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ABSTRACT
This research article will discuss the manner in which multi-modal narratology anchors ecological consciousness in Indian literary and visual practices with special reference to Amruta Patil and Devdutt Pattanaik’s Aranyaka: Book of the Forest. After mapping the different visual-verbal narrative technique and its implications in representing ecological concerns, the paper will show how Aranyaka triggers the ‘ecological thought’ of human and non-human entanglement in aranya, the ‘contact zone’ of multispecies. It further aims to reveal how the ‘transmedial’ narrative with its two tracks of narratology, involving image-narrative on one hand and word-narrative on the other, revives the life of aranya before the post-millennial city dwellers who are increasingly being removed from ‘ecological awareness’ in their highly mechanised world. The sketches accompanied by word bubbles render tactility to the entire narrative and bring together two apparently disparate entities, the human and the non-human, in the network of narratology.
Acknowledgments
The images are reproduced with the permission of the authors and the publisher.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Supplementary material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.
Notes
1. Aranyaka, the name of the graphic novel is derived from the Vedic Aranyakas. The term, Aranyakas is derived from the word aranya, meaning forest. Aranyaka means ‘book of the forest’. The subtitle of the graphic novel suggests the same.
2. Aranya’s significance and its implication are rooted in India’s Vedic past. To maintain the historical importance and the spiritual essence of aranya, throughout the article the original Indic word is retained instead of aranya’s lexical English equivalent, forest.
3. The Aranyakas comprises of the later part of the Hindu religious text, the Vedas. The Aranyakas is read in the forest after the completion of the stage of household activities or grhastha.
4. Sutradhar is derived from Sanskrit words ‘Sutra’ meaning thread and ‘Dhari’ meaning one who holds. Together it stands for one who holds the thread. In the context of the narrative, sutradhar is the one who metaphorically holds the thread of the narrative. In other words, sutradhar plays the role of the narrator or the thread bearer of the narrative.
5. The term ‘deep past’ is connected with the ‘deep history’ that is elucidated later in the same section of the article.
6. Aranya-katha is derived from the Indic words aranya meaning forest and katha meaning lore. Together it stands for the lore of forest.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Somasree Sarkar
Somasree Sarkar is an Assistant Professor of English at Ghoshpukur College, University of North Bengal, West Bengal, India. She is also pursuing her Ph.D. from the Department of English, University of North Bengal, West Bengal, India. Her articles have been published in an edited volume, Partition Literature and Cinema: A Critical Introduction (UK: Routledge, 2020). Her articles have also been published in Taylor and Francis journals. She can be reached at [email protected]
Goutam Karmakar
Goutam Karmakar, Ph.D. (English), is an Assistant Professor of English at Barabazar Bikram Tudu Memorial College, Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University, Purulia, West Bengal, India. His forthcoming and recently published edited books are Narratives of Trauma in South Asian Literature (London: Routledge), The City Speaks: Urban Spaces in Indian Literature (London: Routledge), and Religion in South Asian Anglophone Literature: Traversing Resistance, Margins and Extremism (London: Routledge, 2021). He has been published in journals including MELUS, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, South Asian Review, Journal of Gender Studies, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, National Identities, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, and Asiatic among others. He can be reached at [email protected]
