The Modern ‘Waste Land’: Multiple Voices in Harish Narang’s Pakistani Bachcha

Abstract

In T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” the modern world is spiritually and morally dead; the modern man is a commoner, not a hero, conscious of his limitations. His mechanical and non-spiritual existence and absence of love and communication suggest living death. He is not only indecisive but also evades responsibilities. If there is mobility for the modern man, it is only for material gains, a moral descent towards alienation, deprivation, and lack of spirituality.

            The present paper is a critical insight into Prof Harish Narang’s collection of his self-composed short stories in Hindi, Pakistani Bachcha. The quintessential modern avant-garde stories present multiple perspectives, multiple truths, and multiple points of view. The fragmented self of the modern man, who is absorbed in disillusionment and has lost faith in humanity, finds suitable expression in the said volume. The study thus reflects on this chaos, the ‘waste land’ to borrow from T.S. Eliot’s terminology. With the analysis of the non-linear narrative, intersecting voices of class and gender, the said and the unsaid, the othered spaces, and the nuanced analysis of the characters’ conscious and unconscious thought, the paper probes into the crisis of identity, the existential angst and the gap between human will and action. With a tongue-in-cheek satirical voice, Prof Narang blends historical facts with fiction offering psychological and socio-political narratives.