Performers of Overlooked Spaces: A Critical Reading of Prajwal Parajuly’s Short Stories, The Cleft and A Father’s Journey

Abstract

The study of space is not new and several critiques have done phenomenal work on it. One such scholar is Michel Foucault who has explained it in terms of six Heterotopias. These are spaces where norms of human behaviour remain suspended. Therefore, heterotopia is a physical representation or approximation of a utopia or a parallel space that contains undesirable factors making a real utopian space impossible. These spaces become a veritable stage where performers, irrespective of one’s sex, construct and modulate space. Many studies have been conducted based on the Foucauldian spaces and their impact on human psyche but certain unconventional spaces like the trunk of a car, the interior of a widow’s household have been overlooked. However, these spaces do exist and develop as a result of performance shown by people of different sexes and age. This paper is an attempt to analyse such overlooked spaces which become vibrant due to the interplay of human behaviour. Most of the scholarly studies on the literatures of the North Eastern states of India and India’s neighbouring countries like Nepal delve into history, culture, myths or politics, whereas the study of spaces has not been widely explored. Therefore, this paper focuses on the overlooked spaces which can be detected in the two short stories by a writer from Sikkim, a state from the North-Eastern part of India.