The Spatial Problematic of the Agrahara and the Body-Forest-Townscape in Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man

<p>Michel Foucault’s 1967 lecture Des Espaces Autres (translated as Of Other Spaces in 1986) critiqued the paradoxes of social spatiality against the historico-materialist norms of interpretations. His peculiar forms of counter-spaces which he termed as heterotopias and utopias preceded the spatial theories of Henri Lefebvre and Edward Soja and exposed the reasons behind the creation of spaces in society. Building upon spatial theories of these scholars, the paper examines two significant material spaces—the physical and the corporeal—in U.R. Ananthamurthy's Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man (1976). In the first part, Edward Soja’s and Henri Lefebvre’s concepts of ‘thirdspace’ are intertwined with Foucault’s notion of heterotopias to critique the agrahara, an exclusive orthodox colony depicted in the novel. The second part presents the body as space, site, and agent of disruption by establishing a body-forest-town triad, highlighting the multiplicity contained within this triad. This triad undergoes a critical ‘thirding’ by moving beyond the dualities of physical categorizations. Overall, the analysis critiques four spaces—the agrahara, the forest, the town, and the ‘body as space’ (three of which are narrative locations in the novel)—through a spatial lens.</p>