In Custody

by

Anita Desai

Murad Character Analysis

Deven’s old friend Murad is the editor of the Urdu literary magazine Awaaz (which Murad’s father, a wealthy Kashmiri carpet dealer, bought for him). In the first chapter, Murad visits Mirpore and asks Deven to write a feature about Nur. Throughout the rest of the book, he gives Deven terrible, contradictory directions for conducting his interview and manipulates him into chaotic, unpredictable situations that infuriate and bankrupt him. For instance, in Chapter Two, Murad claims to be in a rush to get to Nur’s house—but then takes Deven along on a random errand, returns to his office, and sends Deven to Nur’s house with his office boy instead. Later, he suggests tape-recording Nur, then guides Deven to Mr. Jain’s shop, where Jain exploits Deven by selling him a poor-quality secondhand recorder and sending his nephew Chiku along to operate it (and eventually demand payment). Unsurprisingly, Murad never does any work or takes any responsibility for the havoc that he wreaks—on the contrary, he seems to actually enjoy Deven’s suffering. In fact, Deven remembers this dynamic from their childhood, when Murad used to drive him crazy by sending him on pointless errands and making false promises. Deven’s struggle to break out of his exploitative friendship with Murad is central to his growth as a character over the course of the novel—he finally does so at the end of Chapter Ten, when he refuses to sell Murad his tape of Nur’s poetry. Throughout the novel, it’s unclear how much of Murad’s villainy is based on manipulation and how much on sheer recklessness—the reader never finds out how much Murad knows, or how far he's planning in advance. And even as he makes a living publishing traditional literature, Murad’s scheming, double dealing, and profit seeking also represent the ethos of modernizing, capitalist India.

Murad Quotes in In Custody

The In Custody quotes below are all either spoken by Murad or refer to Murad . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Memory and the Passage of Time Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

Why should a visit from Murad upset him so much? There was no obvious reason of course—they had known each other since they were at school together: Murad had been the spoilt rich boy with money in his pocket for cinema shows and cigarettes and Deven the poor widow’s son who could be bribed and bought to do anything for him, and although this had been the basis of their friendship, it had grown and altered and stood the test of time. But Deven did not like him appearing without warning during college hours and disturbing him just when he needed to concentrate; it was very upsetting.

Related Characters: Deven Sharma, Murad , Nur
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:

The desperation of his circumstances made him say something he never would have otherwise. All through his childhood and youth he had known only one way to deal with life and that was to lie low and remain invisible. Now he leaned forward on his elbows and said emotionally, “If only we got payment for the articles and reviews that we write for magazines and journals, that would be of some help.”

Related Characters: Deven Sharma (speaker), Murad
Page Number: 7
Explanation and Analysis:

“Now I am planning a special issue on Urdu poetry. Someone has to keep alive the glorious tradition of Urdu literature. If we do not do it, at whatever cost, how will it survive in this era of—that vegetarian monster, Hindi?” He pronounced the last word with such disgust that it made Deven shrink back and shrivel in his chair, for Hindi was what he taught at the college and for which he was therefore responsible to some degree. “That language of peasants,” Murad sneered, picking his teeth with a matchstick. “The language that is raised on radishes and potatoes,” he laughed rudely, pushing aside the empty plates on the table. “Yet, like these vegetables, it flourishes, while Urdu—language of the court in days of royalty—now languishes in the back lanes and gutters of the city.”

Related Characters: Murad (speaker), Deven Sharma, Nur
Page Number: 8
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

If it had not been for the colour and the noise, Chandni Chowk might have been a bazaar encountered in a nightmare; it was so like a maze from which he could find no exit, in which he wandered between the peeling, stained walls of office buildings, the overflowing counters of shops and stalls, wondering if the urchin sent to lead him through it was not actually a malevolent imp leading him to his irrevocable disappearance in the reeking heart of the bazaar. The heat and the crowds pressed down from above and all sides, solid and suffocating as sleep.

Related Characters: Deven Sharma, Murad , Nur , Murad’s Office Boy
Page Number: 31
Explanation and Analysis:

“Urdu poetry?” he finally sighed, turning a little to one side, towards Deven although not actually addressing himself to a person, merely to a direction, it seemed. “How can there be Urdu poetry where there is no Urdu language left? It is dead, finished. The defeat of the Moghuls by the British threw a noose over its head, and the defeat of the British by the Hindiwallahs tightened it. So now you see its corpse lying here, waiting to be buried.” He tapped his chest with one finger.

Related Characters: Nur (speaker), Deven Sharma, Murad
Page Number: 37-38
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

Fatefully, it was the head of the Urdu department, Abid Siddiqui who, in keeping with the size and stature of that department, was a small man, whose youthful face was prematurely topped with a plume of white hair as if to signify the doomed nature of his discipline. It was perhaps unusual to find a private college as small as Lala Ram Lal’s offering a language such as Urdu that was nearly extinct, but it happened that Lala Ram Lal’s descendants […] had to accept a very large donation from the descendants of the very nawab who had fled Delhi in the aftermath of the 1857 mutiny and built the mosque. […] It was promised a department in which its language would be kept alive in place of the family name.

Related Characters: Deven Sharma, Murad , Nur , Abid Siddiqui
Page Number: 100-101
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

Later Deven could not understand how it all come about—how he, the central character in the whole affair, the protagonist of it (if Murad were to be disregarded), the one on whom depended the entire matter of the interview, the recording and the memoirs, to which Siddiqui was no more than an accessory, having arrived on the scene accidentally and at a later stage, and in which he played a minor role—how he, in the course of that evening, had relinquished his own authority and surrendered it to Siddiqui who now emerged the stronger while he, Deven, had been brought to his knees, abject and babbling in his helplessness. How?

Related Characters: Deven Sharma, Murad , Nur , Safiya, Abid Siddiqui
Related Symbols: Tape Recorder
Page Number: 153-154
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

Deven put up both his hands and pushed him back as far as he could on the small landing, till his back was against the wall. “I can’t do that,” he hissed, “it is the property of the college.”

[…]

Deven went down the wooden staircase as steadily as he could although his knees shook weakly. Murad’s perfidy filled him with the iron of resistance and he felt steady, straight. As he reached the foot of the stairs, he heard Murad call over the banisters, “One last time I am offering to help—one last time. Sole rights! Only sole rights!”

Deven went towards the exit without looking back.

Related Characters: Deven Sharma (speaker), Murad (speaker), Nur
Related Symbols: Tape Recorder
Page Number: 209-210
Explanation and Analysis:
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Murad Quotes in In Custody

The In Custody quotes below are all either spoken by Murad or refer to Murad . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Memory and the Passage of Time Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

Why should a visit from Murad upset him so much? There was no obvious reason of course—they had known each other since they were at school together: Murad had been the spoilt rich boy with money in his pocket for cinema shows and cigarettes and Deven the poor widow’s son who could be bribed and bought to do anything for him, and although this had been the basis of their friendship, it had grown and altered and stood the test of time. But Deven did not like him appearing without warning during college hours and disturbing him just when he needed to concentrate; it was very upsetting.

Related Characters: Deven Sharma, Murad , Nur
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:

The desperation of his circumstances made him say something he never would have otherwise. All through his childhood and youth he had known only one way to deal with life and that was to lie low and remain invisible. Now he leaned forward on his elbows and said emotionally, “If only we got payment for the articles and reviews that we write for magazines and journals, that would be of some help.”

Related Characters: Deven Sharma (speaker), Murad
Page Number: 7
Explanation and Analysis:

“Now I am planning a special issue on Urdu poetry. Someone has to keep alive the glorious tradition of Urdu literature. If we do not do it, at whatever cost, how will it survive in this era of—that vegetarian monster, Hindi?” He pronounced the last word with such disgust that it made Deven shrink back and shrivel in his chair, for Hindi was what he taught at the college and for which he was therefore responsible to some degree. “That language of peasants,” Murad sneered, picking his teeth with a matchstick. “The language that is raised on radishes and potatoes,” he laughed rudely, pushing aside the empty plates on the table. “Yet, like these vegetables, it flourishes, while Urdu—language of the court in days of royalty—now languishes in the back lanes and gutters of the city.”

Related Characters: Murad (speaker), Deven Sharma, Nur
Page Number: 8
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

If it had not been for the colour and the noise, Chandni Chowk might have been a bazaar encountered in a nightmare; it was so like a maze from which he could find no exit, in which he wandered between the peeling, stained walls of office buildings, the overflowing counters of shops and stalls, wondering if the urchin sent to lead him through it was not actually a malevolent imp leading him to his irrevocable disappearance in the reeking heart of the bazaar. The heat and the crowds pressed down from above and all sides, solid and suffocating as sleep.

Related Characters: Deven Sharma, Murad , Nur , Murad’s Office Boy
Page Number: 31
Explanation and Analysis:

“Urdu poetry?” he finally sighed, turning a little to one side, towards Deven although not actually addressing himself to a person, merely to a direction, it seemed. “How can there be Urdu poetry where there is no Urdu language left? It is dead, finished. The defeat of the Moghuls by the British threw a noose over its head, and the defeat of the British by the Hindiwallahs tightened it. So now you see its corpse lying here, waiting to be buried.” He tapped his chest with one finger.

Related Characters: Nur (speaker), Deven Sharma, Murad
Page Number: 37-38
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

Fatefully, it was the head of the Urdu department, Abid Siddiqui who, in keeping with the size and stature of that department, was a small man, whose youthful face was prematurely topped with a plume of white hair as if to signify the doomed nature of his discipline. It was perhaps unusual to find a private college as small as Lala Ram Lal’s offering a language such as Urdu that was nearly extinct, but it happened that Lala Ram Lal’s descendants […] had to accept a very large donation from the descendants of the very nawab who had fled Delhi in the aftermath of the 1857 mutiny and built the mosque. […] It was promised a department in which its language would be kept alive in place of the family name.

Related Characters: Deven Sharma, Murad , Nur , Abid Siddiqui
Page Number: 100-101
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

Later Deven could not understand how it all come about—how he, the central character in the whole affair, the protagonist of it (if Murad were to be disregarded), the one on whom depended the entire matter of the interview, the recording and the memoirs, to which Siddiqui was no more than an accessory, having arrived on the scene accidentally and at a later stage, and in which he played a minor role—how he, in the course of that evening, had relinquished his own authority and surrendered it to Siddiqui who now emerged the stronger while he, Deven, had been brought to his knees, abject and babbling in his helplessness. How?

Related Characters: Deven Sharma, Murad , Nur , Safiya, Abid Siddiqui
Related Symbols: Tape Recorder
Page Number: 153-154
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

Deven put up both his hands and pushed him back as far as he could on the small landing, till his back was against the wall. “I can’t do that,” he hissed, “it is the property of the college.”

[…]

Deven went down the wooden staircase as steadily as he could although his knees shook weakly. Murad’s perfidy filled him with the iron of resistance and he felt steady, straight. As he reached the foot of the stairs, he heard Murad call over the banisters, “One last time I am offering to help—one last time. Sole rights! Only sole rights!”

Deven went towards the exit without looking back.

Related Characters: Deven Sharma (speaker), Murad (speaker), Nur
Related Symbols: Tape Recorder
Page Number: 209-210
Explanation and Analysis: