Creative Saplings (CS) (ISSN: 0974-536X) CODEN: CSABCJ is an international peer-reviewed (refereed), open access, monthly online journal of English language and literature from India. Creative Saplings has an expert editorial board and reviewers to analyze and select literary works from the English language, literature, and criticism. Creative Saplings publishes the unpublished, most original, and scholarly articles of students, scholars, and academicians from all over the world.
SAFE: (Society For Academic Facilitation and Extension, Regd.), Head office: 53, Karamchari Nagar, Bareilly 243112 (UP) India
Graphic Fiction in India: When Images Think and Narratives See
Graphic fiction is not merely a genre of literature in India; it is a civilizational echo—a revival of a sense of aestheticity, a re-awakening of a sense of locality, which never uttered a word, but always offered pictures, symbols, and silence. In this regard, the present research paper interrogates its history as the site of communication between tradition and modernity, by trailing the genesis of graphic fiction through the indigenous visual culture such as the Pattachitra, Madhubani, and Warli up to the contemporary graphic tales. The paper tries to scrutinize how this cloth-based medium of scroll painting and visual storytelling hailing from Odisha, Bengal, Bihar, and Maharashtra, respectively, turns into a medium of thought instead of a medium of storytelling, where images do not illustrate what is real, but form it. The study is guided by the cultural theory of Arjun Appadurai, an Indian-American anthropologist, and is implemented using a qualitative and interpretive method in its attempt to demonstrate how globalization, media flows, and the hybrid identities remake the form of narratives. The analysis of the works, especially of River of Stories (1994), Corridor (2004), and Kari (2008), allows seeing the way graphic fiction breaks the linearity to reveal the dissonances of the development process, the loneliness of metropolitan life, and the fluidity of identity. The query claims that the graphic fiction, in India, has not only gone beyond the roots in pedagogy and entertainment but has also been transformed into a visual epistemology, a form of perceptiveness which is never closed but ever embraces fragmentation, comprising participation. Over all, the paper proclaims that Graphic fiction, as a fiction, does not depict the world—it disciplines the eye to perceive what reality hides.
Copyright (c) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The Walls of Delhi: Three Stories by Uday Prakash
The Walls of Delhi: Three Stories by Uday Prakash, translated by Jason Grunebaum, published by Seven Stories Press in 2014, ISBN: 978-1609805289, 234 pages, Rs 350.
Copyright (c) 2026 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Memory, Myth, and Cultural Belonging in the Poetry of A.K. Ramanujan
The paper explores the centrality of family, memory, cultural rootedness, Indian soul and soil in the poetry of A. K. Ramanujan, one of the significant voices of Indian English poetry. Living between India and America, Ramanujan experienced the tensions of migration, displacement, and bicultural existence, yet his poetry consistently returns to the emotional landscape of home. His poems recreate memories of parents, relatives, rituals, family, myths, and domestic spaces that shape his inner world and preserve his Indian identity. Family becomes not merely a social unit but a symbolic shelter and refuge that protects the self from alienation and rootlessness. Through irony, nostalgia, myth, and personal recollection, Ramanujan transforms private experiences into universal reflections on belonging, rootedness and identity. His engagement with Hindu beliefs, legends, and traditions further reveals his attempt to connect the inherited past with the realities of the present. The presence of the past is the hallmark of his poetry. The paper argues that Ramanujan’s poetry derives its emotional depth and sustenance from this continuous dialogue between memory and modernity, exile and belonging, tradition and contemporary life. His poems ultimately affirm that cultural memory and familial relationships remain essential sources of emotional stability and selfhood in a rapidly globalizing world.
Silence, Selfhood, and Patriarchal Pressure in Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terrors
What is the value of being a woman in a society that values you on your skin colour, your obedience and the ego of your husband? The Dark Holds No Terrors by Shashi Deshpande is an unsettling question that is answered in the book's psychological examination of Sarita's progression to become an abused wife and her quest for identity in the absence of a voice. Through the character of Sarita, The Dark Holds No Terrors examines the themes of gender discrimination, emotional trauma, marital abuse, silence and self-discovery. It examines the role of patriarchy in forming women's identities from childhood and how it continues to impact women's lives as they get married and into society. Sarita's experiences as an unwanted daughter, a professionally successful woman and an exploited wife highlight the psychological consequences of gender inequality. Deshpande employs silence and darkness for the purpose of not just symbolizing pain but also spaces of introspection and transformation. The novel is structured through psychological realism and introspection as Sarita moves from fear and guilt, towards self-awareness and self-acceptance. This paper discusses the connection between patriarchy, silence and identity formation in the novel and suggests that the book by Deshpande shows an internalisation of women's empowerment instead of an external protest. The novel is also a significant novel of feminist discourse in India as it reveals the significance of Indian women in relation to oppressive structures, and their quest for freedom and dignity.
Copyright (c) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam and the Literature of Universal Humanism: A Comparative Study of Vedic and English Thought
This paper discusses the Vedic principle of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam ("the entire earth is one family"), outlining it as an ancient Indian ethical construct relevant to the modern world. The study is based on the primary Vedic and Upanishadic literature, such as the Rigveda, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, and the Maha Upanishad, and charts the intellectual history of the doctrine, from the earliest hymns of collective harmony to its philosophical crystallization as a universal moral imperative. The paper also compares the tradition with the classic English poetry of Shelley, Arnold, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Hopkins, Ruskin, Donne, Eliot in order to show that the Vedic imperatives of collective well-being, of ecological responsibility, of dietary discipline, and of yogic liberation find compelling parallels in the works of these poets. The paper highlights that the Indian concept of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam is not a local cultural sentiment but a well-founded and universalistic moral approach. This philosophy is an alternative to the individualistic and exploitation-driven ethos of modern times, a need in the moral consciousness of all humanity at a time when the climate crisis, resource conflict, moral decay and civilizational fragmentation are haunting the world.
The Sultanate Market and the Literary Imagination: Alauddin Khalji’s Economic Policy Revisited
This paper presents a strong socio-economic critique of the ‘Market Control Policy’ (Siyasat-i-bazar) of the most powerful and ambitious Sultan of Delhi Sultanate, Alauddin Khalji. The main objective of the study is to consider the reasons that led the sultan to impose strict price controls. It relies chiefly on the chronicles of the historian Ziauddin Barani and demonstrates that the constant Mongol attacks made it necessary to keep a large standing army, and that under limited fiscal means, keeping the commodity prices at a bare minimum was the only way to pay soldiers low wages. The paper goes beyond economic statistics and addresses the general social impact of the policy, which broke down the middlemen, black marketeers, and corrupt traders, but also placed the productive classes—peasants and merchants—in an environment of harsh state control. The study is based on whether Khalji's economic structure was purely military or had a visionary part which was geared towards the economic stabilization of medieval India. Lastly the paper examines the role of the state in the medieval economy by following the policy's downfall and its far-reaching social consequences.
Copyright (c) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Sport, Sovereignty, and Spectacle: Mughal Sports Culture in Historical and English Literary Perspectives
During the medieval period in India, the Muslims rulers saw sports and huntings as a part of royal life. Traditional games like chaugan (Polo) were encouraged by Mughal emperors, Akbar built chaugan grounds at Fatehpur Sikri and organized them in the Mughal empire. They controlled hunting (particularly the big ring-hunt of the qamargah) and organized large royal hunting parties. The royal patronage was extended to folk sports like wrestling too; wrestlers were called in to the festive occasions to play mall-yuddha (combat). Those activities were linked to military training, social order and also martial skill and royal splendor. The purpose of this study is to look at the main sports (chaugan, hunting, wrestling, archery and chess) and the policies that helped to form them (royal patronage, regulation, taxation and festival organization), and their social impact. The key sources consulted are Abul Fazl's Ain-i-Akbari, Mughal farmans, and the accounts of the travellers of the period, as well as modern scholarship.
Copyright (c) 2020 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The “Golden Bird” in History and Literature: Trade Networks and Economic Prosperity in Ancient India
The real agenda of the entire investigation is to know the mechanism of India's emergence as the ‘Golden Bird' (sone ki chidiya) of the world when many other civilizations were still unorganized in the process of exchange. We have all heard that India was once a country of marvelous riches, but that riches did not fall down from the sky; it was the real income of our fathers' hard work, perseverence and marvellous commercial sagacity. This scholarly research examines the organization of the craftsmen and traders of the ancient world, as well as the nature of the markets and fairs in villages and the customs by which they conducted their business with distant, unknown lands. The paper follows the path from the Indus Valley Civilisation to the ‘Golden Age’ of Gupta dynasty, analyzing how the world's wealth was attracted to India. In non-technical language, it illustrates the skill of Indians artisans and the bravery of the Indian traders to secure India's sovereignty in the world markets. The final premise is obvious—with that old commercial muscle, there is no one who could stop India from regaining its pre-eminence in the world.
Copyright (c) 2019 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Nature as a Spiritual Medium: A Transcendentalist Reading of the Poetry of Ralph Waldo Emerson
It was the poetry that did put most forcibly into words the articulation of Transcendentalism. This looks at nature as a vital instrument of realisation. This paper discusses the relationship between nature and spirituality in the selected poems of Emerson. His poetic vision makes the discarding of the material and the metaphysical possible. Through close textual readings of poems like “The Rhodora,” “Each and All,” “The Snow-Storm,” and “Nature,” the study shows how Emerson constructs nature as a symbolic and experiential medium that reveals the presence of a universal spirit. Based on Emerson’s Over-Soul, the paper argues that nature in his poetry is not simply an aesthetic or descriptive thing but a living entity that reflects an active and living divine unity. According to Emerson, flowers, trees, rivers, hills and storms express the universal energy of nature through symbolic language. The use of this dynamic structure allows one to go beyond empirical perception to intuitive knowing and affirms Transcendentalism’s emphasis on an individual’s autonomy and illumination. In addition, Emerson’s relationship with nature, which designates a centre of harmony and a centre of tension, is also examined for its beauty and empowerment. The paper situates Emerson’s poetry within broader Romantic and philosophical traditions while highlighting the uniqueness of his contribution to American thought. Emerson redefines spirituality as an immanent experience, with which one can relate consciousness and perception; instead of the institutionalised nature of the institutionalized, spirituality refers to the natural area. This study concludes by asserting that Emerson’s poetic treatment of Nature encompasses a whole vision of Reality in which the self and the universe are interconnected through spirit. In assigning any value to poems, the essay has an implication in the history and development of science criticism in America.
Copyright (c) 2026 Munish KumarThakur, Dhan Raj Bist https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Beyond the Curse: Mapping Epistemic Agency and Spiritual Interiority in Kavita Kané’s Ahalya’s Awakening
This research aims to explore the life of a woman, the wonderful creation of Lord Brahma, and the doting wife of a great Rishi; however, she has been cursed by her husband to remain invisible to all beings for thousands of years and will be liberated and redeemed by the touch of Shri Ram. Her name is Ahalya; she is not well described in Hindu mythology; however, she is known for her moral transgression. Moreover, the dichotomous situation is that she has become the symbol of female chastity and has been extolled as the Panchakanya (the five iconic women from the Hindu Epics), which struck a chord with Kavita Kané, bringing her onto the dais and humanising her as a contemporary woman. The objective of this research is to explore Ahalya’s attitudinal shift, which transforms her blemished image from that of a condemned adulteress into a pious, independent woman. This research examines how Ahalya asserts her individuality in a patriarchal world, turns her curse into a boon, and ultimately finds her salvation.
Copyright (c) 2026 Shivani https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Tradition Reimagined: The Evolving Reception of Vijay Tendulkar's Plays in Contemporary Indian Theatre
Vijay Tendulkar is one of the most outstanding writers of plays in India who has always brought a twist in the traditional values and norms in his plays, thus providing a critical commentary to the socio-political realities of his era. The paper breaks down the reinterpretation of Vijay Tendulkar’s plays in the modern context, with reference to the subversion of traditional narrative and conventions of theatrical production in the contemporary performances. An examination of the major works as Sakharam Binder, Ghashiram Kotwal and Silence! The Court is in Session, the research investigates the approaches that the directors have towards the socio-political themes present in the writing of Tendulkar as well as the challenges directed at them by the directors. These adaptations are relevant to the modern audience, as they include new staging devices and allusions to modern culture, creating different responses to them, which mirror the concerns of the society. The article emphasizes the role of the contemporary performance in challenging the traditional understanding of gender relations and power distribution as well as encouraging the audience to think critically about the intricacies of Tendulkar’s critique of authority and morality. Finally, it is evident in this study that the Tendulkar’s work remains relevant in modern theatre, and it has the potential to become a subject of discussion and raise awareness about burning social and political issues.
Copyright (c) 2026 Nand Gopal https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Cinema, Digital Media, and Ecological Representation: An Indian Perspective
The new dimensions in recent decades have given the manifestation of the environmental consciousness in the Indian cinema, as well as in the digital media. This research paper focuses on ecocinema as it appeared and developed in the context of Indians. It focuses on regional films, independent documentaries and Adivasi media practices by going beyond mainstream Bollywood. It states that in an Indian environment, the concept of environmental representation is deeply connected with such questions as caste, class, colonialism heritage, and development politics. The research paper is split into four parts: the first examines historical changes of green themes in the Indian cinema, the second examines the new forms of storytelling in the digital era such as web series and community media projects, the third takes into account the methodological innovation used in the study of the Indian cinema, and lastly the fourth part challenges the material aspects of media infrastructure and the issue of environmental justice. All along, it has been argued that Indian approach provides new orientations to ecocinema research in the world, especially in the environment of postcolonial ecology and the voice of the marginalized.
Copyright (c) 2026 Abhijeet Dawle, Shivaji Methe https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Modernity for Urban Millenial Women in India: A Multiple Viewpoints Construct
This study involves interviewing twenty urban middle and upper-middle class millennial women from tier-2 and tier-3 cities in India. Each interviewee defined the concept of modernity in her own terms and assessed herself as a woman who could claim to be modern, not modern or somewhere in-between. The second and seventh questions of the interview sought the same answer in different words: whether the participants viewed themselves as modern Indian women or not. While the second question, which came early in the interview, was almost inevitably answered affirmatively, the seventh question, which appeared at the end of the interview, witnessed a shift in opinion, where the participants only aligned themselves with the socially positive connotations of the term ‘modern’, such as free will, self-reliance and individuality of thoughts, but distanced themselves from the socially tabooed connotations of a defiant woman representing uninhibited action, ultramodernism and its cosmetic overdoing. This involves the decompression of the concept of ‘modern Indian woman’ into two competing construals - the independent self-reliant woman versus the uninhibited woman - and their re-compression into the narrative structure of the same individual. This affirms Dancygier’s concept of multiple viewpoints in the narrative structure of the same individual, where one construal is privileged over the other. Ultimately, through their narratives, these women emerge as their chosen version of modern Indian women—the ones who blend autonomy with social acceptance and assert their femininity within the bounds of Indian society, family structure and gender expectations.
Copyright (c) 2026 Rhiddhi Saha, Niloy Mukherjee https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The Development and Impact of Digital Theatre on Contemporary Performance Arts
Digital theater is an iconic revolution in learning institutions as technology keeps gaining momentum and penetrating numerous aspects of learning. The integration of digital theater practices in traditional theaters programs is explored in the work, and its role in enhancing learning outcomes, audience participation, and creativity is discussed against the backgrounds of the audiences who are the consumers of such artistic outputs. The paper assesses the role of technology and online platforms in transforming the theatrical education landscape, not only during post-pandemic periods, but also considering the creative application of digital resources, such as virtual performance venues, augmented reality, and multimedia storytelling, to support new expressions and collaboration among students by examining case studies in multiple educational settings. The negative aspects of digital theater are also mentioned in the study, including inequality of resources, access, and need to develop the professionalism of teachers. By conducting qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys, this research will offer a perspective on how digital theatre can and does not only supplement but also redefine the educational frontiers of theatre practice. Ultimately, the results will add to the discussion of the future of theatre education, supporting the strategic incorporation of digital approaches to promote inclusivity and flexibility in a fast-evolving world.
Copyright (c) 2026 Lucy Michael Iseyen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Digital Literary Consciousness: Exploring AI as Author, Reader, and Critic
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-style-textoutline-type: none; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dpiwidth: .75pt; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-linecap: round; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-join: bevel; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-pctmiterlimit: 0%; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dash: solid; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-align: center; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-compound: simple; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: HI;">The advent of artificial intelligence as an agent in literary creation, reading, and evaluation indicates an essential restructuring of what we in this paper refer to as digital literary consciousness. Based on the post-structuralist literary theory and, specifically, the work of Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Mikhail Bakhtin, as well as on the digital humanities studies and ethical theories, this paper will be able to analyse the various functions that AI currently holds in the literary ecosystem. It proposes the idea that the concept of authorship as a singular human action should be rethought as a distributed, collaborative and algorithmically mediated process. AI serves as an author in four types of algorithmic authorship: fully text-generated, human-directed collaboration, adaptive interactive story, and intertextual remix. As the reader, AI does stylometric analysis, sentiment mapping, extracts narrative structure, and gives a recommendation; however, the interpretive authority of the work is subject to algorithmic bias and alignment problems. AI can provide computational stylistics and thematic evaluation at scale, but not human ethical, aesthetic or cultural judgment, as a critic. The paper situates these changes in the wider historical context from oral tradition to print culture to digital media, and explores the ethical and legal issues of plagiarism, attribution, representation, and labour, concluding with pedagogical implications for teaching literature in the age of intelligent machines.
The Struggle for Equality in the Face of White Supremacy in Ralph Ellison’s The Black Ball
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-style-textoutline-type: none; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dpiwidth: .75pt; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-linecap: round; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-join: bevel; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-pctmiterlimit: 0%; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dash: solid; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-align: center; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-compound: simple; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Racism in the United States of America originates in the colonial era and it continues to be a pertinent issue in the American society even today in the 21st century. Despite the enactment of laws against racial discriminations against African-American communities, racial segregation and injustice are still widespread in the US. “The Black Ball” is one of the four lyrical short stories of Ralph Waldo Ellison (1914-1994), the other being “Boy on a Train”, “Hymie’s Bull”, and “In a Strange Country”, which concern the issues of identity, racism, discrimination, and opposition stoking up the struggle for equality. The racial discrimination is faced and its stigma is deeply experienced by John, an African-American, and his four year old son in the white dominated American society of the 1940s. The reactions and responses of the two succeeding generations show how a father protects his son from realization of the crude facts of life in a racist society and the ugly side of the racial discriminations but there is also hope because of their struggle against racism and their emerging spirit of resistance against the white supremacy. This paper seeks to explore the different layers of racial discriminations as presented in this story.
Chiraiya: Drama, Social Thriller, JioHotstar, 2026, Stars: Divya Dutta Sanjay Mishra , Prasanna Bisht. Directed by Shashant Shah and produced by SVF Entertainment
Myth as Philosophy: A Philosophical Study of How Indian and South Asian Myths Encode Worldviews, Ethics, and Cosmology
This paper conducts a philosophical study of myth in the Indian and South Asian tradition, proposing the contemporary relevance of mythological texts like the Vedic hymns, the Upanishads, the Puranas, the epics of the Mahabharata and Ramayana, as well as the living folk mythologies of various sub-regional populations. The paper aims to examine advanced philosophical systems, encoding cosmological, epistemological, ethical and anthropological insights of profound depth and contemporary significance. It will also explore the nature of myth not as a cultural phenomenon, but as what the philosopher Paul Ricoeur described as "a mode of being-in-the-world", a way of knowing the world that is not less but only differently serious than the systematic traditions of philosophy, differing from them only in method, medium and the nature of the relationship. The paper draws on the tools of phenomenology (Heidegger, Ricoeur), comparative religion (Eliade, Smith), mythology studies (Campbell, Doniger), Indian philosophy (Matilal, Mohanty) and postcolonial studies (Nandy, Chakrabarty), and is structured along six philosophical themes: I. The nature of myth as philosophical discourse. II. Vedic cosmogony as ontological inquiry. III. The Upanishadic internalization of myth. IV. Puranic ethics and the moral cosmology of karma and dharma. V. The Epic tradition as philosophical narrative. VI. And the folk myth as subaltern philosophy. The paper contends that Indian mythology represents what can be called a "mythological philosophy" in which the narrative and the analytical, the symbolic and the logical, the experiential and the doctrinal are not discrete but held in productive friction with each other to yield insights unavailable to either pure narrative or pure systematic philosophy. It concludes with a sketch of a contemporary approach to Indian mythology that seeks neither to romanticize myth as arcane mystery nor to rationalize myth as primitive superstition, but seeks to recuperate Indian mythological philosophy as a living resource for contemporary cosmological, ethical, consciousness and humanist thinking.
Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp, New Delhi: ‎Penguin, 2025, ISBN-13 :‏ 978-9367902295, Pages: 246, Paper back: Rs. 248/-
Hanuman in Graphic Avatar: Reframing Ramayana in Vikram Balagopal’s Simian
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-style-textoutline-type: none; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dpiwidth: .75pt; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-linecap: round; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-join: bevel; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-pctmiterlimit: 0%; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dash: solid; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-align: center; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-compound: simple; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The epic tales have endured and thrived in graphic versions in multiple guises by intertwining of genres and styles like sci-fi infused, Ramayana 3392 AD, experiments with indigenous art forms like Arni’s Sita’s Ramayana, and individualistic representations like Amruta Patil’s Adi Parva. This article analyses Vikram Balagopal’s graphic novel, Simian (2014), to apprehend how the author/artist subverts the central themes of Ramayana by retelling the story from the perspective of Hanuman. Since the mainstream versions of the Ramayan accord an important but a liminal status to Hanuman, it is imperative to examine to what extent does Balagopal probe into the potential that Hanuman’s character holds for re-visioning the epic. It’s intriguing to discover that a filmmaker by training, Balagopal, instead of employing a cinematic mode, consciously chooses to adapt the Ramayana into a graphic narrative format. This paper attempts to explore the possibilities and challenges that this emerging medium of story-telling poses, and the manner in which the textual and the visual correlate, negotiate, oppose or reaffirm each other to create new meanings within the epic narrative. It further investigates how this recent retelling of the Ramayana in a graphic mode interacts with the pre-existent multi-medial Ramayana tradition.
From Nadi to New Delhi: A Reading of Satendra Nandan's Recollections of India
Indian diasporic literature is a remarkably rich and prominent branch of Indian literature. If we speak specifically of Indian English literature, a very large number of its writers are primarily diasporic Indians for whom writing serves as a medium to revisit India and to reclaim their Indian roots. While the excellent quality and remarkable range of literature produced by many diasporic Indian writers has been duly acknowledged and appreciated, in India and beyond, there are many more who remain, even today, unheard, uncharted, and unexplored. These are largely writers who do acknowledge their Indian past, and who carry and assert their Indianness, but who do not recognise themselves as Indians, nor do they recognise India as their homeland. For them, the homeland is that island which their grandparents had decided to adopt as a new home for themselves, and as the future homeland for their posterity. It is from within this complex and layered relationship to India, neither the homeland nor entirely foreign, neither fully claimed nor fully relinquished, that their writing emerges. This article addresses this unexplored territory of Indian diasporic literature by focusing on the writings of one of the most prominent Indo-Fijian writers, namely Satendra Nandan. The article is primarily an analysis of Nandan's non-fiction, particularly his autobiography, Requiem for a Rainbow: A Fijian Indian Story (2001), and his collection of political essays, Fiji: A Paradise in Pieces, Writing Ethics-Politics (2000), in which he not only recounts and reflects upon his sojourn in India, but also offers critical and incisive observations on India – its history, culture, society, and contemporary politics – as well as his own evolving understanding of the idea of India itself.
Copyright (c) 2024 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The poem muses on the loss of childhood innocence and its replacement by the vexing responsibilities of adulthood. It reflects on past experiences of happiness, playfulness, and freedom - characterised by innocent joys such as games, laughter and living without stress. Over time, these recollections are juxtaposed with the challenges of adulthood, in which the pursuit of material success and responsibility overshadows the joys and freedoms of childhood. This transformation is shown to have physical and emotional consequences, as the speaker's life becomes burdened by stress, lethargy and diminished health. As an older adult, the speaker appreciates the significance of those earlier times, too late learning the importance of savouring the present moment. In the end, the poem offers a contemplative and warning message, encouraging us to regain and maintain the art of living, to care for our body and soul, and to remember our inner child while it's still time.
Plastic Poetry: The Sculptural Imagination of Language in English Literature
The current research paper critically analyses the idea of ‘plastic poetry’ as a transformative and interdisciplinary form of poetic expression in the present-day English literature. Going beyond the traditional perception of poetry as a linear and purely linguistic expression, the paper examines how plastic poetry redefines the meaning-form interrelation by prefiguring visuality, spatial structure, and materiality of words. The study follows the historical development of plastic poetry, beginning with early ‘pattern poetry’ and the ‘metaphysical experiments’ of George Herbert, an eminent poet from the school of John Donne’s poetry, and the modernist experimentation of Calligrams by Guillaume Apollinaire, a French poet and playwright, and the ‘concrete poetry movement’ organized by Eugen Gomringer, a Bolivian-born Swiss Concrete poet. Based on semiotics, structuralism, phenomenology, and postmodernism, the analysis claims that plastic poetry breaks the conventional signifier-signified relationship and turns the poem into a multisensory and participatory experience. In addition, the venture scrutinizes the main aesthetic principles of plastic poetry such as combination of form and content, engagement of the reader, and the importance of visual perception in sense-making. It also places this innovative genre of poetry in the digital era, underscoring its reformation as an interactive and multimedia poetry, which is enabled by the evolution of technology, hypertext, animation, and virtual worlds. The analysis belongs not only to the critical considerations about the validity, availability, and the aesthetical value of plastic poetry but also to the exploration of the philosophical essence of it in the perspectives of existentialism and phenomenological discerning. The enquiry, ultimately, intends that plastic poetry is not a break but a broadening of the possibilities of poetry, a dynamic and immersive and social responsive literary practice. It proclaims that plastic poetry as a bridge between literature, visual art, and digital media is an imperative approach that is indicative of the encounters of modern human experience and redefines the future of poetic expression.
Copyright (c) 2016 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Aesthetic Labour and Production Design in Nollywood Cinema: Reconfiguring Mise-en-scène across the Film Production Stages
This study questions the aesthetic and production design in Nollywood films as an area of creative work that is disseminated throughout the pre-production, production, and post-production processes, as opposed to being an aesthetic added to an existing script. It claims that the visual regimes of Nollywood, such as sets, locations, costumes, props, colour, and soundscapes, are a complicated system of signification, formed by limited infrastructures, transnational genre demands, and local moral imaginaries. The article, based on the film-theory of style, semiotics of cinema, and media-infrastructural accounts of Nigerian screen culture, suggests a multi-staged approach to studying production design in terms of making historical judgments between economy, technology, and ideology. The research synthesises the close reading of a representative sample of neo-Nollywood films with a synthetic overview of the current scholarship on mise-en-scène, the formation of the Nollywood genre, and screen aesthetics of Africa. The analysis shows that the pre-production procedures, specifically the location choice, art direction, and costume design, encode the aspects of class, religiosity, and gendered aspiration in a manner that predicts the subsequent cinematographic and editing choices. In principal photography, the low-budget zone strategies of space, blocking, and camera positions reorganise classical norms of continuity into a pattern of hybrid appearance, and post-production colour grading and sound design are retroactively stabilising, or sometimes conflicting with, previous aesthetic indicators. The article argues that the perceived weak points of Nollywood style can be seen more as adaptive aesthetic reasoning that appeared as a result of certain infrastructural circumstances. It makes the conclusion that the production design in Nollywood is at the centre of the visual imagining of African urban modernity, spirituality, and precarious neoliberal subjectivities, and that a more granular analysis of African film production practices ought to be done through the stage.
Copyright (c) 2026 Dr. Badeji Adebayo John, Stella Motunrayo Omotunwase https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The poem is a critique of the futile wars in West Asia, where disputes between nations for a variety of causes have caused an untimely upheaval in the world economy. West Asian nations, which were formerly renowned for their artistic and cultural achievements, are today the victims of unavoidable conflicts that have killed a great number of young children. There were fears of worldwide technological disruptions and fuel shortages lead to worldwide inflation and put at risk the standard of living for most people. They return to the Stone Age because of these conflicts, destroying civilization. The wars threaten the stability of peace and future of the world. The poem insists that there is a great need of shielding the globe from wars to restore peace.
Copyright (c) 2026 Kumara Swamy Ravipati https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
MELODY OF WOUNDS- Saga of A Wounded Civilization
This paper critically examines Melody of Wounds, the maiden poetic collection of Nar Deo Sharma, highlighting his role as a socially committed poet, translator, and critic. Through a blend of satire, vivid imagery, and emotive expression, Sharma exposes deep-rooted social, political, and moral crises such as corruption, hypocrisy, ritualistic hollowness, gender discrimination, and the erosion of human values. His poems interrogate institutions like law, politics, religion, and marriage, revealing their inherent contradictions and injustices. By portraying the suffering of marginalized individuals—women, soldiers, and the poor—he foregrounds the harsh realities of contemporary Indian society. At the same time, Sharma’s poetry retains a note of hope, transforming grief into creative expression and moral awakening. His work stands as a powerful critique of societal degeneration while advocating ethical renewal and human sensitivity, thereby establishing Melody of Wounds as a significant contribution to Indian English poetry.
Copyright (c) 2011 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Mortality, Elegy, and the Imperishability of the Soul: Death, Memory, and Transcendence in the Poetry of Hari Singh Gour
In this paper, a close reading of five poems by Hari Singh Gour will be undertaken on a sustained basis (Random Rhymes, 1892; 2024 Anuugya edition, ed. Laxmi Pandey) which form the most intensive part of the collection in the form of mortality, grief, elegy and transcendence: In Memoriam (To My Sister) (p. 65), Death (p. 30), On the Tomb of Tamerlane (pp. 32–33), “Hadrian’s Address to His Soul” (p. 38), and “On the Tomb of Fawcett” (pp. 41). With reference to the tradition of elegy found in classical antiquity in both the English Romantics and the Victorians, on neo-Platonic philosophy of soul and immortality, and on Indian conceptions of the persistence of the ātman after physical death, the paper claims that the death poetry of Gour represents a strict and emotionally direct meditation upon the question of what remains. The paper places the elegiac poetics of Gour and the poetry of Tennyson, Keats, Shelley and Matthew Arnold and pays due attention to the distinctly Indian aspect of his philosophical and aesthetic legacy. It contends that the most striking feature of the elegiac vision of Gour is that it never accepts the finality of death: in each of the five poems, death is not an end but a change, the transformation of the body into earth, of the individual soul into something that brings to life the natural world, of human greatness into something that lives or, more educatively, does not. The paper concludes that the death poetry of Gour is worthy of appreciation as a pioneer work in the genre of Indian English elegy.
The term love appears in almost every poem of W. H. Auden; however, it should not be understood as an intense personal emotion that unites a lover with his or her beloved. Unlike his predecessors, Auden conceives love as something impersonal and detached. His conception of love evolves gradually through three major phases: love as Eros under Freudianism, love as social bonding under Marxism, and love as Agape under Christian existentialism. Beginning with Eros (sexual love), moving through Marxist collectivism, and culminating in Agape (divine love), Auden presents love as a multifaceted and evolving principle. He redefines love not as mere romantic sentiment but as a profound ethical and spiritual force.
Niranjan Mohanty- As Critic of Indian English Literature
This paper examines the critical contributions of Niranjan Mohanty to Indian English literary criticism, highlighting his role in shaping a culturally rooted and humanistic discourse. Building upon the early recognition of his potential by Bijay Kumar Das, the study traces Mohanty’s evolution as a critic who engaged deeply with major issues of Indian English poetry and literature. His emphasis on the nativization of English, the experience–expression dichotomy, and the significance of cultural memory underscores his commitment to authenticity in creative writing. Mohanty advocates a synthesis of Indian and Western critical frameworks, encouraging the development of indigenous interpretative tools. He also addresses challenges in English studies, including declining standards, lack of critical engagement with emerging writers, and the marginalization of humanities. Ultimately, his criticism foregrounds the “human factor” as essential for achieving universality, thereby establishing his enduring legacy in Indian English literary thought.
Copyright (c) 2013 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
A Note on Poetic Craftsmanship in the Prefaces of Stephen Gill
This paper critically examines the poetic theory and craftsmanship articulated in the prefaces of Stephen Gill, a globally recognized poet, novelist, and critic whose works foreground harmony, human values, and spiritual resilience. Focusing on key texts such as Songs Before Shrine, Shrine (Revised Edition), Flashes, and The Flame, the study explores Gill’s conceptualization of poetry as an experiential, intellectual, and aesthetic practice that bridges inner consciousness with external reality. The paper highlights three central concerns in Gill’s poetics: the definition and function of poetry, the essential qualities of ideal poetic expression, and the limitations inherent in poetic composition. Gill posits poetry as a medium of profound human experience, shaped by a dynamic interplay of inspiration and sustained intellectual labour, wherein “perspiration” outweighs mere spontaneity. His emphasis on beauty, precision of language, economy of expression, and freshness of imagery underscores a disciplined approach to poetic creation. At the same time, he critiques contemporary poetic practices for their reliance on clichés, lack of structural coherence, and insufficient revision. The study further situates Gill’s ideas within broader critical traditions, drawing parallels with figures like John Dryden and T. S. Eliot, who also articulated literary principles through prefaces and essays. Ultimately, the paper argues that Gill’s prefaces function as a significant theoretical corpus that not only reflects his own creative philosophy but also contributes to a larger discourse on poetic art, ethics, and craftsmanship. His vision of poetry as a vehicle of peace, catharsis, and spiritual liberation reinforces its enduring relevance in a fractured modern world.