A Trumpet to Save the World: Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

 

A Trumpet to Save the World:

Amitav Ghosh’s

The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

Abstract

Climate change has emerged as the most pressing existential crisis of the twenty-first century, destabilizing ecological systems, social orders, and cultural imaginaries across the globe. Despite its magnitude and urgency, climate change has remained curiously marginal within the domain of serious literary fiction. Taking Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016) as its central critical text, this article argues that the contemporary literary imagination has failed to grapple adequately with the scale, violence, and unpredictability of the climate crisis because of deep-seated aesthetic, historical, and political constraints. Expanding upon Ghosh’s arguments, the article situates The Great Derangement within current debates in ecocriticism, climate change criticism, and Anthropocene studies, and reads it alongside key works of climate change fiction such as Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future and Neal Stephenson’s Termination Shock. By integrating close readings, theoretical discussion, and historical analysis, the article contends that climate change fiction must move beyond the narrow focus on individual experience and realist probability to imagine collective agency, nonhuman participation, and alternative narrative forms adequate to planetary crisis. In doing so, it positions Ghosh’s work as a foundational manifesto for climate-conscious literature in the twenty-first century.

Keywords: Amitav Ghosh, climate change fiction, The Great Derangement, ecocriticism, Anthropocene, imperialism, carbon economy, collective action

Introduction: Climate Crisis and the Crisis of Representation

Climate change is no longer a distant scientific hypothesis or a speculative future scenario; it is a lived and escalating reality that shapes everyday life through extreme weather events, rising sea levels, ecological collapse, forced migration, and geopolitical instability. Scientists describe the present moment as one of planetary emergency, while scholars increasingly refer to the Anthropocene to designate an epoch in which human activity has become a geological force. Yet, as Amitav Ghosh observes in The Great Derangement, this overwhelming reality has left only a faint imprint on the landscape of serious literary fiction. He famously remarks that climate change “casts a much smaller shadow within the landscape of literary fiction than it does even in the public arena” (Ghosh, 2016, p. 7). This striking disparity between material catastrophe and cultural representation constitutes what Ghosh terms the “great derangement” of our times.

The present article takes this diagnosis as its point of departure. It argues that the marginalisation of climate change in mainstream literature is not accidental but symptomatic of deeper aesthetic and ideological formations that govern modern literary production. By revisiting Ghosh’s critique of literary realism, his historical account of the carbon economy, and his political reflections on freedom and collective action, the article seeks to demonstrate how climate change challenges inherited modes of storytelling and demands new narrative strategies. At the same time, it expands Ghosh’s framework by engaging with recent developments in climate change fiction and ecocritical theory, showing how contemporary writers are beginning to respond to this challenge.

The article is organised into six sections. Following this introduction, it examines Ghosh’s critique of modern realism and its inability to represent climatic catastrophe. The third section situates The Great Derangement in relation to the emergence of climate change fiction, or “cli-fi.” The fourth explores the historical entanglement of climate change with imperialism and the carbon economy. The fifth analyses Ghosh’s political arguments concerning freedom, democracy, and collective response. The sixth turns to encounters with the nonhuman world, focusing on the Sundarbans as a key site in Ghosh’s environmental imagination. The conclusion reflects on the implications of these discussions for the future of climate-conscious literature.

The Limits of Modern Realism

One of the most provocative claims in The Great Derangement is that the modern realist novel is structurally ill-equipped to represent climate change. Ghosh traces the rise of the realist form to the nineteenth century, when fiction increasingly turned away from epic events, collective destinies, and improbable occurrences toward the detailed depiction of everyday life and individual psychology. This shift, he argues, coincided with broader intellectual trends that emphasised gradualism and predictability in both natural and social sciences. As a result, events that appear sudden, catastrophic, or statistically improbable—such as freak storms or unprecedented floods—came to be seen as implausible within the logic of serious fiction.

Ghosh illustrates this problem through the notion of the “uncanny.” Extreme weather events, he suggests, produce an uncanny effect because they disrupt the assumed stability of the natural world and blur the boundary between the normal and the extraordinary. Yet the realist novel, committed to probability and plausibility, tends to exclude such occurrences. As Ghosh puts it, “the very gestures with which the novelist creates a sense of reality are precisely those that rule out the extraordinary” (2016, p. 24). Consequently, climate change, which manifests through precisely such extraordinary events, is relegated to the margins of literary realism.

This aesthetic exclusion has significant cultural consequences. When climate catastrophe appears primarily in genres such as science fiction or fantasy, it is implicitly marked as speculative or escapist rather than urgent and real. Ghosh warns that this generic segregation contributes to a collective failure of imagination, preventing societies from fully grasping the magnitude of the crisis. In this sense, the limitations of realism are not merely artistic but ethical and political. They shape what can be thought, felt, and acted upon within the public sphere.

Recent ecocritical scholarship supports and extends this argument. Critics such as Rob Nixon (2011) have drawn attention to “slow violence,” forms of environmental harm that unfold gradually and invisibly, escaping conventional narrative representation. Climate change intensifies this problem by combining slow processes with sudden catastrophes, demanding narrative forms capable of holding multiple temporalities together. Ghosh’s critique thus exposes a fundamental mismatch between inherited literary forms and contemporary ecological realities.

Climate Change Fiction and the Rise of Cli-Fi

The perceived inadequacy of mainstream literary realism has coincided with the emergence of climate change fiction, commonly referred to as “cli-fi.” This loosely defined body of work encompasses novels, short stories, and speculative narratives that foreground global warming, ecological collapse, and their social consequences. Writers such as Kim Stanley Robinson, Margaret Atwood, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Neal Stephenson have used speculative and near-future scenarios to dramatise the trajectories of climate crisis and to explore questions of responsibility, adaptation, and justice.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future (2020), for instance, imagines a near future shaped by catastrophic heatwaves, mass migrations, and radical policy interventions. Structured as a polyphonic narrative that includes fictional reports, eyewitness accounts, and economic analyses, the novel departs from traditional realist conventions to represent climate change as a global, systemic phenomenon. Similarly, Stephenson’s Termination Shock (2021) explores the ethical and geopolitical dilemmas of solar geoengineering, highlighting both the technological ambition and moral ambiguity of attempts to control the climate.

While Ghosh acknowledges the imaginative power of such works, he remains sceptical about their marginal status within the literary field. He argues that as long as climate narratives are confined to genre fiction, the mainstream novel can continue to evade the crisis. This division, he suggests, mirrors broader hierarchies that separate “serious” literature from speculative writing, reinforcing the very structures that contribute to cultural denial. As he notes, “the climate crisis has arrived at a time when the prestige of the novel has never been greater, yet its imaginative resources have never been more constrained” (Ghosh, 2016, p. 9).

Nevertheless, recent criticism suggests that cli-fi is increasingly influencing literary norms rather than merely occupying a marginal space. Scholars such as Adam Trexler (2015) argue that climate change fiction is reshaping narrative expectations by foregrounding collective agency, nonhuman forces, and planetary scales. In this sense, cli-fi can be seen not as a peripheral genre but as a laboratory for new forms of storytelling capable of addressing the Anthropocene.

Imperialism, History, and the Carbon Economy

In the historical section of The Great Derangement, Ghosh challenges simplified narratives that attribute climate change to an abstract notion of “humanity.” Instead, he situates the crisis within the specific histories of imperialism, industrialisation, and fossil-fuel capitalism. He traces the origins of the carbon economy to the expansion of European empires, which relied on coal-powered technologies to secure military and economic dominance. From steamships to railways, fossil fuels were integral to the infrastructure of empire.

Ghosh’s discussion of figures such as Dwarkanath Tagore illustrates how colonial elites were drawn into this carbon-intensive modernity, often in the name of progress and development. At the same time, colonial rule constrained industrial growth in much of Asia and Africa, producing a deeply uneven distribution of emissions and vulnerabilities. As Ghosh observes, “the history of capitalism is also a history of empire, and the history of empire is inseparable from the history of fossil fuels” (2016, p. 87).

This historical perspective has crucial implications for both politics and literature. It complicates narratives that frame climate change as the result of universal human behaviour, instead highlighting questions of historical responsibility and climate justice. For climate change fiction, this means attending to colonial legacies, extractive economies, and the lived experiences of communities in the Global South. Novels set in regions such as the Sundarbans, the Niger Delta, or the Arctic foreground the uneven impacts of climate change and challenge Eurocentric perspectives on the Anthropocene.

Politics, Freedom, and Collective Response

Ghosh’s analysis of climate politics centres on the tension between individual freedom and collective survival. He argues that modern political systems, particularly liberal democracies, are poorly equipped to address climate change because they prioritise short-term economic growth and individual choice over long-term planetary stability. Climate discourse, he suggests, has been excessively moralised, focusing on personal lifestyle changes while avoiding structural transformations of energy systems and global governance.

In a striking formulation, Ghosh writes that “the climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of the imagination” (2016, p. 162). This crisis manifests politically in the inability to mobilise collective action at the scale required. Elections, policy debates, and media narratives remain trapped within national frameworks, while climate change operates on transnational and intergenerational scales.

To address this impasse, Ghosh looks beyond conventional political institutions to alternative sources of collective ethics, particularly world religions. He contrasts the cautious language of international climate agreements with the moral urgency of Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’, which frames environmental degradation as a matter of social justice and spiritual responsibility. Such perspectives, Ghosh suggests, may offer resources for imagining forms of solidarity and sacrifice that modern secular politics struggles to articulate.

For climate change fiction, this emphasis on collective action challenges narratives centred on heroic individuals. Works like The Ministry for the Future experiment with depicting institutions, movements, and distributed agency, suggesting new ways of narrating political change. In doing so, they respond directly to Ghosh’s call for literature that can imagine collective futures rather than isolated moral adventures.

Encounters with the Nonhuman: The Sundarbans

Ghosh’s engagement with climate change is grounded in specific ecological landscapes, most notably the Sundarbans, the vast mangrove delta shared by India and Bangladesh. This region, shaped by tides, cyclones, and shifting river channels, exemplifies the precarious coexistence of human and nonhuman life. In The Great Derangement, Ghosh describes the Sundarbans as a place where the boundaries between nature and culture are constantly unsettled, and where nonhuman forces assert their agency with undeniable force.

The Sundarbans also reveal the unequal burdens of climate change. Rising sea levels, salinity intrusion, and intensified storms threaten both biodiversity and human livelihoods, forcing communities into cycles of displacement and vulnerability. For Ghosh, such landscapes challenge anthropocentric worldviews and demand narrative forms that acknowledge the agency of animals, rivers, and ecosystems. As he notes, “to think of the world in purely human terms is to overlook the many forces that shape our lives” (2016, p. 141).

Climate change fiction increasingly turns to such liminal environments to explore multispecies ethics and ecological fragility. By foregrounding nonhuman actors and precarious ecosystems, these narratives expand the scope of literary imagination and align with broader efforts in environmental humanities to rethink human–nature relationships in the Anthropocene.

Conclusion: Making the Unthinkable Thinkable

The Great Derangement stands as one of the most influential interventions in contemporary climate discourse precisely because it exposes the cultural and imaginative dimensions of the crisis. Ghosh’s critique of literary realism, his historical account of the carbon economy, and his political reflections on freedom and collective action together constitute a powerful call to rethink how stories are told in an age of planetary emergency.

This article has argued that climate change fiction, informed by Ghosh’s insights, must move beyond individualist narratives and realist probability to engage with collective agency, nonhuman forces, and global histories. Recent developments in cli-fi suggest that such transformations are already underway, as writers experiment with new forms, scales, and voices to represent the Anthropocene.

Ultimately, the task of climate-conscious literature is not merely to reflect reality but to reshape the conditions of thought and feeling through which reality is understood. By making the unthinkable thinkable, literature can contribute to the cultural transformations necessary for confronting climate change. If future generations are to judge this era differently, it will be in part because writers, critics, and readers refused to remain deranged in the face of planetary crisis.

 

 

References:

-       Earth.Org. (n.d.). 5 great climate change fiction novels. Earth.Org. https://earth.org/climate-change-fiction-novels/[ppl-ai-file-upload.s3.amazonaws]​

-       Ghosh, A. (2016). The great derangement: Climate change and the unthinkable. The University of Chicago Press.wikipedia+1[ppl-ai-file-upload.s3.amazonaws]​

-       GradeSaver. (n.d.). The great derangement study guide. GradeSaver. https://www.gradesaver.com/the-great-derangement[ppl-ai-file-upload.s3.amazonaws]​

-       Johns-Putra, A. (2016). Climate change in literature and literary studies: From cli-fi, climate change theater and ecopoetry to ecocriticism and climate change criticism. In Climate change in literature and literary studies [PDF]. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291388137_Climate_change_in_literature_and_literary_studies_From_cli-fi_climate_change_theater_and_ecopoetry_to_ecocriticism_and_climate_change_criticism[ppl-ai-file-upload.s3.amazonaws]​

-       MacConaghy, C. (2020). Migrations. Flatiron Books.[ppl-ai-file-upload.s3.amazonaws]​

-       Murtheppa, G. M. (2025). Revisiting ecocriticism and “cli‑fi”: Reading climate change in contemporary fiction. Integral Review: A Journal of Management, 17(4). https://integralresearch.in/index.php/1/article/view/470[integralresearch]​

-       Outlook India. (2022, September 27). The rise of climate change literature. Planet Outlook. https://planet.outlookindia.com/news/the-rise-of-climate-change-literature--news-414991[ppl-ai-file-upload.s3.amazonaws]​

-       Robinson, K. S. (2020). The ministry for the future. Orbit.[en.wikipedia]​[ppl-ai-file-upload.s3.amazonaws]​

-       Stephenson, N. (2021). Termination shock. William Morrow.[en.wikipedia]​[ppl-ai-file-upload.s3.amazonaws]​

-       University of Chicago Press. (n.d.). The great derangement: Climate change and the unthinkable. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo22265507.html[press.uchicago]​

-       Wikipedia. (2023, August 10). The great derangement: Climate change and the unthinkable. In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Derangement:_Climate_Change_and_the_Unthinkable[en.wikipedia]​

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-       World Literature Today. (2017, March). Climate change and the unthinkable by Amitav Ghosh. World Literature Today. https://worldliteraturetoday.org/2017/march/great-derangement-climate-change-and-unthinkable-amitav-ghosh[worldliteraturetoday]​

Migration, Gender, and Social Reality in Karmelin by Damodar Mauzo

 

Migration, Gender, and Social Reality in Karmelin by Damodar Mauzo

ABSTRACT

Damodar Mauzo’s award-winning Konkani novel, Karmelin (1981), offers a searing and empathetic portrayal of a Goan woman’s journey as a migrant domestic worker in the Gulf. This paper argues that the novel functions as a powerful critique of the intersecting forces of economic necessity, patriarchal morality, and social hypocrisy in late 20th-century Goa. By tracing the protagonist’s trajectory from her village to Kuwait and back, the analysis explores how Mauzo complicates the binary narratives of female victimhood or agency, instead presenting migration as a transformative yet deeply ambivalent experience. The novel exposes the community’s dependence on the economic fruits of migration while simultaneously deploying rigid moral codes to judge the women whose labour secures those benefits. Through an examination of themes such as female agency, cultural hybridity, and narrative realism, this paper demonstrates how Karmelin transcends its regional context to offer enduring insights into the gendered dimensions of labour mobility and the construction of social morality. Ultimately, the novel is positioned as a seminal text that challenges readers to replace moral judgment with empathetic understanding.

Key Words:    Damodar Mauzo, Karmelin, Konkani literature, migration, gender, domestic work,

                        social hypocrisy, Goa, Gulf migration, patriarchy.

 

Introduction:

Damodar Mauzo’s Karmelin (1981) is a cornerstone of modern Konkani literature, a work whose influence extends far beyond the linguistic and geographical boundaries of Goa. Recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1983, the novel brought the nuanced realities of Goan life to a national readership, solidifying Mauzo’s reputation as a keen observer of social transformation. His literary project is characterized by a deep humanism, focusing on the interior lives of ordinary individuals navigating the complex currents of cultural and economic change.

Karmelin tells the deceptively simple story of its eponymous protagonist, a young woman from a impoverished Goan village who migrates to Kuwait for work as a domestic servant. Her journey, born of stark economic necessity, becomes a crucible in which her identity, values, and understanding of the world are reshaped. The narrative follows her experiences of alienation and intimacy in a foreign land, culminating in her return home, where she is met not with gratitude for her economic contributions, but with the corrosive suspicion and moral judgment of her community.

This paper contends that Karmelin is more than a poignant narrative of individual struggle; it is a sophisticated sociological and psychological exploration of the fault lines within a society undergoing rapid change. Mauzo masterfully dissects the hypocrisy of a community that eagerly consumes the material benefits of migration—the remittances, the consumer goods, the improved homes—while ruthlessly policing the morality of the women whose labour makes this prosperity possible. Through a detailed analysis of the novel’s treatment of migration, gender, social judgement, and cultural identity, this paper will argue that Karmelin offers a profound and enduring critique of patriarchal structures and the human cost of economic survival.

Literature Review: Situating Karmelin in Scholarly Discourse:

Academic discourse on Indian regional literature has long recognized its capacity to serve as a vital record of social experience. As Naik and Narayan (2001) posit, modern Indian novels often function as “documents of social experience,” capturing the inherent tensions between tradition and modernity in a postcolonial landscape. Karmelin exemplifies this function, providing a granular depiction of how global economic forces penetrate and reshape a local, rural community.

 

The novel’s thematic core aligns with a rich body of scholarship on migration, particularly its gendered dimensions. Foundational work by scholars like Parreñas (2001) on Filipina domestic workers has illuminated the “contradictory class mobility” experienced by migrant women, who may gain economic power in their home countries while simultaneously facing racialized and gendered subordination abroad. Parreñas’s concept of “dislocations” in migrant experience—in terms of familial relationships, national belonging, and class position—resonates deeply with Karmelin’s own fragmented sense of self. Similarly, scholars like Hondagneu-Sotelo (2001) have emphasized how the transnational domestic work industry creates new “global care chains,” where women from the Global South provide intimate labour for families in the Global North (or wealthier Gulf states), often at the expense of care for their own families.

Within the specific context of Goan society, migration, particularly to the Gulf states (a phenomenon known as the “Gulf Dream”), has been a transformative force since the 1970s. Fernandes (2015) notes that while remittances have undeniably raised living standards and fueled a construction boom in villages, they have also exacerbated social inequalities and created new forms of moral anxiety. The sudden influx of wealth and exposure to different cultures disrupts established social hierarchies and generates debates about authenticity, modernity, and cultural dilution. Karmelin captures this precise historical moment, offering a literary case study that complements sociological and economic analyses.

Critics have acknowledged Mauzo’s literary achievement in Karmelin for its nuanced characterisation. By refusing to moralize, Mauzo grants his protagonist a complex interiority that challenges the simplistic archetypes of the “fallen woman” or the “economic saviour” often found in narratives about migrant women. This paper builds on such critical observations by integrating them with feminist and migration theory to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the novel’s enduring power.

Migration: Between Economic Salvation and Emotional Displacement:

The theme of migration is the foundational axis of the narrative, presented not as an adventurous choice but as a desperate, almost inescapable, response to structural poverty. Karmelin’s village, with its limited opportunities and entrenched cycles of want, offers no viable future. Her reflection that staying means “living forever with want and humiliation” (Mauzo, 2008, p. 23) is a stark indictment of the socio-economic conditions that push individuals into the global labour market. Migration, therefore, is initially framed as a necessary sacrifice for collective family survival, a theme common in labour-sending communities worldwide.

However, Mauzo meticulously deconstructs the purely economic rationale by delving into the profound emotional and psychological costs of displacement. In Kuwait, Karmelin experiences a double alienation: she is an outsider in a culturally distinct society, and she occupies a liminal, subordinate space within the household of her employer. The intimacy of domestic work—cleaning, cooking, caring for children—paradoxically heightens her sense of isolation. She is essential to the functioning of the household yet remains fundamentally separate from it. This reflects Hugo’s (2005) observation that labour migrants, especially those in live-in domestic situations, frequently encounter intense cultural displacement and social isolation. The novel captures this through subtle details: the unfamiliarity of the language, the vastness of the desert landscape, and the quiet loneliness of her evenings. The material rewards of migration are thus shown to be inseparable from deep emotional sacrifice, making her journey a complex tapestry of loss and gain.

Gender, Labour, and the Negotiation of Female Agency:

Karmelin offers a sophisticated exploration of female agency within the constraints of patriarchy. Karmelin’s life is a constant negotiation between the conflicting expectations imposed upon her. She is expected to be the economic provider, a role that requires her to leave the protective sphere of her community. Simultaneously, she is expected to embody an idealized, passive femininity and uphold rigid standards of moral purity. This contradiction lies at the heart of her struggle.

Her relationship with her employer in Kuwait is the novel’s most potent exploration of this dilemma. Mauzo resists any simplistic moral framing. He portrays the relationship not as a calculated transaction or a simple fall from grace, but as a complex human interaction born of shared loneliness, emotional vulnerability, and a deeply unequal power dynamic. Karmelin’s reflection that “a woman alone in a foreign land learns quickly how fragile respectability can be” (Mauzo, 2008, p. 67) speaks to the precariousness of her position. Denied the social safety net of family and community, her “respectability” becomes a fragile construct, easily destabilized by circumstance and emotional need.

This narrative challenges what feminist scholar Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1988) famously critiqued as the portrayal of the “third-world woman” as a singular, oppressed subject. Karmelin is neither a passive victim nor a triumphant heroine. She makes choices within a severely limited set of options, demonstrating what can be termed “patriarchal bargaining” (Kandiyoti, 1988). Her agency is exercised not in grand, rebellious acts, but in her quiet resilience, her ability to endure loneliness, her navigation of a new cultural landscape, and her complex emotional decisions. She works tirelessly, and her labour, though economically vital for her family back home, remains socially invisible and unacknowledged, a reality highlighted by feminist economists like Desai and Krishnaraj (2004). By centering Karmelin’s subjective experience, Mauzo restores value and visibility to that labour and grants her a dignity that transcends the community’s narrow moral judgments.

The Anatomy of Social Hypocrisy:

Perhaps the most potent and enduring aspect of Karmelin is its unflinching critique of social hypocrisy. The novel dissects the double standards with which the village community judges its returning migrants. When Karmelin returns, her material success—the money, the gifts, the improved circumstances of her family—is a visible, tangible benefit for all to see. The community is complicit in this prosperity; they accept her generosity, admire her family’s new status, and benefit from the circulation of her remittances.

Yet, this acceptance is shadowed by a venomous undercurrent of suspicion. The very people who partake in the fruits of her migration are the ones who eagerly speculate about the “price she must have paid for prosperity” (Mauzo, 2008, p. 112). This gossip is not a passive pastime; it is an active tool of social control, a means of reasserting patriarchal authority over a woman who has stepped outside its traditional boundaries. The community’s morality operates as a flexible ideology, one that condones the economic outcome of migration while condemning the perceived moral transgressions that enabled it.

This mirrors Parreñas’s (2001) observation that migrant domestic workers are often stigmatized precisely because their labour is performed in the intimate, “backstage” spheres of foreign households. This proximity to the private lives of others renders their own morality suspect in the eyes of their home communities. The gossip about Karmelin is an attempt to impose a narrative on her experience, one that reduces her complex journey to a simplistic story of moral compromise. Mauzo’s narrative, by giving voice to Karmelin’s perspective, powerfully counters this reductive judgement and exposes the injustice at its core. The community’s hypocrisy is laid bare: they benefit from her transgression of geographical and social boundaries while punishing her for it.

Cultural Identity and the Ambivalence of Return:

Karmelin is also a rich ethnographic text, vividly depicting the rhythms of Goan village life—its customs, religious festivals, and social hierarchies. This detailed portrayal of “home” serves as a crucial counterpoint to Karmelin’s experiences abroad. However, migration irrevocably alters the relationship between the individual and their culture. Returning migrants are not the same people who left; they carry with them new habits, perspectives, and aspirations, becoming agents of social change, whether they intend to or not.

Fernandes (2015) notes that migration has been a key driver of social transformation in Goa, introducing new forms of wealth and consumption that challenge traditional markers of status. Karmelin’s return embodies this tension. Her economic independence gives her a new kind of power, but it also places her under a microscope. She exists in a liminal space: no longer fully a part of the world she left, yet not entirely belonging to the world she has experienced. This is the profound ambivalence of return. Her story reveals that while migration can be an economic success, it can also create a permanent sense of dislocation, a theme that resonates powerfully in postcolonial and diaspora studies. The home she returns to is both familiar and changed, and she herself is now an outsider within it.

Conclusion: The Enduring Relevance of Karmelin:

Nearly four decades after its publication, Karmelin remains a landmark text, not only in Konkani literature but also in the global literary discourse on migration, gender, and labour. Through the intimate and harrowing story of one woman, Damodar Mauzo illuminates the vast, often invisible, structures of power that shape the lives of millions of migrant workers. The novel is a powerful testament to the idea that literature can offer a form of knowledge as profound as any sociological study, granting us access to the subjective, emotional, and moral complexities that statistics cannot capture.

By presenting Karmelin with profound empathy and refusing easy moral judgements, Mauzo challenges readers to see beyond the labels of “victim” or “sinner.” He reveals the deep hypocrisy of a world that demands women’s economic contributions while simultaneously policing their bodies and choices. Ultimately, Karmelin is a call for a more nuanced, compassionate understanding of the human beings who navigate the precarious terrain of global labour. It demonstrates the enduring power of literature to challenge social hypocrisy and to illuminate the shared humanity that binds us, even across vast distances of geography and experience.

References:

-       Desai, N., & Krishnaraj, M. (2004). Women and society in India. Ajantha Publications.

-       Fernandes, A. (2015). Migration and social change in Goa. Economic and Political Weekly, 50(32), 45–52.

-       Hondagneu-Sotelo, P. (2001). Doméstica: Immigrant workers cleaning and caring in the shadows of affluence. University of California Press.

-       Hugo, G. (2005). Migration in the Asia-Pacific region. Global Commission on International Migration.

-       Kandiyoti, D. (1988). Bargaining with patriarchy. Gender & Society, 2(3), 274–290.

-       Mauzo, D. (2008). Karmelin (V. Pai, Trans.). Sahitya Akademi. (Original work published 1981)

-       Mauzo, D. (1981). Karmelin. Jaag Prakashan.

-       Mohanty, C. T. (1988). Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. Feminist Review, 30(1), 61–88.

-       Naik, M. K., & Narayan, S. (2001). Indian English literature 1980–2000: A critical survey. Pencraft International.

-       Parreñas, R. S. (2001). Servants of globalization: Women, migration and domestic work. Stanford University Press.

Fragmentation and Bricolage in Vilas Sarang’s In the Land of Enki

Postmodernism in literature is significantly characterized by the distinct features of fragmentation and bricolage. While analysing the post War II period, the element of disillusionment and fragmentation is found to be present everywhere in every sense. This fragmentation can be experienced on individual and social level as well. It can be in the political, cultural and ideological worlds also. In fact, disillusionment of concepts and theories bring the consequences of fragmentation in the post-modern world. Simultaneously the repeated efforts have been taken to reconstruct the world out of this fragmentation.

In the post-modern Indian English literature, some significant names endeavoured to present fragmentation and bricolage in their literature, one of them is Dr. Vilas Sarang. His novel In the Lands of Enki, presents various types of disillusionment and fragmentation in the Third World Countries.  There are very few Indian novelist exhibit global perception of the matter as Sarang does. In the Land of Enki is an autobiographical novel by Dr. Sarang, which earlier he wrote in Marathi under the title of Enkichya Rajyat and later on transcreated it into English. Here he narrates his life in Iraq: The novel is a story of Pramod Vengurlekar, a young Indian from Mumbai (then Bombay). Like many others he goes to the USA to get better prospects and to live meaningful life. As he is quickly disillusioned there, he opts for totally unknown place, Basra in Iraq. Here he comes with the hope to experience a different life as the place is historical and known as ‘cradle of human civilization’. He was willing to search mythology of the culture. The novel further narrates the experiences of the narrator under repressive political regime and its impact on everyday human life.

Pramod, a postgraduate in English left for America from Mumbai not only in search of better prospects but also in search of true democratic civilization based on the principle of equality and justice. Narrator expresses his strong disapprobation for the culture which he lives in:

“There was also a strong dislike for what he saw around him-the ritual and superstition, the insidious ramifications of caste and community distinctions, the tenacious hold of restrictive ancient mores.” (Sarang, 1993, p. 6)

The narrator further explains that Pramod left for USA with dreams in his eyes and at first he was encouraged by the openness of American people, but he soon discovered that his relationship with others was beginning to prove as unsatisfactory as they had at home.  He was struck by the practicability and lack of emotions in human relationship by Americans. He was surprised to see that Americans even hesitate to offer an artichoke hearts or a piece of pizza even to a fiancé or a friend, and if they offer anything, they would ask for payment. Such experiences gave a sort of disillusionment of the genuine relationship in American culture. The frustration of the ideas takes him to the fragmentation and hence he decides to accept the offer from a college in Basra, Iraq. While leaving everything in America he has dreams to discover more of the human civilization and therefore he decides to be going back to ‘the cradle of human civilization’. However his entrance in that ancient land begins with frustration when he experiences the encroachment of freedom on the airport itself when his radio is confiscated for having FM frequency on it with a promise to return it after removing the facility of FM frequency on it. He is surprised to know that even a common machine like typewriter is not allowed in that land. The experiences continue to add his astonishment when he learns that a person once appointed in a government job there can not resign from it. Even government wants to control the minor parts of their life for instance, costume and hairstyle of the students. Thus the novelist presents the disillusionment and therefore fragmentation of the illusions of a person expecting ideal world to be.

In Iraq, Pramod meets many Indians who specifically came there in search of better prospects. But most of them experience now a feeling of insecurity in the new political regime. Simultaneously the narrator unveils their opportunistic attitude and selfish tendency. They want to deserve the benefit of both Indian as well as Iraqi political system but when the time comes to pay for the benefits they try to abscond from it. They want to have liberty and material prosperity together which is impossible in the totalitarian type of government. There are lot of Indian merchants and businessmen in Basra earning handsome money but when the Iraqi government gives them choice between citizenship of the country or to leave the place, they accuse government for its policy. They want to earn money in the foreign country and to invest it in motherland, that which they would return their homeland and will enjoy both freedom and prosperity.

Further, the novelist also presents a disillusionment and fragmentation of religious belief. Hameed Qureishi, an Indian from Aligarh is a representation of such tendency. Hameed is hard core namazee Muslim and keeping Islamic style beard and practices his religion very strictly in his everyday life. Hameed neither goes for movie, nor does he drink, nor does he smoke. He even does not eat roasted chicken as it is imported from Europe and in his opinion they are not killed according to Muslim customs. In fact Hameed arrived there not only in search of prosperity but also he came there in search of ‘true Islam’ in its original land. Unfortunately his ideas of true Islam are shattered in that place when he finds the Muslims in Iraq are clean shaved and wearing western outfits. They not only smoke but drink also and to the worse for him they go to watch cabaret and Western movies. Against his vision, they speak corrupt Arabic which is not the pure classical language of Koran. While replying the question on the same from Pramod, he expresses his frustration thus:

“That is the tragedy! (…) I was terribly shocked when I came here. I thought I was going to an ancient Arab country, the home of Islam, and that I would discover Islam here in its true authentic form. And what do I find? Bars and clubs everywhere, with people sitting with bottles lined up in front of them! It’s appalling (…) I wear my beard in true Islamic fashion- absolutely no trimming or cutting. And here people stare me in the street as though I were some strange sort of animal!” (p.52)

Hameed wants to reconstruct the things on its firm and true base but it is not within his capacity. This fragmentation of the illusions takes Hameed to undergo a metamorphosis. Hameed’s frustration teaches him everything: smoking, eating non-Islamic, drinking, going for movies. He now tells Pramod, “Things like that happen, you know. One changes . . . one has to change.” (p.115) and the change is so bigger and shocking even for Pramod when he admits his homosexuality.

Ideological disillusionment and fragmentation is another feature of the novel presented emphatically by the writer. Maria and Nazar speak for such fragmentation. Argentinean origin Maria met Nazar in Berkeley in the late sixties. She had grown up in intellectual climate and radical politics brought them together. Together they dreamt for red revolution. She married Nazar and came to Iraq where socialist government was ruling. When they experience a pure dictatorship under the tag of socialism, they are helpless. Nazar compromises with the facts around and turns to be a building contractor and becomes prosperous and a part of the elite culture of Basra. Maria occasionally comes to Pramod’s college as a typist. Maria lives now a comfortable bourgeois existence and Red Book of Mao is gathering dust in her private library. Maria experiences suffocation in the country where every minor activity, even a thinking of human being is under control. She finds a way for herself, makes friendship with Pramod and beds with him occasionally. Surely these are not the repercussions of her unhappy married life; moreover she can empathize with Nazar also. But she wants some freedom from her routine and cliché life. Sarang also criticizes the Third World socialism as it is not practiced religiously as in Russia or East Europe.  Pramod learns from one of his students Khudeir, who is a Communist that the present government which claims to be socialist is prosecuting Communists all over the country. Pramod’s Bengali friend Mr. Mukherjee describes the Third World is the area where the tensions of the first two are played. Further he expresses his idea of Third World:

“It’s possible to create a genuine Third World- a really beautiful Third World- by combining the best things in the first two worlds, like the concern for freedom in the first, and the desire for equality and justice in the second.”(p.132)

Mr. Mukherjee always wants to find the key to discover the Third World of his dreams. Perhaps he is still optimistic in spite of repeated fragmentation of his dreams. Mr. Mukherjee also tells Pramod that the totalitarian atmosphere in Iraq is not new. Having some study of archaeology, he tells Pramod that even ancient Sumerian civilization shows uncanny resemblance to the present times. He shows Pramod some archaeological proofs that Enlil and Enki, the highest Sumerian Gods were also ruthless dictators. According to him, “...history repeats itself. Centuries may pass, (…) but human society doesn’t fundamentally change.” (p.132)

Disillusionment and fragmentation of the ideas of individual freedom is another feature of the novel. Sarang presents a gap between the theory and actual practice of the concept of individual freedom. People who are brought up with the idea of individual freedom in the American atmosphere experience suffocation in Iraq. Pramod’s colleague Aqueel stands for certain frustration. He is brought up in the free atmosphere of California. He is total American in his behaviour and haunted by the idea of freedom. He has American wife too. He came to his motherland with patriotic dreams at his heart. Soon he faces frustration when he finds that the ideas of individual freedom cannot work in Iraq. Especially for his American wife it is so difficult to adjust in the totalitarian atmosphere in Iraq. Consequently she leaves Aqueel for US. Aqueel is shattered, cannot tolerate the destruction of his dreams. Moreover, he cannot leave his place and join his wife as he arrived here on special agreement with the government. The stress is insufferable for him and all this results into his suicide. The totalitarian control leads these characters to search an outlet for their depressed feelings. Maria finds comfort in an extramarital relationship with Pramod. Salwa and Pramod experience freedom in each other’s company in a lonely place. Salwa knows that her relationship with Pramod cannot live longer in the orthodox atmosphere of her family, still she wants to collect and enjoy these valuable moments of life. Pramod too understands the importance of freedom in the totalitarian atmosphere. Since he comes from India and some period of his life he spent in US and as both the countries have respect for democracy, he was unaware of the value of personal freedom. As expected their relationship cannot live longer as Abu Fareed, the father of Salwa stops her college, when he learns about their relations. Pramod also observes that the experience of individual freedom is relative. For instance, the people from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia experience freedom in Iraq as drinking and cabarets are not allowed in these neighbouring countries. Iraq is more permissible for such things and hence the people come there to enjoy themselves. On the contrary, Hameed feels secure in Iraq.  Hameed is changed now and therefore he wants freedom from all the clutches of family and his past. He is happy that the Iraqi government does not give visa to anybody on demand as it is closed country and hence he feels safe there. The idea of individual freedom is fragmented by Hameed in another way. Pramod notes his observations:

“Hameed’s was a strange case. Aqueel and Abu Fareed had been driven to desperation by the closed doors of the country, and Pramod himself had begun to find it oppressive, while Hameed found sanctuary and contentment in precisely this sense of enclosure. The chain that shackled others protected him.” (p.163)

Fragmentation of the doctrine of one nation and patriotism is another significant part of this novel. Disillusionment of dreams is an emotional assault to these people. Aqueel is one of them. He came to Iraq with an appeal of patriotism. He had dreams to contribute in making of new Iraq and therefore he had left California along with his American wife and came to Basra on special agreement with the government. The truth is far away from his dreams. He suffers in the absence of freedom. The situation for his American wife is more distressing and hence she leaves him for USA. The idea of contributing to the homeland disappears now and replaced by a frustration. The same experience for Sabri Mizfer, who returns to Iraq from London but soon he learns to compromise with changing times. Pramod also observes the disillusionment of European women who married Iraqis and settled in Basra. Life is custody for them. These women and their men are naturally drifted together and create separate social life of their own. The experience of the distance between dream and reality takes them to frustration. Moreover the socialist government of the nation always speaks for the justice and nation but it too has racial complex. The government is prejudiced to its own citizens belonging to the Kurdish race. They are forced to migrate from northern part of the nation to the southern part. They are always kept under the suspicion, even college and university atmosphere is not an exception. Pramod observes here the falling of nationalism from everywhere.

Presentation of the impacts of the post War II political situation on the Third World and individual’s suffocation is a prominent feature of Enki. The ideas and visions of individual and society are shattered in many ways and the consequence of this fragmentation is ultimate frustration. Characters like Aqueel cannot tolerate this fragmentation and trounced by the fate whereas, many of them compromise with the changing atmosphere and try to create a new life within the periphery. The postmodern term ‘bricolage’ is apt for its description. The French term ‘bricolage’ means construction or something constructed by using whatever comes to hand. Sarang’s people in Enki endeavour to construct their own worlds out of the broken pieces of their dream world and ideologies. These ‘bricolage’ worlds are not they dreamt but moreover they are contradictory to their ideologies and visions in many respects, but they have enough capacity to give them pleasure with the changes. Impacts of the post War II politics made them feeble before the political and capitalist power but they could retain their creativity and desire of life and hence they are succeeded to find escape from the totalitarian world to some extent. Eminent critic of Postmodernism, Fredric Jameson defines this as an ‘anxiety of utopia’. Every individual in Enki is anxious to discover his/her utopia in the world around. These utopias are political, social, ideological, religious and many others, but an individual is neither capable to discover it nor to create it. Jameson names it after ‘totalization’ and describes incapability of an individual in the world of post-capitalism in these words:

“…‘totalization’- one of the most sordid residual vices to be eradicated from the populist health and fitness of the new era- individuals like Humpty Dumpty cannot make it mean what they want it to mean…” (Jameson, 2006, pp. 331-332)

The people in Enki are Humpty Dumpty from the idea of Jameson, and therefore everyone of them individually cannot bring his/her own vision into reality. They are defeated before the powerful political and capitalist system but further all of them have not lost their courage. Many of them exhibit the strong capacity to rise from their defeat and disillusionment and thereby create the new world out of the fragmentation which is a significant post-modern characteristic: ‘bricolage’. This is a global phenomenon of the post-modern era, after the pitfalls of fragmentation and disillusion of ideas and doctrine specifically in the Third World countries. Dr. Sarang thus succeeded to present his individual experiences in to a global perspective.

(Abbreviation Enki is used for In the Land of Enki)

References:

-        Sarang Vilas. (1993). In the Land of Enki. Calcutta: Seagull Books

-        Best Steven, Kellner Douglas M. (1991). Postmodern Theory. London: Guilford Press.

-       Jameson, Frederic. (2006). Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press.