The Material and Mythological Significance of Dirt in Pundalik Naik’s the Upheaval

Abstract

This essay takes a look at Dirt in Indian fiction and state it is significant not as a emblem or sign — which is how traditional literary criticism has addressed it — but also as a material that can transform. In order to conceptualise dirt as a literary topic, I offer a material ecocritical framework, and then I analyse selected passages from four famous Indian novels with an emphasis on dirty materialisation and change. My argument is based on the fact that Pundalik Naik's The upheaval places a strong emphasis on a number of different dirt scenes, all of which feature various processes. It turns out that dirt is not passive but rather active. Depictions of nature as anthropomorphic can be reconceptualised as not inevitably being expressive or as instances of the pathetic fallacy by looking at material ecocritical analysis , which rejects as a precondition of agency. Instead, such portrayals can be seen as bearing witness to the way in which authority is shared by living creatures and the environment in which it operates.