Ms Quested and "real India"

All three liberal colonial figures—Fielding, Mrs. Moore and Ms Quested—are isolated from their own cultural milieu, but Mrs. Moore and Ms Quested are different in that they carry within them the modern condition of 20^th century England. They both are tired and “weary of drinks” (pg 23), similar to the people in the club, but Adela is in search of the “real India”, something more organic and fulfilling that the artifices that surround her in British society. While her ostensible reason for coming to India is to decide whether or not to marry Ronny, it becomes an inconsequential question to her subconsciously when she blurts out that she has no intention of remaining in India during Fielding’s party. Rather, the idea of the exotic and the different thrills her. But surprisingly (at least to her), this idea remains an idea and doesn’t translate to reality. Instead, she encounters the modernist condition of fragmented identity and breakdown of communication in India as well. During the “purdah party” (page 38), she is happy to find out that Mrs. Bhattacharya and co. speak English, but it is not enough to overcome the communication barrier as everything fizzles down to “a murmur of deprecation” (page 39). Also, she sees through Aziz’s fabricated image of a grand Mohammedan by calling him out on it with “have you one wife or more than one” (page 143), an affirmation of her disillusionment with Oriental India as she had realized before that her desire had had a “factitious element” (page 80) in it.