Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I investigate the use of geological time in Anita Agnihotri’s Mahānadi (2015) and its relation to the tradition of the Bengali regional novel to argue that the novel’s use of the Mahanadi river basin as a “region” helps us rethink the role of the regional novel in the Anthropocene.

Paper long abstract:

The Bengali regional novel has a long and rich history of depicting how capitalist modernity transforms property relations of specific communities directly dependent on natural resources for subsistence. These transformations mark a shift from a commons based lifestyle to a capitalist or modern lifestyle centred around the idea of private property. Yet, as Amitav Ghosh’s critique of the realist novel in The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016) underscores, these novels remain bound to human time and space and have very little engagement with the geological. However, if we are to have narratives that address the current planetary crisis, the geological must be an integral part of storytelling. In this paper, I investigate the use of geological time in Anita Agnihotri’s Mahānadi (2015) and its relation to the tradition of the Bengali regional novel to argue that the novel’s use of the Mahanadi river basin as a “region” helps us rethink the role of the regional novel in the Anthropocene. The term “regional” invokes the idea of a remote land in opposition to the global or the metropolitan. Yet when the climate crisis is bringing down the opposition of the place and the planet, can the regional novel be the kind of narrative we need in the Anthropocene?