He was not himself because his wife was not herself, because in marriage you acted and reacted one upon the other, however much you wished it otherwise, and whether you wanted to or no. Dandekar is a routinebound government clerk who is able to provide his family with a comfortable life. But his ordered existence is thrown off course when, one day, he comes home from work to find his wife, Sarojini, missing. On her return she gives him an excuse for her disappearance which he realizes is a lie, further rousing his suspicions. Doubt and mistrust plague him and he puts his career in jeopardy when he begins to trail Sarojini in the hope that he might find her with another man. But when he stumbles across the truth he gets more than he bargained for. In A Silence of Desire Kamala Markandaya explores the tension between the East and the West between superstition and science, faith and reason, tradition and progress in a profound manner.