Re-Locating the Unitary National Space, Self and Consciousness: A Study of Srilal Shukla's Raag Darbari

The continual existence of a nation as a space internalised in its, what Bachelard calls in The Poetics of Space, "oneiric" sense is often attached to borders and boundaries as definitive symbols, determining one's communal and social space. Just as a home is a space where personal memory and nostalgia dominate an individual selfhood, a nation as a community is a collective space where distinct selves aspire to reside together in unity and belongingness. The questioning of interdependencies between selves and spaces creates, what Homi Bhabha calls, a “Third Space” where cultural identities are fluid, with no primordial fixity, resulting in a fractured consciousness and an ambiguous national identity. Keeping these dualities and their subsequent fracturing in mind, this paper analyses the ambiguity and magic (or mystery) of the number ‘two’. It focuses firstly on the ‘two-ness of spaces’, namely ‘home’ and ‘community’ as well as ‘rural’ and ‘urban’. Secondly, it marks the categorisation of the ‘two-ness of selves’, namely ‘communal’ and ‘individual. Thirdly, the paper focuses on the third classification, the ‘two-ness of consciousness’- ‘National’ and ‘fractured’ consciousness. The emphasis would be on these categorisations of the two-ness of spaces, selves, and consciousness, taking references from Srilal Shukla’s Sahitya Academy-winning novel, Raag Darbari (1968).