LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 16:2 February 2016
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Narcopolis: A Reflection of Mumbai of 70s

Dr. Anjali Verma, M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.

Abstract

Thayil in Narcopolis constructs a form which captures those nuances of feeling and brings an inclusive sympathy to the possibilities of human and social behaviour. Drug literature became popular after 1970s and 80s. Opium has been symbolically represented as idea of religion, films, freedom, memory and dream. Similar idea is taken by Thayil in this novel. The narrative is true to its subject matter- opiated, hazy, viewed through foggy smoke, dream like sequences, and stream of consciousness at another level. The novel fits into the recent literary wave of “Dark India”, a body of literary fiction which seems to have found a niche in the market, writing as it does of the underbelly of Indian society: its slums, poverty, deprivations, and destitutions. Narcopolis, with its setting on Bombay’s Shuklaji Street of the 1970s, and 1980s crowded with opium dens and brothels, with its cast of drug addicts, drug peddlers, prostitutes, criminals, and even a eunuch is a book which definitely sets out to depict a non-shining India, which may be a more faithful representation than what it had been the norm up until recently, of the exotic, lush, extravagant India.

Keywords: Mumbai, Narcopolis novel, Dark India literary genre, exotic India

Society and Literature

Literature is shaped by the material conditions of society. We have to relocate literature in the context of caste, region gender -issues of every day struggles. Thayil in Narcopolis constructs a form which captures those nuances of feeling and brings an inclusive sympathy to the possibilities of human and social behaviour. Drug literature became popular after 1970s and 80s. Opium has been symbolically represented as idea of religion, films, freedom, memory and dream. Similar idea is taken by Thayil in this novel. The narrative is true to its subject matter- opiated, hazy, viewed through foggy smoke, dream like sequences, and stream of consciousness at another level.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Dr. Anjali Verma, M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor in English
Smt. MMK College of Commerce & Economics
Bandra
Mumbai
Maharashtra
India
drarver@yahoo.com
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