Jaya completed her studies and become a well grown woman. She was married to a man named, Mohan. Mohan is a young man who has good paying job.
Jaya and Mohan are completely different from each other on the basis of their thinking. And both are not happy with their marriage life. Jaya wasn’t allowed to have her own point of view and that why she wasn’t happy with her marriage life. Mohan never allowed Jaya to present her opinion. Mohan believes that whatever he thinks is right and her wife, Jaya should always be quiet and should do housework.
He wants Jaya to live like a robot machine with no feelings. One days, Mohan gets suspended from his job. As Mohan is suspended from his job, his earning stopped and he became poor. Therefore, Mohan and Jaya ends up leaving their rented apartment. They shifts in small house.
Mohan and Jaya also have two children, Mohan is so poor now that he can’t even feed his wife and children properly. That’s why they decides to leave their children at relative’s house. To support her family financially, Jaya started writing articles. She also wrote some letters in which she vented her anger because society never allowed her to raise her voice. Mohan reads his wife’s Jaya’s articles and he doesn’t like her thinking.
Jaya understands Mohan’s feeling through his expressions. She knows that Mohan doesn’t seem to like her articles. Afterwards, Mohan gets a huge shock because he is fired from his job. There comes new character, Kusum, a sister of Jaya who comes to meet her at her home. Kusum is separated from her husband as her husband was very abusive. Jaya and Kusum also have one brother named, Ravi. One day, Ravi speaks bad things about Mohan.
When Mohan get to know about Ravi, he gets very angry. In return, Mohan abused Jaya to take revenge from Ravi. Mohan is in trouble, he doesn’t know what to do. He is living a jobless and poor live. He needs his wife, Jaya’s love. But there is a huge communication gap between two of them. They doesn’t share their heart feelings to each other. Mohan and Jaya are just playing a role of husband and wife.
Meanwhile, both of them come to know that their son, Rahul has run from their relative’s home. Mohan leaves home to find his son, Rahul. On other side, Jaya is alone in home. As we know, Jaya is smart and mature, she realizes that due to communication gap between their relationship, they are facing such problems.
The story now features new character, Mr. Kamat, who shares his life experiences to Jaya. Mr. Kamat tells her how to remove communication gap between their relation. He also teaches her about how to share her feeling to her husband.
At the end of story, Mohan sends one telegram to Jaya in which he tells her that he is soon returning home with new job. Jaya is also desperate to see her husband, Mohan. Jaya swears that she will not remain silent now and with silence she will not let the axis grow.