Anupama A. P1 & Vinod Balakrishnan2
1Research Scholar, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. National Institute of Technology,Tiruchirappalli. Tamil Nadu. India. E-mail: anupriya2621@gmail.com
2Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli. Tamil Nadu. India. E-mail: winokrish@yahoo.co.uk
Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.40
Abstract
There are two spaces in Anil Radhakrishnan’s travel narrative, North 24 Kaatham (2013), the topographical space outside and the psychological space inside. The film is read as a dialectical tension that plays out in the character of Harikrishnan who suffers from an obsessive compulsive disorder. The fateful journey of Harikrishnan on a day of harthal (general strike) is, to all appearance, topographical though it is, in equal measure, a psychological one. The paper, through a formalist analysis of the film, draws a correspondence between the two journeys of Harikrishnan in the company of fellow passengers: Gopalan and Narayani (Nani), in order to demonstrate Hari’s transformation from a self-absorbed individual towards a sociable human being. The argument is structured by combining Walter Benjamin’s idea of “aura” and Gaston Bachelard’s dialectics of space to explain the protagonist’s psycho-spatial transformation.
Keywords: travel, outside/inside, topographical space, formalist analysis, spectator experience
