Impact of Globalisation and
Urbanisation in the Ecosystem: A Study of Keki. N. Daruwalla’s Poetry
Dr. Trishna Duarah
Kalita,
Assistant Professor,
Department of English,
Dibrugarh Hanumanbox, Surajmal
Kanoi College,
Dibrugarh, Assam, India.
Abstract: The threat brought by Globalisation and Urbanisation on the ecosystem
however is not a recent phenomenon, but its impact on the ecosystem is beyond
any human control in the contemporary picture. The abuse of Nature and the
environment is becoming a matter of great concern for not only the
Environmentalists but also students of humanities and social sciences. In
Indian English Poetry, the poetry of Keki. N. Daruwalla reflects his deep
concern for the growing threat on the ecosystem. His poetry not only celebrates
the rich diversity in nature but also highlights the making of myth, culture
and literature in association with nature, man and the entire ecosystem.
Daruwalla's primary concern in many of his nature poems is to draw our
attention to the slowly disappearing myth and folk along with destruction of
nature by human interference, posing a threat to human habitation and life in
general. Celebrating the rich ecological diversity, Daruwalla mourns over the
engulfing damage that sets the paradigm for ecological discourse. The paper
aims at a critical understanding of a few selected poems of Keki. N. Daruwalla
from ecocritical perspectives.
Keywords: Nature, Abuse, Eco-Criticism, Keki. N. Daruwalla, Indian Poetry
Ecocriticism
broadly refers to the study of the relationship between literature and the
physical environment. The word 'ecocriticism' is sourced out from an essay
"Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism" by William
Rueckert, published in 1978.However, the most widely acknowledged founder of
U.S Ecocriticism is Cheryll Glotfelty. In her collections of essays titled "The
Ecocriticism Reader" (1996), Glotfelty defines ecocriticism as an
"earth centred approach to literary studies" (Glotfelty 18).
Ecocriticism in the US takes its literary bearings from the nineteenth century
transcendentalists. While in the UK, Ecocriticism/ Green Studies was influenced
by the British Romanticism and emerged through major critics such as Jonathan
Bate, Raymond Williams and Lawrence Buell.
Ecocriticism
in the Global South takes a different turn from the dominant western
prospective of understanding nature. Environmental historian Ramachandra Guha
greatly influenced the field of South Asian postcolonial Ecocriticism; he quite
rightly pointed out that deep ecology's central tenet of distinguishing between
anthropocentrism and biocentrism is of little use to most of the world's
population. Guha insisted that wilderness preservation cannot be pursued
without considering social "equity and the integration of ecological
concerns with livelihood and work" (Guha Citation 1989, 71). Global South
eco-criticism is the effort to examine the postcolonial narratives that
questions the environmental challenges faced by the people of the South Asian
countries. It refers to the areas of research that explores the history of
colonialism and its impact on environmentand nature in terms of exploitation of
natural resources and abuse of nature, fostering a great environmental crisis
in the postcolonial nations.
In
Modern Indian English poetry, the concern for the environmental degradation and
environmental justice is an area widely explored by writers. India is a land of
immense diversity in natural resources and here people live very close to
nature, even today. The usage of Nature is not limited to livelihood alone, but
it has a significant role to play in shaping culture through myth and folk.
Postcolonial Ecocriticism in India engages a serious study of "not so
visible" gradual smudging of human, social and cultural values, with the
loss of biodiversity, eco-balance and the exploitation of natural resources,
because of urbanisation and globalisation. Postcolonial Ecocriticism delves
away from the structured thought of deep ecology and attempts a wholesome idea
of nature, inclusive of man. Man as a part of the ecosystem, like other species
dependent on nature for survival. But what Postcolonial Ecocriticism focuses,
is essentially the crisis that is existential, both for human and nonhuman. In
Modern Indian English poetry, Keki. N. Daruwalla's poetical ovary is
impregnated with diverse issues related to nature. Numberless poems he composed
reflect how in postcolonial India, Capitalism, commercialisation and
misconception about the environment is catering to the existential crisis
befalling on the ecosystem. The paper will make an attempt to examine how
Daruwalla's poetry emerges as a separate wing from the dichotomy of Deep
Ecology and Anthropocene and questions the complex existential crises on the
organic whole. From the bulk of Daruwalla's poetical works, only a small number
of poems are bucket-listed to examine in this paper: "Hawk', 'Wolf',
'Fish', 'Death of a Bird', 'Ghagra in spate', and 'Boat ride along the Ganga',
from the prospective of Ecocriticism of the Global South.
One
of the most unique poems of Daruwalla selected for this study is
"Wolf." Daruwalla in the opening lines of the poem, introduces this
creature as a part of the poet's past and thereby indicates the uncertainty of
its existence in the present time:"the wolf circles my past". The
half silhouette and half mythical image of the wolf that shapes the childhood
imagination of the poet, questions the gradual extinction of the wolf behind
the smoke of "gun barrel." The image of the wolf as a
"throat-catcher", "wind-sniffer" is culturally transmitted
from generation to generation through literature, myth and folk.
Referring
to the process of mythmaking, Daruwalla highlights the relationship between
nature and culture. Here the poet trickily points out the role of a mother in
image-making, the mother in order to make her child sleep, create a frightening
image of the wolf: 'prowler, wind-sniffer, throat-catcher of an otherwise
extraordinary animal that enriches the diverse biological world. Emphasising
the physical proximity, Daruwalla gives a glorified picture of the wolf:
"he can sense a shadow", “his ears stand up/ at the fall of the
dew": "he can sniffout/ your approaching dreams": "there is
nothing/ that won't be lit up/ by the dark torch of his eyes." Daruwalla
probes the pointer to the misrepresentation of a precious animal in the process
of mythmaking and man's role in the gradual disappearing of the wolves.
The wolves have been slaughtered
now.
The
black snout, sulphur body, extended paws enriched his childhood dreams of the
speaker. The fear and terror of the wind sniffer, throat catcher is a thrilling
experience for a child to dream. The speaker seems to be thankful to the wolf
for enriching his bedtime stories. He draws the line between past and present
by showing the stark difference between the childhood experience of himself and
of his daughter. The poet is nostalgic to his past: the wolf's "cries drew
a ring/ around my night/a child's night in a village/ on the forest edge. This
rich experience of the poet is replaced by his daughter's; it is the
"hedge of smoking gun-barrels" that "ring" his
"daughter's dreams" and not the cry of the wolf. The
"gun-barrel" carries with it the smoke of colonialism which is at
large responsible for the exploitation of not only nature, but the rich folk
and myth associated with it.
Similarly,
the poem "Hawk" is remarkable for Daruwalla's selection of a
distinctive variety of bird: it is the "Wild Hawk King." Some of the
varieties of this bird are very rare and nearing extinction. Daruwalla employs
the image of the Hawk to represent the frustrated young man who is forced to
work in a corrupt bureaucratic system. Leaving aside the symbolic significance,
an ecocritical understanding of the following lines quoted from the poem
"Hawk" directly refers to the complete degradation of the ecosystem
where no living organism could strive:
"The land beneath him was
filmed with salt,
grass, seed, insect, bird,
nothing could strive here."
(5-7)
The
'Hawk' is said to be "a rapist" in the harem of the sky, he kills his
prey for survival primarily and to satisfy his "barbed passion" as a
master craftsman. Daruwalla tries to justify the passion of the "Wild Hawk
King" as something he inherited from nature, hence something natural in
him. The hawk is a bird of prey and the ecosystem demands him to play his allotted
part. He skilfully points out the stark difference in the temperament of the
wild hawk and "tamed ones" with the adjective "worse." He
emphatically points out that "the tamed ones are worse," for "he
is touched by men." He attempts to portray the superiority of reason in
subjugating nature.
his eyelids are sewn with silk
as he is broken to the hood
He is momentarily blinded,
starved.
Then the scar over his vision is
perforated.
(22-25)
Daruwalla's
concern in this poem is to highlight man's inhuman domination of the environment
which is leading to environmental crisis. The Hawk King is a bird with
extraordinary physical prioresses with sharp curved talon for capturing prey,
razor-sharp beak to tear off flesh in a moment and its capacity to fly swiftly
in high speed. The extinction of such a precious bird is a great damage to the
biodiversity. Hawking is an ancient game and most popular among noble families.
Hawks are most popular companions of hunters but in the recent time due to the
extinction of this bird, Hawking is not allowed in most counties, including
India.
In
another beautiful poem "Fish" Daruwalla relates the incident of
discovering a huge fish lying by the sea. The account of the physical proximity
of the fish reveals the poet's high sense of aesthetic and fascinates the
readers with the marvel of nature:
her tin coloured barnacles
and a long threaded rose moles
patterned on her body.
Daruwalla
took immense care to describe the intricate patterns visible on the body of the
fish: "the armour of her scale/ and the filigree of her rose moles."
But this beautiful creature seems to surrender to the forces, which is making
life impossible on earth: "her eyes still translucent/as if half aware and
half unaware/ of the state of her body.' She is not dead but may be senseless.
The tide kept coming but couldn't disturb her "in her resting place."
Instead of the seashore, the resting place of the fish should have been the
sea. She is lying undisturbed and the tides couldn't take her along as she was
heavy. Here the threat on aquatic creatures could be two-fold: threatening
changes in the ecosystem and the impact of numberless experiments made on
aquatic creatures. The death of huge fish which is otherwise should not be
affected so easily to the extent of losing its life indicates the degree of
crisis in the sea. Daruwalla highlights the tragic fate of such a wonderful
creature in the hands of time.
The
poem probes the pointer towards the environmental disaster growing massive in
size every day. The impact of urbanisation which seems to have engulfed the
aerial and terrestrial space is visibly clear in the aquatic world too. From
the huge size of the fish, it seems to belong to the whale family, another
widely explored area by Daruwalla. In a number of poems Daruwalla's concern for
the extinction of the whale is profoundly expressed.
In
another poem "Death of a Bird", man is portrayed as a violent
intruder that destroys the tranquil, peaceful lives of the inhabitants of
jungle. Through the brutal killing of the "monal" to fulfil human
passion, Daruwalla critiques the hierarchy of reason over the
"non-descriptive" nature. Daruwalla opens the poem with a scene of
vibrant lovemaking of a pair of Monals, a kind of most beautiful and rare
variety of birds usually found in the Himalayas. Environmental disaster leading
to existential crises, purely conditioned by man. The end of lovemaking is
essentially related to the process of multiplication, and the death of one
partner questions the possibility both survival and the process of
reproduction. In this poem Daruwalla postulates, human interference on mute
creatures, in various levels. The 'pony' that the hunter rides on
"swivelled and went down the flanks" due to overloaded work. The poem
gives an extensive account of the exploitation:
And we rose to the final kill ---
Two electric saws meeting on a
hill
in the narrowing bones of a
fractured tree ---
each of us thought the other was
free
of the pony's scream and the
monal's wings
and the prowling bears in the
firelight-rim
(50- 55)
Nature
is exhausted by human misuse and abuse; the distortion is clearly indicated in
the quoted lines. Daruwalla brings in the Coleridgean consciousness of guilt
and sin as reflected in the Rime of Ancient Mariner with expressions like
"bird-blood on our hands". "why did our footsteps drag?",
"my blistered dreams", "depressed a bit". And in the final
lines:
It's the queen-monal! We are
cursed! she said
Just watch its eyes! For though
the bird was near dead
its eyes flared terror like bits
of dripping meat!!
(72 -73)
Like
the old mariner who couldn't forget the eyes of two hundred crew members, the
lady companion couldn't forget the eyes of the bird "its eyes flared
terror." Daruwalla's concern here is more ethical. Nature is stripped off,
morally, spiritually and this moral question disturbs the speaker's wife with
the consciousness of guilt. It is the question of sin in the reign of reason,
the moral responsibility of man to the "non-descript" nature that
bothers Daruwalla the most.
The
poem "Ghagra in Spate" is yet another finest composition of Daruwalla
that portrays the image of the river as a living entity: a woman, frustrated,
angry and restlessly moving on her bed, over and over again, unable to sleep:
"ghagra changes course
turning over and over again in
her sleep"
(2 -3)
Attributing
the human qualities in the river, Daruwalla redefines the river within the
cultural context. The poem poignantly refers the wrath of the river in the
changing situation, where values are distorted, at the advent of globalisation
and industrialisation. The poem reveals Daruwalla’s ethical concern for the
degradation of the ecosystem. The river swells up in anger, revolting against
the abuse of nature by industrialisation and urbanisation: "spiked
shadows", "inverted trees", "kingfishers",
"gulls", emphatically projects the uncontrollable power of nature as
a living entity. But the urban man is unaffected by the disaster brought by the
angry river, and takes a pleasure-drive around the flood-affected areas to
derive sadistic pleasure by witnessing the drama of destruction:
and women in chauffeur-driven
cars
go looking for driftwood.
(29 -30)
The
devastation made by the flood in the villages is unseen by the urban crowd.
Daruwalla in the next section of the poem employed the extended metaphor of the
river and visualises it as a devouring monster that spins and churn: half the
street goes- "churning in the river-belly." After the devastation,
the Ghagra calms down but the reminiscence of her outburst is particularly visible
on the mute creatures:
a buffalo floats over the rooftop
Where the men are stranded
Three days of hunger, and her
udders
Turn red-rimmed and swollen
With milk-extortion,
(23-27)
The
flood that ended in complete disaster on human and nonhuman counter the notion
of reason and becomes irrational, pagan and "bitchy". The image of
the river Ganga is sacred to the Indian cultural identity. Ganga is not an
ordinary river for us; the mythical Ganga is auspicious for every Indian.
Daruwalla's poem "On a Boat ride along the Ganga" draws a crude,
realistic picture of the devaluation of the sacred river in the name of
fractured religious beliefs and rituals. He presents a cinematographic picture
of the riverbank, witnessing the scenes, while riding on a boat along the
Ganga:
Slowly the ghat amphitheatre
unfolds
like a diseased nocturnal flower
in a
dream
(25 -27)
According
to Hindu belief system, the image of the river Ganga is deeply associated to a
person's journey to heavenly abode. Thus, it has multifarious roles to perform
at the time of death of a human and after it. The transformation of the 'ghat',
Varanasi in particular, to one of the busiest and over-crowded riverbanks of
India, is one of the most commonly used metaphors for degradation of values in
Indian English poetry. The poet sarcastically curses his upbringing that made
him "queazy" to see the dirty unhygienic condition of the ghat. The
performer of the last rites however is devoid of any emotion- "there's no
lament", no mourning. The decomposition of human values along with
traditional values are placed side by side with a series of contradictory
images: the pyres, against a mahagony sky, flames like a hedge of spear blades
heated red for no good. The colour red of the flames of the pyre is brought together
with the colour of red chili powder used for the purpose of cooking, by the 'doms'
and 'mallahs' for 'unleavened food' in the ghats. The poem ends with a sense of
disgust and addresses a cognitive effort to save the river, replacing the
humancentric values to a nature centric one. The sight of the
"corpse-fire" and "cooks fire", burning side by side
baffled the poets:
Where corpse- fire and cooking
fires
Burned side by side?
(63 - 64)
Daruwalla's
critics fail to identify sentimental and emotional strain in his concern for
ecosystem. However, majority of his poems, express his cry for existential
crisis but without the note of sentimentalism. It is interesting to note that
in the poems like, "Hawk", "Wolf", "Fish",
"Death of a Bird", Daruwalla selected certain species with
distinctive qualities. Highlighting the qualities of the hawk, Daruwalla
particularly refers to its extraordinary eyesight and the swift flight. But
this "Hawk King" is reduced to a helpless prey and submits to the
power of man. And here, the role of man, as the harbinger of rationality
against the “nondescript', [mis]uses it for exploitation. Postcolonial
Ecocriticism examines man far from their interdependence with nature as a part
of the ecosystem but beseeches a cognitive approach to save the environment
from violent human exploitation. For example, in the poem "Hawk", the
act of sewing the eyelids of the bird with silk thread in the course of
training is the height of cruelty and misuse.
Similarly,
the wolf is another beautiful specie nearing extinction. Daruwalla identifies
this animal not only as a precious element of nature but considers it a part of
the rich cultural space. The poem celebrates the distinctive power of the wolf:
"throat catcher", "wind-sniffer", who can sense a shadow
and wakes up with slightest sounds. Like the "hawk-king" it has its
role to play in maintaining biodiversity and ecological balance. The
slaughtering of the wolf by "gun-barrels' refer to the legacy of
colonialism that marks the extinction of the wolf, which not only posits a
threat to the ecosystem but also a threat to our cultural heritage. It is a
loss to the imaginative power of a child who is deprived of a thrilling dream
of the wolf. Daruwalla's imaginative power takes wing in his description of the
five feet long fish in his poem "Fish". This huge fish is not only
spectacular in its size, but the rose moles and filigree work on its scales
highlights the physical distinction of the creature. Though there is no direct
reference to the specific breed of the fish, it seems to belong to the Whale
family and the artwork on his body might refer to the rarity of the breed. The
concern for the extinction of the Whale is most effectively produced in his
poem "The Last Whale." Daruwalla's description of the fish is not
only limited to its physical aspects alone, but the size of the fish certainly
refers its huge appetite, and hence like the hawk and the wolf, the fish
certainly plays its part in regulating ecological balance. The tragic fate of
the pair of monals in his poem "the death of a bird" is yet another
example of man's cruel interference in destroying the serenity of nature.
Focussing on the soulful union of the pair of birds, the poet shows the
shooting of the one of the two by "barrel" violently jerks the
peaceful serenity of the woods and posits the threat for reproduction of the
beautiful variety of bird essentially refers to the colonial tantrum.
River
plays a dominant role in Daruwalla's poetry. Apart from a river's significance
in an agrarian work-culture, in a country like India, a river is considered
sacred due to its mythical significance, Ganga is a goddess, a mother;
likewise, Ghagra, Krishna, Kaberi, Godavari possess their mythical identity in
Hindu culture. In his poem "on a boat-ride by the side of the Ganga",
Daruwalla offers a graphic presentation of the commercialisation of the "ghat".
In the Hindu belief system, the image of Mother Ganga is closely associated to
salvation. The drop of Ganga-Jal at the time of taking the last breath is
believed to purify the soul; the last-rites observed in the "ghat' helps
the departed soul to find salvation. This strong belief-system eventually led
to the transformation of the 'ghat' to a over-populated, commercial, dirty and
unhygienic spots where funeral pyre and cooking fire burns side by side.
Daruwalla gives a sceptical view of religious fanaticism that led to a complete
degradation of the beautiful riverbank and the river. Ganga is one of the major
rivers of India and a habitat of a million of species and identified for its
rich biodiversity. Daruwalla's concern as an environmental humanist about the
misuse of the river rejects the notion of Anthropocene that ensures man's
position at the centre and debunks the tenets of deep ecology, and focuses the
attention to a complex environmental consciousness fostering the threat of
existential crisis to the ecosystem as a organic whole that includes man as a
part of it. Daruwalla concern is more earth-centric which is an in between
condition: Anthropocene vis-a-vis Deep Ecology. Daruwalla's poetry explores the
in-between space in post-colonial ecocriticism; a space that questions the
survivability of the organic whole.
A
study of Daruwalla’s few selected poems shows Daruwalla's strong resistance of
the polarities of ecocritical discourse. Though his concern for nature seems to
be is rooted in Deep Ecology, his poetry engages a serious study of
interference of man as a violent intruder and exploiter, threatening
existential crisis for the human and the nonhuman, in the face of consumerism,
colonialism and capitalism. At the present geological epoch of Anthropocene
though human is seen as the controlling power to shape nature, Daruwalla's
poetry seems to question the ethical space. The poems selected in this study
made an attempt to examine the impact of globalisation and urbanisation in
various spheres on earth. The study of existential crises of the hawk and the
monals, the wolf and the whale, the Ghagra and Ganga probes the pointer to man
as a controlling force to destroy the environment? The concern here is earth
centric. It demands a separate space between the sense of morality and
rationality. A space for everything human and non-human. Nature is a living
mechanism, and it follows its own course. Man's obsession to control nature not
only posits a threat to the nonhuman alone but is alarming to man as a part of
the ecosystem.
Works Cited
Daruwalla, Keki, N. Crossing of River. New Delhi: OUP, 1976.
Print.
---. Collected Poems 1970- 2005, New Delhi: Penguin, 2014. Print.
---. "Introduction", Two Decades of Indian Poetry: 1960-1980,
Delhi: Vikas, 1980. Print
Guha, Ramchandra. “Radical
American Environmentalism and Wilderness Preservation: A Third World Critique”,
Environmental Ethics, vol. 11, no.1
(Spring 1989), pp. 71-83.
Gotfelty, Cheryll. The Ecocrticism Reader, University of
Georgia Press, 1996. Print.
Rahman, Shazia. "The
Environment of South Asia: Beyond Postcolonial Ecocriticism," South Asian Review, vol. 42, no. 4, 13
Oct 2021, pp. 317-323.