Shashi Deshpande’s Moving On (Penguin, 2004) is about a father who delights in the human body, its mysteries, its passion, and the knowledge that it contains and conceals. And a mother who wields the power of her love mercilessly. And Manjari Ahuja, the daughter, who after her husband’s death, is made to feel the truth behind the various relationships. Shashi Deshpande’s novel is about the secret lives of men and women who love, hate, plot and debate, and thereby she, using the metaphor of ‘body’, gives realistic presentation to the various relationships. Once again she is not content with the objective but is subjective by delineating the interior landscapes of her men and women characters, and unlike others who, to use R K Gupta’s words “have been content to record and document.