That Long Silence: A Dialogue in the Silence

That Long Silence written by one of the most notable contemporary Indian women novelists, Shashi Deshpande, bagged Sahitya Akademi Award in 1990. The novel presents an account of the life of Jaya using first person narrative. It has been mostly read from feminist perspective; critics focused their attention on the themes of generational silencing of women and silence, used by the women characters, as a strategy for their survival. The present study intends to move this focus from silence to the dialogue that runs, at different levels, throughout the novel.