Male Aging, Intersectionality, and Social Change in Indian Society: A Literary Perspective

Abstract

Older males have got little space in Indian Writing in English. Mir Nihal of Ahmed Ali’s Twilight in Delhi (1940), Aadam Aziz of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981), Nur Shahjehanbadi of Anita Desai’s In Custody (1984), Shyamanand of Upamanyu Chatterjee’s The Last Burden (1993), Nariman Vakeel of Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters, and Ghulam Saab of Shashi Deshpande’s Small Remedies (2000) are some important representations of male aging in Indian Writing in English. These characters not only represent the changing meanings of old age in India in different phases of the twentieth century, but are also representative of multiple kinds of aging masculinities. Focusing on male aging, intersectionality, and social change in the twentieth century India, the chapter has two purposes. First, it explores how Indian older males have dealt with social change in the twentieth century India, through a detailed study of Nur Shahjehanbadi of Anita Desai’s In Custody, Shyamanand of Upamanyu Chatterjee’s The Last Burden, and Nariman Vakeel of Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters. The second purpose of the chapter is to explain relying on these three literary texts how social change interacts with intersectionality to affect male aging in India.