Dear Reader,
August is ending, and we are approaching the last quarter of 2024. Since August is also the month of India’s independence, this seems like a good time to take stock of the events that have happened in the country since the beginning of 2024. Looking back, even the staunchest optimists among us cannot fail to acknowledge the overwhelming presence of mishaps—bombings, train collisions, explosions, encounter killings, fires—which ripped off lives. Even the celebration of Independence Day this year was a lacklustre event, taking place under the shadow of the horrific rape and murder of a young doctor in Kolkata. All this makes one wonder: What does independence mean to us? In the days of the British Raj, we could blame the foreigners for all the miseries we suffered. But now, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Literature is the place where such dilemmas are faced head on, thrashed out, and solutions sought. Two years ago, Frontline had celebrated the 75th year of Independence by drawing up a comprehensive list of books, fiction and non-fiction, that capture the zeitgeist. To read these books is to know where we went wrong and if a course correction is possible.
One aspect of the downhill slide—the rise of hate engineered by the RSS—is analysed in depth in a recent book, Siddhartha Deb’s Twilight Prisoners: The Rise of the Hindu Right and the Decline of India. Do read it to recognise the origin and nature of the poison being injected into our veins, and don’t miss its review by Shakir Mir here.
An important point made by Deb is the relation between the Union Carbide gas leak of 1984 that killed more than 20,000 people and the much-vaunted Green Revolution of the 1960s. The latter, which resulted in an increased crop yield and boosted the economy greatly, also started the use of pesticides and chemicals at an industrial scale in agriculture. The ill effects of that “revolution” are being felt today in toxic soil quality, dried-up waterways, and a perceptible loss of biodiversity. Indeed, the natural world, thought to be the refuge from all kinds of adversities, is itself ravaged almost beyond repair, by our thoughtless exploitation of its resources. We experienced the effects of the abuse most recently in the Wayanad landslides, which killed and displaced thousands, and changed the topography of Kerala.
Authors have debated the possible responses of literature to a world morphed by human-induced climate change. As Amitav Ghosh wrote in The Great Derangement: Climate Change and The Unthinkable, we need a new language to express what is happening around us now since none of us has witnessed disasters of this magnitude. Science fiction or speculative fiction (SF)—which we usually tend to dismiss as second-grade literature—might actually prove to be the literature of the Anthropocene by bravely visualising the dystopia to come.
India lags when it comes to sci-fi and SF—we don’t have writers of the stature of, say, Ursula le Guin or Margaret Atwood. But there is good news in this regard as young authors like Samit Basu, Gautam Bhatia, Mini Mondal approach the unfolding reality with a form and style suited to the purpose. The latest entrant in the growing group of Indian SF writers is Gigi Ganguly, whose book, Biopeculiar: Stories of an Uncertain World, is an impressive feat. It is SF par excellence, taking off from the realms of the known world to those of the uncanny, while retaining enough traces of lived reality to suggest that the as-yet-unthinkable might just come to pass. The collection opens up the imagination to make us consider perspectives and possibilities beyond the given—interspecies communication, for eg. Since we share our living space with a variety of creatures—insects, trees, animals, birds—whose perspectives we never consider, imagining an active interaction with them might indeed open up a portal to a more equal future. Jaideep Unudurti writes an excellent review of Biopeculiarhere.
As long as the young generation can think against the grain, there is hope. Maybe we will have more events to rejoice over when we celebrate the 100th anniversary of India’s independence in 2047. “Courage!” we tell ourselves, and hang on. And try to make our relationship with the world less exploitative, more empathetic.
We will rummage the pages of literature again to take heart when we meet next time. Till then, adieu. See you again, soon.
Anusua Mukherjee
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