Anita Desai has always revelled in exploring the deeper recesses of human subjects and tried to bring out the grimmer and challenging aspects of their lives. Anita Desai has inarguably made yeoman service in adding new vistas in thematic treatment of existential issues dogging the common strata of society. Her novels create evocative and deeply moving narratives of individual lives caught in the throes of socio-cultural and existential dilemma. The helplessness and fallibility of Human beings form bedrock of her existentialist approach to work. She lends her women characters a voice and an audience by dramatizing ‘mute miseries and helplessness of married women’. Desai has created a virtual storyboard of feminism by capturing for posterity, the emotional upheavals of women, encompassing the varied strains of feminine sensibility. Her characters embody the bland absurdity of life. Her women wilfully choose the sterner options and the darker alleys in abject rejection with little choice whatsoever, bringing to life a ‘tragic vision’.