Narrative of the Village : Centre of the Periphery
Contents: Preface. 1. Introduction/Jasbir Jain. 1. Narratology and the narrative of the village/Jasbir Jain. 2. Rethinking Kajri when black clouds hang/Anisur Rahman. 3. Village as protagonist in the socio-political system/Renuka Pamecha. 4. Interplay of rural social change, urban middle class and filmic depiction: recovery of the village in popular Hindi cinema/Kumool Abbi. 5. Revolt and reform in rural India/Santosh Gupta. 6. Villages in crisis: a comparative study of Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan, Raghuvir Chaudhary's Uparvas Kathatrayee and Rahi Masoom Reza's Adha Gaon/Avadhesh Kumar Singh. 7. Plebeian patricians in Premchand's short stories/Ameena Kazi Ansari. 8. Ritual as a defining point: Saratchandra Chatterjee's Palli Samaj and "Abhagi ka Swarg"/Bandana Chakrabarty. 9. "[Wo] man is not made for defeat": vignettes from village narratives/Usha Bande. 10. Power politics from class to caste: Premchand and limbale/Veena Jain. 11. Contradictory images of nature Pather Panchali/Madhuri Chatterjee. 12. The film version of the village fair: site for counter-cultural resistance/Vrinda Mathur. 13. Awakened rustics in Renu's Maila Aanchal/Neelam Raisinghani. 14. Aesthetics of a decentred narrative Train to Pakistan/Sarojini. 15. Time and space in Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan/Rama Rani Lall. 16. Centres and margins in Chemmeen/Jessy Mani. 17. The living space between mindscapes and landscapes: village in Rahi Masoom Reza's Adha Gaon/Avinash Jodha. 18. Village as nation: Reza's a village divided/Urmil Talwar. 19. Self-realization and Altruism in Shukla's Gaon Ka Aadmi/Sonu Shiva. 20. The legends of Khasak: place and paradox/Preranna Bishnoi. 21. Displacements and relocations: Ashis Gupta's Dying traditions/Supriya Agarwal. 22. Recreating the village: Davidar's The house of blue mangoes/Preeti Bhatt. Index.
"Narrative of the Village: Centre of the Periphery attempts to dismantle the polarities of centre and margin and substantiate the way they interconnect and flow into each other across all differences of region and language.
Crossing disciplinary boundaries, the essays in this volume foray into sociological, political, economic and narratological issues in order to fathom the rural life of India. Landscapes, histories and folk culture interact with each other to affect both narrative constructs and power structures. The period covered by the essays spans nearly a hundred years and traces the history of India from the early decades through the dislocations of the partition right up to the present in an attempt to recapture the past, relocate priorities, recover lost myths and unveil the process of nation construction.
The preoccupation with village India has been a constant concern with writers and film-makers from all regions and languages. The kaleidoscopic nature of village life has always been a part of the nation's imagination. The essays in this volume, open out the narrative of the subcontinental village to look at it anew in all its complexities and sociological concerns, to unfold a multi-layered reality." (jacket)
