An Ecosphical Approach to Forest in Janice Pariat’s Everything the Light Touches
Prasanta Pathak,
PhD Research Scholar, MSSV &
Asst. Professor, Department of English,
Bikali College,
Assam, India.
&
Dr. Bibha Devi,
Supervisor,
Department of English,
Guwahati Unit, MSSV,
Assam, India.
Abstract: Janice Pariat’s Everything the Light Touches is an
extraordinary literary piece that concerns the perpetuity of nature in
different time through the journeys of four different characters across
different places. This paper is an attempt to address environmental problems
resulted from the evolution of human society and human subjectivity, culture,
politics and economy and the act of reduction of the natural resources for
material environment by human beings. This paper has looked through the first
episode of the novel that how human-nature relationship helps attaining
abounding peace and happiness and man’s preoccupation with forest and plant
life can explore the astounding beauty and mystery of nature and its diverged
aspects. Forest has occupied a considerable space in this episode as well as
deforestation is a major concern undertaken by the central characters. Ecosophy
demands a broad environmental awareness
propagating the ideas about the requirements of our earth and our
responsibilities to sustain it through reviewing our activities.
Keywords: forest,
deforestration, envirionment, ecosophy
Introduction:
The growing civilization, scientific
and technical transmutation is a serious ecological crisis in present global
scenario. The present generation has been edging out in collective mission of reduction
and abstraction from nature for the cause of materialistic benefits, successes
and worldly pleasures. Anthropocentric and egotistical motives outrun the
congenial relationship between human and other life forms. Norwegian
philosopher Arne Naess and French philosopher Felix Guattari share the common
concept of Ecosophy. The word ‘Ecosophy” consists of two words similar like
“Ecology” and both derived from Greek words. Ecosophy is a conjunction of ‘eco’
(oikos) -‘home’ or in a larger concept our ‘earth’ and ‘sophy’ refers to
‘wisdom’. According to Levesque, “Ecosophy is a philosophical worldview or a
system inspired by our living conditions in ecosphere.” (512) Karthick and
Vaghese point out Arne Naess’ concept of ecosphy “which means through attaining
ecological wisdom in one of the best ways to preserve and understand nature.”
(128) Man’s awareness to environment and a cognitive realization to
environmental issues, according to Guttari, is a needful process of “transformations
of mentalities and collective habits” (Cavacante 26); otherwise our concern for
material environment will be an illusion only.
Moreover, Cavalcante construes Guttari’s concept of ecosophy in the
following lines -
“Ecosophy is a practical and
speculative model, ethical -political and aesthetic, not being a discipline,
but rather a simple and efficient renewal of the old ways of conception of the
human being, of society and of the environment.” (25)
Ecosophy is not a watertight
philosophy; rather an active and progressive thinking on the dilapidated
condition of nature and humans’ exploitative motives towards nature. It is an
awareness on ecological destruction and man’s practical and realistic
realization along with an attempt for constructive solutions that makes the
basic footing of ecosophy. According to Cavalcante and Alves, “It proposes to
analyze man in an integrative way of the environment in which he lives through
the practical articulation of his daily life” (166). Therefore, ecosophy is a
conception interlinking with critical thinking for the cause of
interrelationship between environment , social relation and human subjectivity.
Analysis:
Recipient of Sahitya Akademi Young
Writer Award for the English language in 2013 and Crossword Book Award for
fiction in the same year; Janice Pariat is an Indian author and poet hailing
from Northeast India. Her notable works include Boats on Land, Seahorse, The
Nine Chambered Heart, Everything the light Touches. Everything the Light Touches won the
Sushila Devi award for the best fiction in 2023 and short listed for JCB Prize
for Literature in 2023. Her She horse was shortlisted for the Hindu
Literary Prize in 2015. The present study has been limited to her latest
fiction Everything the Light Touches - a seminal and ambitious work with
a wide-ranging and deep-probing journeys through centuries.
Janice Pariat’s Everything the Light
Touches (2022) has featured four characters and they are Shai, Evelyn,
Johann, and Carl. The characters have travelled across different centuries and
continents touching everything tiny and mighty with a single liaison that the
natural world is very close to us and breaking the relationship with earth
means pulverizing our very spirits. Their travel encompasses from Northeast
India’s remote village to Lower
Himalaya and Finland’s Lapland to Gothe’s Europe. The four characters have
dived into a single passion for
studying nature in a particular region and a geological period. The
novel is centered round on ecological wisdom or ecosophy that human and natural
world is intricately connected with each other with a radical spiritual bond.
Pariat is deeply concerned about the
attenuated relationship of human and nature. Nature has been considered by
human beings as utilizable resources and exploited arbitrarily for
anthropocentric needs. The novel juxtaposes varied issues with a binary
approach from colonial to modern, rural to urban, and capitalism to
altruism. The novel begins with the
vista of urbanization at the rural areas adjacent to Shillong -the capital of
Meghalaya. Shai is a thirty two years old Khasi girl staying in Delhi and every
homecoming of Shai explores expeditious urbanization in her hilly and cloud
shrouded region. Shai’s home visit makes the picture more clear as she comes
about to notice the rapid changes of landscape of her green hills. A deep ecosophic concern for ecoendangerment
has been echoed throughout the feeling of Shai in the following lines-
Much of Shillong has been given over
to manic construction, an inglorious clutter of unplanned cement
structures-mostly illegal, of course, in an earthquake zone such as this. Every
so often, the town is rattled by tremors, or a series of small rumbles.
Warnings of what’s to come, my mother likes to say, sounding as though she
might even be wishing it upon us.” (Pariat 11)
Shai’s house is situated at the outskirt of
Shillong and her parents live in a big house atop of a hill. Shai’s father has nourished an especial
interest in botany though by profession he is neither a teacher of botany nor
an academician. He has been introduced in the novel as “Treeman of Shillong” (Pariat 20) - an
environmental activist and lover of nature. He has begged some recognition to
be an environmental protector and battler and his house is frequented by
reporters. He has cultivated a deep passion for growing of plants, nourishment,
and protection either from natural causes or humans. Pariat writes, - “Growing
plants and saving them, from frost and aphids and too much rain.” (Pariat 11).
Shai’s father is equally concerned on the growing deforestation in his region, “Especially
when they might be felled. And “plant -bias”-our human tendency to underappreciate
or ignore the flora around us -according to him, our species’ gravest crime.”
(Pariat 11) Guattari is critique in his philosophical work The Three Ecologies,
stating that man’s overindulgent and imprudent challenge to the earth leads to
ecocide. According to him, “After a century of unparalleled scientific and
technological progress we have made our presence known to the planet in the
most dramatic and self-defeating fashion.” (Guattari 03)
The novel sets a pine forest that
edges the small colony where Shai’s house located. The pine forest covers the
hills over and contributes to the greenery and beauty of the place. The novel
traces how Shai’s father is anxious about the plan of cutting down a number of
pine trees for the cause of construction of a wall by someone. The ‘Treeman of
Shillong’ does not keep himself to be a silent observer of this felling
activity of pine trees. However, he has approached to some forest officials
accompanied by his comrade Bah Kyn with an appeal to stop the felling scheme of
pine trees immediately.
Pariat has vivified the character of
Shai’s father by gifting him a plethora of botanical wisdom. The plants have
evocative and communicative power like human and animal beings despite their
immobility and lack of articulation capacity. This magical truth from
scientific understanding has been put forth in the narrative through the
botanical knowledge of Shai’s father and the unknown mystery of plants and
their “immense aromatic vocabulary, their capacity for memory.”(Pariat 13)
Shai’s father alludes to birch tree when he gives to his daughter delightfully
the most wonderful information about the remembering power of this plant in the
following words- “Birch tree can remember a past event for up to four years.” (Pariat
13) Shai has added her own comprehension saying that, “All the trees in the world
remember.” (Pariat 14)
Nature affinity has been a serious
and vital eco- theme delineated by Janice Pariat in her elegant novel Everything
the Light Touches. The Guardian appreciates in the commentary pages of the
novel remarking that “the natural world around us is loud enough for those
willing to listen, and Pariat has found the language for it.” (Pariat) Janice
Pariat has depicted Shai’s ecosophic self in the line of her father. Her
eco-aesthetic virtue has been best understood when she sets her bed by the
window in her living room of her house directing to the pine forest. She likes the forest and the natural music
emitting out from the deep of the forest. She loves to listen “the chirrup of crickets, and from near
the stream, a bright chorus of frogs.”(Pariat 14) During her sojourn at home,
Shai occasionally goes into the nearest forest to seek happiness after having
been away from the bustling city life. She says, “I wish I could say I find
peace here - or a joyous communion--Perhaps the city has dulled my heart, my
senses.” (Pariat18) She understands her incompetence to be attuned with her
father’s passion for interacting with forest due to her professional obligation
in the big city Delhi.
The novel delves deep into the
ecosystem of plants through the botanical knowledge of Shai’s father. The world
of trees on earth surface is not only the world we are visualizing. There is
another world or a complicated wide network underneath the surface of our earth
woven by the roots of the trees. Shai comes to know from her father the
botanical term of this extensive network as “Hyphae” (Pariat 21) or network of
fungus from root to root. Shai terms it in her simple understanding as “The
wood wide web”. According to Wohlleben, “Life in these hidden ecosystems has
barely been explored, and we only know about a tiny fraction of the species
that live down here.” (46)This infinite
biological phenomenon makes an underworld of trees. In this unseen world, trees
make their intricate relationship among them and prepare a strong ecosystem
sharing “resources, information, nutrients.” (Pariat 21)
Moreover, ecological balance has been
seen more beautifully designed among the trees in the underworld; mutual
support within the same kin and the role of caretaker by the healthy trees to
the weaker ones provides throughout the web interconnected roots to roots. The
trees, besides their generous role of life giver to other living beings, make a
beautiful paragon of coexistent species. Shai expresses, “Others believes trees
care for one another, and act as guardians, sharing resources, with the healthy
supporting the weak. A free market versus a socialist’s dream.” (Pariat 21)
Human beings, the most elite and wise among other beings, not only exploit
within same kin but also others recklessly. The novel points out many ironical
or superficial environmental awareness popped up in sociocultural practices
rather than a realistic understanding.
Guattari (qtd. in Cavalcante and Alves 168) states that -
Environmental Ecosophy aims to
articulate new ecological practices. These new ecological practices must make
the subjective singularities of humanity progressive and active, moving to
collective thinking, in the well-being of the group. Thus, heterogeneity has
the capacity to organize and articulate the functioning of the global system.
The first episode of Shai in Pariate’s
Everything the Light Touches finally turns out Shai’s father to be a
champion in the cause of forest. He
involves in the environmental fight that issued forth from cutting of pine
trees that has been inchoate for a wall construction. Finally the forest
department interferes into the matter and a number of pine trees are saved from
felling down. Shai’s father is delighted that finally their efforts to save the
pine trees do not go in vain. “The new wall, it has been mandated, will be
slimmer. A victory for the Treeman of Shillong” (Pariat 54). Parait has shown
throughout the character of Shai’s father that ecosophy is a realistic approach
and it is call for solidarity in shifting perspective that can foster a holistic
understanding of human and nature.
Conclusion:
The study is an attempt at assessing
the literary representation of forest in North East Indian writing in English.
It has examined the forest and human relationship and the wonder and mystery in
the world of plants from the ecohumanistic wisdom in Janice Pariat’s Everything the Light Touches. Human beings have
an ancient connection with forest since its Homo sapiens stage. The wheel of
civilization and urbanization bring about a massive rift between the two and
the deep affinity between the two entities has been dissipating day by day.
According to the propagator of Deep Ecology Arne Naess the anthropocentric
activities of human beings lead humans to live alienated from their natural
environment” (Nayar 246). The insightful ecosophic awareness of non-anthropocentric
attitudes must repair the growing crevice between man and nature. Moreover,
nature provides overflowing amount of joy and happiness to those who love
living close to nature and understands its magnitude.
Works
Cited
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