Ageing Subjects, Agentic Bodies: Appetite, Modernity and the Middle Class in Two Indian Short Stories in English

Hindu literature and ideals, especially the model of life stages or ashramadharma, recommend renunciation of worldly pursuits in old age. According to Manu Smriti,1 when the householder, or the mature, economically active adult male on whom all others in society depend for sustenance, “sees his skin wrinkled and his hair white and the sons of his sons”, he should turn over the management of household affairs to his heir and retreat to a forest where, in order to disentangle himself from physical and emotional bonds of interdependence developed during the previous life stages, he will devote himself to contemplation, the performance of sacred rites and bodily self-mortification. If he succeeds in this, he is ready to enter the last stage, which involves the complete renunciation of the material world and its pleasures and ties. This is the manner in which ideally he should end his days, fully absorbed in the quest for spiritual perfection.2 Although Hindus in contemporary India may not subscribe to the idealized, four-stage life cycle in literal detail, they are nonetheless guided by the belief that life is made up of distinct developmental stages, each with its own normative code of conduct. Irrespective of the degree of direct familiarity with the classical texts, the idea that it is appropriate for old people to withdraw from active economic, productive or managerial involvement with household affairs and to renounce sensual in favour of Ageing Subjects, Agentic Bodies