Human life revolves around hopes. Hopes keep us going. But some unexpected flops or fiasco break us sometimes. Reading Anita Desai’s touching novel ‘In Custody’ will bring us to this reality. Hope is a key concept in many classics and contemporary fictional works. It is used as a motivating force to show the changes in main characters. The protagonist of the novel discusses here is a college lecturer, named Deven Sharma. He fails to face the flops in his life as he has many hopes to have. But the self-realization only gives solution to his soul by the end of the novel.