In Custody: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

Nur’s passionate lecture about Urdu’s fate confirms Deven and Murad’s complaints in the first chapter: Urdu no longer has any power in independent India. It is demoralizing that even a master Urdu poet cannot see the language’s future. Next, Deven’s explanation gives the reader more insight into why he, an ordinary Hindu, speaks and cares so much about Urdu, a traditionally Muslim language. The language is his main connection to his late father, and it is thus central to his sense of identity and masculinity.

Deven finally proves to Nur that he’s serious about Urdu and poetry. This shared recitation looks like the start of a fruitful partnership, but as in so many other moments in this novel, looks are deceiving: this turns out to be the most meaningful, intimate moment that Deven and Nur ever share.

The chaos of the Chandni Chowk bazaar floods into Nur’s house, turning the scene upside down and challenging Deven’s expectations about Nur. Specifically, Deven is surprised to see someone he views as sacred (the great poet Nur) in a situation he views as profane (a boisterous crowd of ordinary Indians, who seem to lack his reverence for Nur and his work). But given that Nur takes him outside, it seems that Nur finds the crowd bothersome, too. When Nur gets angry at Deven for forgetting his pillow, this frustrates Deven because Nur seems to have suddenly forgotten the beauty of poetry—and their shared love for it. Indeed, Nur’s health concerns humanize him, showing that he’s no different from any other old man. But Deven doesn’t want to see Nur, his idol, as human—instead, he long imagined Nur as superhuman, a kind of vessel for divine intelligence, who dedicated his every thought, action, and minute to poetry.

Nur’s attachment to pigeons is another sign of his deep roots in Delhi’s old Islamic traditions, as pigeon-keeping was famously a popular pastime among India’s Mughal emperors and the elite that surrounded them. Deven’s failure to make a profound comment again shows how his real life falls far short of his ambitions—which, of course, is the same thing that happened during his meeting with Nur. Finally, Nur’s massage and chat about wrestling combine these two tendencies. On the one hand, wrestling (pehlwani) was an important part of Mughal high culture, so it shows that Nur is deeply rooted in the dying world of traditional Delhi. But on the other, Deven is frustrated to see that Nur seems to care less about his poetry than about everyday hobbies like wrestling.

Deven doesn’t understand why an extraordinary poet like Nur would choose to spend time with an ordinary crowd of ordinary people, instead of immersed in the greatness of poetry. Readers will notice that this dynamic reflects Deven’s disappointment in his own life: he wants the people around him to understand poetry’s beauty, and the world around him to reflect it. But this doesn’t happen. Poetry simply can’t shape the world in the way Deven hopes—even the most storied poets, like Nur, are just ordinary people who carry on ordinary day-to-day lives. And if Nur is so ordinary, then Deven has little hope of being anything else.

To Deven’s astonishment, not only does the disorderly crowd from the bazaar invade Nur’s house, but Nur starts to willingly mix with it. In fact, the visitors appear to be his friends and followers. Among Delhi literary circles, this suggests, Murad’s kind of personality and behavior is actually more typical than Nur’s. Above all, this party scene shows that Deven has long had an idealistic, one-dimensional view of Nur: he thought of Nur as just a poet and never a complex, multifaceted man with varied interests and relationships. He also never considered that Nur might have serious flaws and shortcomings (like his gluttony). Notably, Nur’s greasy, meaty meal belongs to the Mughlai cuisine of north India’s traditional Muslim rulers. Throughout the novel, Desai contrasts this kind of food with light (“Hindu”) vegetarian food, which Deven usually eats—and which Murad mocked in the first chapter.

Readers may find it ironic that Deven sees Nur’s poetic vocation as incompatible with a bohemian lifestyle. But Deven specifically associates Urdu poetry with the high culture of Old Delhi’s royal courts, where it originated, and the formal recitation style in which it is traditionally performed. Nur’s guests clearly seem to care about Urdu—they just don’t seem to respect its traditions. And while their conversation does seriously focus on the importance of saving Urdu, it also strikes Deven as empty—like they are declaring their political allegiances as part of a performance, but not in order to actually do anything about Urdu’s decline.

Desai uses Nur’s interruption to bring the reader’s attention back to her novel’s central ideas: literature can transform people’s lives by expanding their sense of possibility, and historical and cultural change are inevitable—no matter how deeply we are attached to the past that they replace. Ironically, though, Nur seems not to practice what he preaches: he criticizes Deven for becoming a Hindi teacher, even though Deven did so because, in post-independence India, it was the most practical way to dedicate his life to literature and pursue his interest in Urdu.

Once again, after a brief moment of respite, the party descends further into chaos. Desai intentionally leaves it ambiguous whether the tall man is praising or mocking the poem that he recites. This reflects Deven’s discomfort and uncertainty amidst the crowd—after all, Nur has alternatingly praised and mocked Deven, too. And Nur’s reply makes it clear that, despite all his wise thoughts about time and change, he ultimately sees Hindi replacing Urdu as a symbol of India’s cultural decline in general. In other words, he’s not just against the Hindi language— he's against modernity altogether.

It's significant that this section opens with Deven not wanting to remember the shameful scene that he witnesses. In addition to framing the reader’s expectations for the scene, this also highlights the way that our beliefs and ideas depend on our memory—which is far from neutral or objective. Clearly, Deven doesn’t want to remember this scene because it shows him that Nur is not a perfect, saintly idol but rather an ordinary, pathetic man. But readers must also decide what the unreliability of memory means for Deven and Nur’s memories of Urdu’s glorious past: to what extent do they miss it because it was real, and to what extent do they use it as a convenient fantasy to feel better about their failures in the present?

It appears that Nur went downstairs to try and wake up his son to force him to sing. But instead, he fell to the floor and vomited everywhere. Realizing this, readers will likely see Imtiaz’s fury as justified—even though Deven struggles to accept the dissonance between his perception of Nur and the reality. Indeed, in this scene, the novel turns the reader’s gaze to women’s perspective for the first time (of many) in this novel. In short, the novel shows how the “great man” theory of success—or viewing accomplished men as singular geniuses who are superior to the rest of humanity—gives those men a justification for irresponsible, controlling, or abusive behavior toward their families.

Deven’s sudden escape reflects his cowardice and disappointment: he is not willing to face the uncomfortable truth that Nur has fallen fall short of his expectations. He is not a perfect, moral sage, but rather a miserable, depraved shell of a man. The vomit-soaked poems represent this contradiction between expectations and reality—which, in turn, reflects Deven’s feelings about his own life and career. In short, the truth about Nur suggests that Deven’s entire career is built on a lie.