Unmasking Industrialization: Reading Varma’...

Unmasking Industrialization: Reading Varma’s Bhopal and Malladi’s A Breath of Fresh Air from Ecocritical Perspective

Author Name : Dr. Mayurakshi Mitra

ABSTRACT

With the advent of technological advancement, science has invaded almost every aspect of human existence and his surroundings. There is hardly any area left without the touch of technology. God has created all creatures on earth and among them, only human being lives in artificial world, created by him, most of the times at the cost of environment. In the era of development and industrialization, man has neglected the environment to satisfy his greed. In return of this man has led his life towards tropical warmth, chronic drought, global warming, desertification, deforestation, flood, drought, pollution and what not. It is really an alarming condition that man is living neglecting the environment. Environment affects all life on earth ranging from food, habitat, fashion, class, gender, psychology, religion, economics, etc. Ecological consciousness and environmental awareness have become an inevitable part of our life. A remarkable number of writers across the globe have captured the harmonious relation as well as the tension between nature or/and environment and man.In this context, the paper seeks to evaluate Rahul Varma’s play Bhopal (2001) and AmulyaMalladi’s novel A Breath of Fresh Air (2003)using the methodology of ‘ecocriticism’ or ‘Green Studies’, a critical approach which began in the USA in the late 1980s and in the UK in the early 1990s. The paper endeavors to explore and analyze how industrialization and urbanism have severed the harmonious relation between environment and man, affecting the entire ecosystem of the place. It further attempts to investigate the power dynamics of patriarchal structures in jeopardizing the environment and its flora and fauna for the sake of commercial purposes.

Keywords: Ecocriticism, Industrialization, Urbanization, Environment, Nature, Man.