Olivia Joseph
Research Scholar, Department of English and Comparative Literature. Central University of Kerala, Kasargod.
10.21659/9788197513022.02Abstract
The multilayered fabric of the urban environment brought diverse theories and perspectives into focus. One such perspective is the dynamic everyday practices of inhabitants and tourists. These practices yield micro-narratives from everyday life and are rooted in emotional attachment to the place rather than in the recording of a social issue. This chapter discusses selected stories from the People Called Kolkata collection, curated by Kamalika Bose and published in 2019. The study explores how the author engages with the city through sensory narratives and the everyday practices of its dwellers. It also examines how these sensory details influence the emotional responses of inhabitants in a specific city. The study also analyses the work through the lens of everyday urbanism by enquiring into how urban spaces are defined by daily routines such as commutes and the use of resources like water, as well as by strained infrastructure, thereby making it a study of the presence of informal urbanism within the city. It also examines the representation of adaptive practices, such as dwellings visualised in the collection. Thus, the study focuses on two main questions: how the disordered vanishing of inhabitants and vernacular architecture retells the story of a city through the senses and everyday practices, and, as a detached observer, how the curator aesthetically compiles these everyday sensory urbanisms in People Called Kolkata.
Keywords: Urbanism, Everyday Urbanism, Sensory Urbanism, Flaneur, Spatial Practice, Representations of Space and Representational Space.
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Urban Imaginaries and Indian Cities in Literature
Table of Contents
Urban Imaginaries and Indian Cities in Literature: An Introduction
Dr. Neethu P Antony and Dr. Arpana Venu
Olivia Joseph
Multilingual Metropolis: The Politics of Language and Belonging in Guwahati Through Sheelabhadra’s Fiction
Sangeeta Bhagawati
Spatial (re)orientations and Epic structures of the urban in Fareeda Mehta’s Kali Salwaar
Elroy Pinto
Between Tramline and Traffic Jam: Mapping Indian City through Satyajit Ray’s Mahanagar and Anurag Basu’s Life in a…Metro
Trisha Sengupta & Dr. Sanghamitra Baladhikari
Reimagining Kolkata: Subaltern Narratives and the Colonial Urban Dystopia in Kallol Magazine’s Literature
Nandini Gayen
Walking, Writing and Resisting the City: Spatial Tactics and Postcolonial Reimaginings in Janice Pariat’s Everything the Light Touches
Parvin Sultana
Mimesis, Montage and Mapping: A Spatial Analysis of Gangtok City Scapes in the Select Works of Satyajit Ray and Prajwal Parajuly
Dr. Sudakshina Bhattacharya, Dr. Sulagna Mohanty, and Dr. Ankusha Bandyopadhyay
