Moving On by Shashi Deshpande (Penguin, 2004) is about a father who delights in the human body, its mysteries, its passion and the knowledge it contains and hides. And a mother who wields the power of her love mercilessly. And Manjari Ahuja, the girl who, after her husband's death, feels the truth behind different relationships. Shashi Deshpande's novel is about the secret lives of men and women who love, hate, plot and debate, and thus, using the metaphor of 'body', it gives a realistic presentation of different relationships. Once again, she is not content with the objective but shows herself to be subjective in delimiting the interior landscapes of her male and female characters, and unlike others who, to use the words of RK Gupta “were content with 'record and document' (Gupta 1). a story that begins with a woman's discovery of her father's (Baba) diary. It is through Baba's diary that Manjari discovers the past, rescuing old memories and recasting events and responses. The ensuing struggle to reconcile nostalgia with reality and the body's fire with the desire for companionship reaches an unanticipated resolution, twisting and turning through complex, interrelated emotional landscapes. The story is about Manjari and her other male and female relationships closely intertwined with his own. As she puts it: “My story” – how can there be such a thing as my story when the lives of others are so closely intertwined with it? I can't pick one point and say, this is mine, take another and say, this is Baba's story, and then another and say, this is Mai's story... All our lives are so intertwined, so linked that I can never separate them. (270) Baba, Manjari's father, exposes his father's past and his ...... middle of paper ...... had paid the killers, that she had acted in concert with a rival who had become her lover. Eventually, the rumors died down and "Laxman's death became just one more act in the endless drama of gang warfare" (175-76). In a nutshell, Shashi Deshpande has woven the tragic versions of different relationships through Manjari Ahuja's relationships with Baba, Shyam, Raman and Raja, intertwined with that of Baba-Mai, Gayatri-RK, Kamla-BK, Laxman-Mangal and Bharat-Medha. This novel chronicles the secret lives of men and women who love, hate, plot and debate with an intensity that reveals the inner landscapes of many human relationships. Works Cited Deshpande, Shashi. Move on. New Delhi: Penguin, 2004. (All references in parentheses are to this edition) Gupta, RK The Novels of Anita Desai. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2002.