Earth as Text: Ecological Yearnings in Kalidasa's Meghadutam and Abhay K's Monsoon: A Poem of Love and Longing

Abstract: The Meghadutam which inaugurated in Sanskrit literature the genre of the messenger-poem or the sandesa kavya, is regarded by most scholars as the most ambitious work in Kalidasa’s literary oeuvre. Abhay K’s Monsoon: A Poem of Love and Longing, a single poem constituting hundred and fifty quatrains, describes the journey of the south-west Monsoon from the island of Madagascar across the Indian Ocean and the Indian subcontinent to the Himalayas. Its literary inspiration, quite obvious to most readers, is derived from Kalidasa’s Meghadutam. The present paper attempts to undertake a reading of both texts from the point of view of contemporary theories in Ecocriticism. It shall endeavour to examine the poems as deep ecological texts which rather than privileging man’s place in the natural world, craft a bio-centric narrative of love within which man, along with the myriad elements of nature, is intricately, inseparably, and humbly woven. By closely mapping the emotions of love, longing and desire in interrelationship with the elements of nature, both texts invest ecological landscape with a life of its own and bring thereby, the human and non-human worlds in a close and symbiotic structural alliance. Keywords: ecocriticism, nature, deep ecology, landscape, love