Reading ROSARITA: Between History, Memory, and Self

Anita Desai, a name that echoed through my school years. She was everywhere, from literature lessons to general knowledge quizzes. However, oddly enough, I never actually read any of her works back then. It is only now, years later, that I finally picked up one. Her most recent release, a much anticipated return - Rosarita.

And, it has equally grabbed critical acclaim as her earlier works. This book, dubbed “the first novel in over a decade from the three-time Booker-shortlisted author,” thus already carried an air of ‘subtly hidden’ significance before I even opened it.

What drew me in first was the cover - a serene, striking and exquisite painting of a woman - that felt both delicate and compelling. I knew then that I had to give it a read, and hoped that the writing inside would mirror the same beauty. And it absolutely did!

At just 112 pages, Rosarita is a slim book, but one that leaves a deep imprint. With a language simple yet refined, as I began, it immediately reminded me of the old NCERT textbooks; also of those short stories that would stay with you long after the class was over. So, I found a strong sense of nostalgia as I read, not just in the themes, but in the whole tonality of the story itself.

Desai’s writing blooms through its beautiful attention to human connection and empathy, all wrapped in a deep sense of reminiscence. 

In Rosarita, she gently weaves in the questions about women’s place in deeply rooted patriarchal societies, and their search for identity - something that's probably never separate from the histories of their own land and nation. The narrative, however, doesn’t shout these themes, it rather seems to whisper them, allowing them to unfold slowly and deliberately.

All through the story and the end, I am left reflecting on what 'identity' really means, especially for a woman caught in the crosswinds and turbulence of history. It made me realise that identity isn’t something fixed or shaped solely by one’s abilities or decisions. While personal choices do play a part, identity also becomes a lifelong process, continually reshaped by memory, political change, and the social expectations placed upon us.

At its heart, the story is driven by the question of ‘Who am I?’ This existential thread forms the centre of the narrative as our protagonist, Bonita confronts not just her past, but also navigates and transverses through the diverse layers of memory, language, and location, each shaping her sense of ‘self.’ This we may then see as a reflection of what philosophers like Sartre and Beauvoir spoke of - that one’s existence and identity is not given. It’s not something predetermined. Instead, who we are unfolds through the actions we take and the responsibilities we carry. In Rosarita, this idea plays out not just through the protagonist, but also through her mother, as both navigate their paths within the larger forces of history and personal experience.

When Bonita chooses to return and explore the land that perhaps holds traces of her mother, it feels like more than just a physical journey. It then becomes an act of facing her own disconnection and alienation from ‘a’ history, and consequently, the weight of being free from it.

As the story progresses further, we witness how she doesn’t passively just accept the version of 'identity’ handed to her, instead actively seeks to piece ‘it’ together on her own terms. She endeavours to reclaim what feels lost, and reimagine what it could be, even if the full picture remains just out of reach.

An important aspect of Bonita’s journey is how Desai frames her encounter with inherited memory. It comes across not just as something personal, but as deeply collective. This becomes clear when Bonita reflects on her mother’s failure and father’s success as “how it was expected to continue, generation after generation, without  change.”

‘This was how it was expected to continue, generation after generation, without change. This was what you had feared, and that fear falls upon you again like ashes, like sand that you had struggled to throw off and that compelled you to build your own individual life out of different elements – school, studies, exams, friends. Rushing out of the house with your books, returning to lock yourself into your room to study, prepare for the next exam, the next step. Then, when even those proved nothing but a variation of routine, order and monotony, seizing as if inspired on the study of languages that would wrench you out, lead you as far away as you could get – French that took you to Pondicherry, Portuguese that took you to Goa, and the Portuguese led you to Spanish and Spanish had brought you here – here and now. Aqui y ahora.’

Anita Desai, Rosarita

Rosarita captures well the idea that ‘memory is shaped by our place in time and space.’ It is filtered through our expectations, often blurred by displacement and the overlooked corners of family history. As readers, this is where we come to see that memory isn’t a faithful record, it is layered, embodied, and interpretive.

Through Bonita’s search for clarity and ‘a’ truth, Desai seems to suggest that ‘the past and its truths’ may never be fully accessible. They can only be reconstructed, piece by piece, through a careful and often painful pursuit.

I felt deeply empathetic towards Bonita, almost sharing in her confusion and ache as she tried to assemble the scattered fragments into some coherent story of her mother. And just when she seemed to be nearing an understanding, the picture only grew more uncertain.

Thinkers like Foucault and Derrida have ideated that ‘truth may not always be a stable endpoint,’ but rather a construct shaped by certain power, absence, and language. And that's exactly what Rosarita reflects - that "truth" is scattered and fragmented across ruins, oral histories, half-tellings, and silences (of both people and places.) This silence again is not just external. It lingers in Bonita’s experience as she grapples with a past that remains blurred, and with a growing sense of being unheard or misunderstood herself. She is caught between worlds, in none of which she ever feels fully at home.

Desai captures chapters of history, of revolutions and partitions into a fiction very skillfully. She does this through an uncertain, marginal female perspective that carries a ‘quiet resistance’ to the often male-dominated historical narrative. It feels like an answer to a fractured interiority of ‘how colonial trauma not only disrupts lives but unsettles the mind.’

Despite her efforts, our protagonist doesn't seem to arrive at any neat resolution. So, the story leaves us with an ambiguity and unease, raising questions about fate, choice, and closure.

And yet, what makes our loving Bonita’s journey meaningful, perhaps even redemptive, despite its futility? It is the act of seeking itself. It is that persistent, almost tender need to uncover a truth, even if it remains just out of reach, that gives her story its weight. It is not the outcome ultimately, but the effort that stays with you.

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Anita Desai is a magnificent writer

SALMAN RUSHDIE

To compare Anita Desai's fiction with that of Chekhov or the short stories of Tolstoy is not extravagant; it is entirely warranted

IRISH TIMES

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