The great social novel Voices in the City depicts how the corrosive effects of city life on an Indian family caught in the cross current of changing social values and norms make them to suffer a lot. Disillusionment and frustration are their lot in the city. Nirode doesn’t voluntarily leave his city and come to another city which is unfamiliar to him. Nirode is employed as an “anonymous, shabby clerk on a newspaper, calling himself a journalist” while his real job is cutting out “long strips of newspaper and paste and file them, occasionally venturing out to verify a dull fat in some airless office room. “ He is not happy with his lot in the city and desperately wants to escape. While if the people, particularly his mother and the society had not affected Nirode, he would not have left the city. If the family of Monisha had not behaved rudely, she could have led a peaceful life. If the mother had been good, both of them, when suffering in life, would have gone to the mother. From the mother, who is poor and seeks money through ill-manner, Anita Desai portrays how people, especially poor, are forced to lose their moral values because of money which is indispensible to lead the life. Thus the society makes a lot of sudden changes.
Keywords: Economical Conditions, Political Status, Social Satire, Subaltern Voices, Trauma of the People.
