Alternative Geographies and Bioregional Aesthetics: A Critical Reading of D. K. Chowta’s Mittabail Yamunakka: A Tale of a Landlord’s Household

Study of places form a significant part of contemporary cultural analysis. There are different approaches in spatial literary criticism based on the differences in geographical, political or cultural geographical perspectives. Bioregionalism is one such prominent field of spatial literary analysis. Bioregional orientation in literary criticism recognizes the role of literature in helping people to maintain sustainable relations to the places where they live. Mittabal Yamunakka is one of those literary endeavours, ‘distinctly regional art,’ that attempts to capture the bioregional nature of Tulunadu. The novel, originally written in Tulu language (one of the oldest Dravidian languages), attempts to retrace the historical existence of a human culture that once inhabited a region- scale ecosystem in the South Kannada, in India. The novel that embodies the highly complex socio-cultural history of Tulunadu is an attempt to doccument the “Tulu-ness” or the “Tuluva” world for non-Tulu speakers. This study seeks to read D. K. Chowta’s Mittabail Yemunakka, from a bioregional perspective. The novel seems to embody the basic premise of bioregionalim where the natural factors function as a way to envision place. The community life in the region is organized around myths and rituals that carry environmental ethics. This study underlines the ethic of sustainability as the driving force of the community’s co-existence. The novel exhibits its bioregional literary conciousness in fictionally doccumenting Tulunadu’s natural territories, local culture, local food systems and environmental ethics. It inspires the modern readers to rethink- to reassess where we are.