Death of Rivers: Fragile Ecology

Veh nadi dadi Sunma ki ankhon mei behti thi

That river flowed in grandmother Sunma’s eyes (p. 7).

The introductory line of the novel sets the tone for what we witness throughout its narrative. Sunma is no ordinary woman. Her tears symbolize a tenacious grip over the capitalist and globalized reality, and how it has caused a systemic destruction of rivers and natural resources. The novel highlights how ethics of care and relationality forged among people have a strong potential to challenge the unscrupulous developmental rhetoric of the nation state and its allied structures of violence.

The character of Sunma gains gravitas through the course of the novel. She does not become a courageous woman overnight, but gradually, through her disparate acts of resistance against the communal, political and globalized matrix of power. For instance, after her husband’s death, she refuses to submit to the injunctions of austerity and widowhood.