Fluid Relations: Water and Humanity in Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay's Literary Imagination

Abstract: Ecology punctuates the interdependence of every life form on the other, echoed in the dictum, “Everything is connected to everything else”. It comprises of living and non-living things like the natural resources in the environment such as the flora and fauna, air, soil and water. This very confluence of man and nature is a fact that provides the material basis for the generation and development of living beings. This interdependence of mankind and nature is also a mutually beneficial relationship called synergy, which is the creation of a whole greater than the sum of its parts. The ability to comprehend this dependence, however, hinges on the ability to see humankind as one among the many species that coalesce with nature. Ecocriticism is a literary and political inquiry into understanding nature-human interdependence and the ecological concerns portrayed in literary texts. The main agenda of Ecocriticism as a branch of literary criticism, therefore, happens to be the analysis of such environmentally oriented literature or eco-literature. Thus, the present study from an Eco-critical perspective is pursued with the main objective of exploring how far this interdependence of human beings with the natural resource of water, illuminates Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay’s novel, Aranyak: Of the Forest