Postcolonial Aesthetics and Sensuous Geographies in Aruni Kashyap’s The House with a Thousand Stories

Abstract

The place is fundamental to our existence; it conforms to the phenomenology of being in the world as we always occupy a place “if not with our minds, then always with our bodies”, to quote Moslund. The role of the senses in knowing the geographies of our existence, form a kind of structuring of space and defining of place. To understand the construction of sensorial-socio-cultural space of Assam at the time of extrajudicial killings that produces a ‘sense of fear’ jeopardizing the everyday negotiations of people inhabit the exceptional zones, this paper takes into account Aruni Kashyap’s debut novel The House with Thousand Stories (2013) that set in Hatimura village of Mayong area and deals with alternate retellings of micro-historical account of Assamese people. The paper dwells upon the artist’s creative response to the Agambenian ‘bare life’ that he associates with ‘bare’ or ‘pure senses’ to cultivate the idea of sensuousness of geography produced through the life stories of people and the interactions between human and non-human beings. Like Manipuri mother’s Naked March in front of Kangla Fort and Irom Sharmila’s sixteen years-long hunger strike that can be looked at as the metaphor for staging the ‘bare life’ against the body polity of the state, the sensual dimension of the geographic experience of Pablo, the narrator of the novel, in the village helps to understand the spaces of difference in the time of conflict.

Mental Illness - An Illness to Well-Being Towards Children: Reference to socio-political violence in literature

“…A detailed examination of the characters Mamoni and Mridul is conducted to understand their direct and indirect characterization. "The analysis revolves around how literature aesthetically present and represent the terror occurrences by using writing as fertile instances of a poetics which grows out of the 'events' but goes beyond such traumatic events as a strategic mode of continuation and regeneration"[14]. The narrative structure and storytelling techniques are scrutinized to uncover the author's portrayal of the psychological impact of socio-political turmoil on the chosen characters connected with the psychological concepts.…”