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Shanti is a major female character in the novel. Shanti is represents new emerging woman who nurtures the ambition of pursuing a career in order to achieve an independent indentity in the society. She registers her first appearance in the film studio section of the novel and dominates it throughout after the closure of the publication of the periodical, "The Banner", edited by Srinivas and printed by Sampath. She strikes the fancy of Sampath at the first look he casts at her photograph sent alongwith her application for acting the part of the heroine, Parvathi, in the proposed film "The Burning of Kama". She is born and bred in Madras. She has a strong resemblance with the girl whom Ravi has seen at Iswara Temple in Malgudi and for whose another glimpse he is pining for so that he may be able to complete her portrait. She is called for interview by Sampath with a resolution in his mind to "make a star of her." After audition test, she is engaged to play the role of Parvathi in the proposed film.
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Shanti's physical charms are bewitching and any male counterpart can fall a victim to her compulsive ravishing beauty. This aspect of her personality is described in detail and repeatedly stressed upon at different places in the novel, She is a type of the modern aspiring woman who spares no effort in achieving economic success on the strength of her God-given attractive physical features. Srinivas feels off his mental balance at her sweeping beauty when she is introduced to him by Sampath. She is described as "a very pretty girl, of a height which is neither too much nor too little, a perfect figure, rosy complexion, arched eyebrows and almond-shaped eyes-everything that should send a man, especially an artist, into hysterics." The manner of her dress-her feet encased in velvet sandals, the folds of her azure translucent saree edged with gold falling over her ankles and a tiny diamond star sparkling at her throat holds Srinivas in a state of trance. He, therefore, remarks:
"It is all nonsense to say that she does all this only to attract man. That is a self-compliment Man concocts for himself. She spends her day doing all this to herself because she can't help it, any more than the full moon can help being round and lustrous."
The donning of her personality and the sprucing-up of her physical figure is natural and spontaneous to her as fragrance, is to a flower. Srinivas admits his discomfiture and bewilderment in her presence and thinks of the mythological reference of the opening of Shiva's third eye in order to burn Kama, the god of Love, who stirs desire in him for Parvathi-Shiva's devotee. Srinivas finds himself in Shiva's predicament. Apologetically, he remarks, "Man has not yet learned to react to beauty properly." When Shanti is introduced to Somu, Srinivas feels that Somu will also find it "difficult to speak anything but nonsense" in her presence. The grandeur and baffling charm of her personality is reiterated in his comments "She was dazzling today, clad in a fluffy saree of rainbow colours, with flowers in her hair to match." These observations occur when she comes to Srinivas alongwith Sampath to discuss a point of clarification in the film script whether the dialogue, "How shall I get at him?" is to be spoken as a question or as a desperate cry. The pleasing impact of her personality is pointed out in Srinivas's spontaneous remarks, "What a pleasure to watch her features!"
She has been the wife of a forest officer with whom she snaps off her ties due to some differences. She has a son whom she leaves with strange people at Madras and comes to Malgudi alone in order to seek a career in film industry. This background reveals her modernity of outlook which is in consistency with an open, daring, aspiring and adventurous mental orientation of a modern, forward-looking educated woman. She easily gets initiated into the role of a film star and does her best in performing the role of heroine, Parvathi, in "The Burning of Kama".
Shanti is a devoted artist. She labours hard in order to play her role as perfectly as she can. Rehearsals tire her. Still, she doggedly sticks to her determination of getting through her assignment. That is why, she wants to be clear on every dialogue and situation in the story for the sake of performing her role conscientiously. Whenever there is a doubt, she likes to get it resolved from the script-writer, Srinivas, rather than doing it imperfectly. This is illustrated by her personal enquiry from the film-script writer in regard to the manner of speaking Parvathi's dialogue, "How shall I get at him?" uttered by her to her maids. She desires to know whether this is to be spoken like a question or as a desperate cry. She is asked for repeated rehearsals in enacting the dance scene. She feels exhausted and profusely perspires but she does not show impatient protest. Unlike her, the hero playing the role of Shiva fights and runs away in fury protesting against exacting rehearsals. This shows her painstaking devotion and diligence to her job like a serious-minded artist. This, is another matter that the whole business of shooting the ilm ends in a big hysterical fiasco not because of any frivolity on her part but owing to the disorderly, frenzied behaviour of Ravi, the artist.
Shanti's seductive physical charms like those of a temptress prove disastrous to the normal, calm domestic life of both Ravi and Sampath. Her purse made of cobra hood is suggestive of her vicious charms which can poison the harmony of life. This symbolism is further expanded in Rosie, pseudonym Nalini, in The Guide. Ravi is an unmarried young artist who is in infatuation with a girl whom he has seen at Iswara Temple. He is preparing her portrait in oil paints but feels hampered in completing it as the girl has suddenly disappeared from his sight. He is pining for one more look at the girl which will inspire him to complete the portrait. Suddenly, one day Shanti appears before him when he is busy at his accounts books in the studio. The strong resemblance between Shanti and the girl of his attraction convinces him that she is the same girl. Her sudden appearance is described by him "as an apparition"? and sends him into a trance. Her chance encounter with him brings about a commotion in his life. Ravi's artistic urges get resurrected. He expresses his desire to Srinivas to work in the art department of the studio. She catapults him to the world of wild imagination and he decides to complete the unfinished portrait with unusual colours. He says:
"My subject must have a tint of the early dawn for her cheeks, the light of the stars for her eyes, the tint of the summer rain- cloud for her tresses, the colour of ivory for her forehead..!"
He thinks that the "usual synthetic stuff" for painting, available in market in tubes, is too heavy for this job.
Sensing Ravi's unusual behaviour, his movements in the studio are restricted by the Director of the art department under instructions from Sampath. Ravi feels shaken as he is barred from having occasional glances at Shanti. Sampath's proximity and tactile contact with her in the car irritates him a lot. She arouses jealousy in Ravi's mind against Sampath. Ravi's exasperation is intensified when he is deprived of a glimpse of Shanti even at the time of her arrival at the studio because the curtains of the car are drawn up. However, he manages to have a look at her by standing on a block of wood when she crosses the courtyard of the costume department. Infatuation with Shanti coupled with Ravi's increasing exasperation because of obstacles put in his way, proves nerve racking to him. Consequently, he reaches nervous breakdown in the dance scene where Shanti is playing the role of Parvathi and Sampath is in the role of Shiva. Shanti as Parvathi is gliding slowly towards Sampath standing with his arms stretched-out in order to receive her. Ravi, looking at this prospect in the scene, loses control over his wits. In a fit of madness, he rushes towards. Shanti pushing aside Sampath and takes her into his arms. She struggles in his arms and gets badly bruised. He tries to carry off "his prize!" i.e. Shanti. He remains a demented young man for the rest of his life. This sequence of events reveals that Shanti proves disastrous to Ravi's normal life.
The Shanti-Sampath episode in the novel also reiterates the vicious effect that Shanti's seductive physical charms exercise on Sampath. The latter introduces her as some sort of his cousin. But it ends into an amorous relationship between the two. This new development becomes suspect in the eyes of Srinivas when he notices nail polish on Sampath's fingers.. He asks him, "What is that red on your fingers?" Sampath is embarrassed over this query and says for the sake of face-saving that his cousin might have done some mischief without his knowledge. Srinivas's suspicion becomes a confirmed fact when Sampath's wife tells Stinivas's wife that her husband has been keeping away from home for days together neglecting his family. She stresses upon her to tell Srinivas about it so that he may prevail upon Sampath to mend his ways. After initial hesitation, Srinivas tries to probe Sampath on this point. He finds that he has gone too far in the matter. Sampath discloses to him his mind candidly that he thinks of marrying Shanti as his second wife and assures him that he will keep both of his wives in equal comfort in separate houses. He says:
"..Is a man's heart so narrow that it cannot accommodate more than one? I have married according to Vedic rites, let me have one according to the civil marriage law.."
He dismisses the anxieties of his wife in this regard by saying non-chalantly, "It's her nature to fuss about things sometime. But she always changes for the better." This does not satisfy Srinivas and hence he comments about his infatuation with Shanti as nothing but "succumbing to a little piece of georgette, powder and curves."
After the mishap in the dance scene, Shanti is jaken to the hill resort at the top of the Mempi Hills so that she may recover her mental equilibrium which has been badly shaitered by Ravi's frenzied behaviour with her in the studio. She, alongwith Sampath, stays there for four days. She recovers her normalcy. On way back to Malgudi, they have to wait at the railway station for the morning train. She has given a word to Sampath to marry him, but things take a different turn. She goes back to Madras by eleven o'clock train in the night when Sampath is lying asleep in the waiting room. He finds a letter wherein she has told him about her decision to return to her domestic life in Madras in order to look after her son and to live a widow's life. She tells him not to pursue her and warns him that in case he does so she will shave off her head, fling away the jewellery and wear a white saree. She can do all this since she is a widow. She leaves Sampath a woe-begone, bewildered and jilted man like that Knight-at- arms in Keats's poem, La Belle Dame Sans Merci.
Like other protagonists of Narayan, she too passes through the oft-repeated cyclic order of experience. Her return to the real world of her old domestic life at her native town, Madras, occurs after she has gone through a whole gamut of experiences of a totally different world which she mistakenly magazine as a real one. She feels disillusioned with this imagined, illusory and unreal world of making a career as a film heroine. She feels lured by it from a distance. But when it is seen from inside, she finds it the contrary one and hence relinquishes it saying, "I had different ideas of a film life." The same pattern in the case of Savitri in The Dark Room gets reflected in her final return to her husband's house after a short-lived departure from it in protest.
The characters of Shanti and Shanta Bai of The Dark Room offer an interesting study in comparison and contrast. Both of them are modern, ambitious, unorthodox and daring women who leave their home and hearth and go to Malgudi in order to join a profession for the sake of acquiring an independent economic identity. Each deserts her husband. While in job, each develops amorous relations with her male colleague i.e. Shanti with Sampath and Shanta Bai with Ramani. Since both the male counterparts i.e. Sampath and Ramani have children, the consequence of the extra-marital relations is the disruption of their normal domestic life. Despite these obvious similarities, the dissimilarities between the two are deeper and more significant. First, they differ in their attitude to the work they are doing. Shanti is serious-minded, painstaking and strenuous in performing her role of heroine, Parvathi, in the film, "The Burning of Kama". She works hard, perspires and perseveres in repeated rehearsals in the dance scene in the studio. Shanta Bai, on the other hand, is flippant in her job of an Insurance agent in Engladia Insurance Company. She tries to wriggle out of the condition in her appointment letter that she will have to give a business of ten thousand rupees in the first two months of her probation period. She makes amorous advances to her boss, Ramani, with an ominously selfish purpose and the latter offers to write to the Head Office to waive off that condition.
Shanta Bai is cunning, artful and selfish. Such wilful designs are missing in the character of Shanti. Shanta Bai acts deliberately to provoke Ramani and ensnares him. She enjoys private movements with him through her night escapades. In the case of Shanti such amorous movements are absent. She moves with Sampath in connection with her vocation except that both of them go together to the hill resort at the top of the Mempi Hills in unusual circumstances with the specific purpose of restoration of emotional and mental equilibrium of Shanti who is badly shattered by Ravi's mad encounter in the studio. Moreover, Shanti agrees to conclude this love-affair in a marriage which will legitimise the whole thing. But when she changes her mind, she gives up both the ideas of marriage and amorous association simultaneously. Shanti Bai remains content with relations that are based purely on assuagement of carnal desires. She. persists in her immoral ways. She shows no realisation or repentance at any stage. Secondly, Shanti returns to her old domestic life at her hometown after getting disillusioned with the film world. She resumes her maternal duty of looking after her only son. On the contrary, Shanta Bai does not undergo such transformation. She remains an incorrigible, unrepentant, immoral woman. She does not get reconciled with her social position of a wife or of a daughter as she stands a rebel against both.