Weaving, sewing and patching the world together in two contemporary Indian novels
Weaving, sewing and patching the world together in two contemporary Indian novels

Summary/Abstract: The image of political- and sectarian-torn India under Indira Gandhi’s State of Emergency is countered by powerful metaphors of binding and union inspired by the subcontinent’s millenial history of cloth-making. In Amitav Ghosh’s debut novel The Circle of Reason, the old art of buti weaving becomes alternatively a sign of the new Mechanical Man and his ability to do or undo a fragmented India, and that of Art, that can create its own words and realities. Conversely, in Rohinton Mistry award-winning A Fine Balance, the havoc wrought in people’s lives by the Emergency might seem to discard them like unwanted scraps of cloth, and yet the playful art of quiltmaking becomes a metaphor for the individuals’ solution of joining their destinies in a meaningful patchwork.

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