Overlapping Boundaries and Fluid Cultural Spaces: A Cultural Geographical Reading of D. K. Chowta’s Mittabail Yamunakka: A Tale of a Landlord’s Household

Abstract

Place, process of place formation, struggle over places, spatial production of identities, and practices of spatial representation predominate in the spatial aesthetics. The term and concepts provided by the discipline of geography and cultural geography can enhance the analysis of spatial texts. This paper is an attempt to read D. K. Chowta’s Mittabail Yamunakka: A Tale of a Landlord’s Household with a cultural geographic framework. The novel’sspatial setting is the historically existed Tulunad region in Dakshina Kannada.Mittabail Yamunakka exposes the fluid and overlapping boundaries of place. Juxtaposition between a past and present Tulunad is the strategy adopted for its fictional mapping. Tulunad’s spatial history in the colonial period is placed against the same in the postcolonial period.Cultural geographic reading will reveal the relative nature of the dominant values and preferences inscribed in the fictional geography.The spatial consciousness that the novel shares is that of a dynamic place ever-evolving.What the novel presents is not a static place, but a dynamic place ever evolving and emergent. The place and places in Mittabail Yamunakka are fluid entities, owing to their ever changing-nature and ever shifting boundaries. The lived space of Mittabail Yamunakka is at once decided by the myths, fossilised customs, domestic happenings, varied social-relations, events of nationalist nature, colonial encounters, and historical occurences. This study also highlights economic exploitation enacted through the caste-driven and gender-driven social practices depicted in Mittabail Yamunakka. Incorporation of a political vision in the critical framework has unravelled the embedded web of hegemonic power relations evolving over time.