Keki N Daruwalla's Crossing of Rivers: An Ecocritical approach

Abstract

Ecocriticism, an Interdisciplinary study of Ecology and literary criticism focuses on representations of nature and environment in literature as it sets out to assess culture from the perspective of human-nature interaction. In the process, it more often than not, gets coloured by the local scenario with varying cultural valencies and gradually broadens towards a socio-centric direction on the cornerstone of nature writings. It is thus, closely connected to the dictum of, "Ecopoetics" which has been defined by Jonathan Skinner, the editor of the journal of Ecopoetics as, "an "ecotone...between ecology, poetry and ethnopoetics."(Skinner 5-8). The origin of Ecocriticism is almost inextricably bound with Ethnopoetics, which Jerome Rothenberg treats as” looking away from the modern and experimental to focus on ancient and autocthonous cultures “(Rothenberg 6 ) James Englehardt, on the other hand opines, ”The Ecopoem must connect to the culture and society that it inhabits….when thinking about an ecology, it’s easy to overlook aspects.”(Englehardt 1). Patrick Murphy rightly gauges Ecocriticism in his declaration that, "Ecocriticism should remain localist, rather than global, in its grounding orientation…Localist in orientation would mean being always attentive to particular and specific places, entities and events.”(Murphy1). This paper ventures to scrutinize Keki N Daruwalla's (1937- ) portrayal of Ganga and the locale of Varanasi in the Crossing of River (1976) from an Ecocritical perspective to fathom the Ecopoetics inherent in his poetry as he sets out to connect nature and Ecology with culture, which, according to Englehardt is a product of Non-human nature.