“Games at Twilight” takes place in India, at the home of a large family on a very hot summer day. We first see the children in mid-afternoon, an “arid time of day” when “no life stirred…the birds still drooped, like dead fruit, in the papery tents of the trees; some squirrels lay limp on the dead earth under the garden tap.” Desai provides very vivid imagery such as this throughout the story, reminding us of...
“Games at Twilight” takes place in India, at the home of a large family on a very hot summer day. We first see the children in mid-afternoon, an “arid time of day” when “no life stirred…the birds still drooped, like dead fruit, in the papery tents of the trees; some squirrels lay limp on the dead earth under the garden tap.” Desai provides very vivid imagery such as this throughout the story, reminding us of the dogged, unforgiving heat by direct description and also through the contrast with evening, when the light becomes “fuzzier” and the gardener is “soaking the dry yellow grass and the red gravel and arousing the sweet, the intoxicating scent of water on dry earth….”
As the story progresses it zeroes in on Ravi hiding inside a shed during a game of hide-and-seek, and the spooky crepuscular interior soon mirrors the twilight that descends outside. This, as well, is part of the setting – the “less definable, less recognizable horrors” of the shed, the dank, dusty, close space that is so similar to the feeling Ravi has at the end of the story, when he discovers that the other children have completely forgotten about him and have moved on to a different game as he stood huddled in his lonely space.
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