The Vagabond”s War Cry:

The Other in Nabarun”s Narrative

Authors

  • Dibyakusum Ray

Keywords:

Nabarun Bhattacharya, Other, Subversion, Resistance

Abstract

The objective of this article is to discuss, in brief, how Nabarun Bhattacharya deals with the question of the “other.” Bhattacharya treats the ‘other’ not as a convenient literary device, but as an ever explosive, ever truant fantastic object that jumps at the face of the ‘I’ (the author and the reader) and says “NO”.

Bhattacharya, spanning roughly four decades, presents not only the human subaltern as a belligerent agent of chaos, but also depicts cats, dogs and lunatic footpath dwellers in a similar role. Paranormal humanoids with wings come out of his pages to shock and destroy the audience’s perception regarding what the life-world should be like. He speaks in a language that might be forever out of my comprehensibility. This essay is on the culminating phase of Bhattacharya’s prose writing career, and I wish to explain how such a culmination becomes apparent in the handling of theme, style and ideology; 1999 onwards to be more precise.

The author presents the “other” as the ultimate voice of dissent and a thorough reading of his oeuvre shall make clear that he slowly removed himself from the linear assumption that once the marginalized assumes the power, all shall be equal forever. In this article, I have attempted to demonstrate  how Bhattacharya does not thrust any emancipatory role on the “other” but lets them speak freely while being on the margin, posing maybe a greater challenge and a more intense threat to normative powers—thematically and linguistically.

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Author Biography

Dibyakusum Ray

Dibyakusum Ray is an Assistant Professor in English in Symbiosis Law School, Hyderabad. He received his doctoral degree from the Dept. of Commonwealth Literary Studies, English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. His primary interest lies in European aesthetic traditions and postcolonial theory. His research tries to understand the development of ‘liminality’ as an aesthetic-philosophical concept. He has published in edited volumes and has presented his writings in Jaipur Literary Festival, Emory University, USA, and Technische Universitat Dresden and has undertaken research at the latter institution as part of an exchange program.

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Published

2021-11-15

How to Cite

Ray , D. . (2021). The Vagabond”s War Cry:: The Other in Nabarun”s Narrative. Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry, 2(1Supplement), 52–69. Retrieved from https://sanglap-journal.in/index.php/sanglap/article/view/151