The Wasteland

  “Feeding the Beast”: Development, Displacement, and the Marginalized in Orijit Sen’s The River of Stories In 1994, Orijit Sen published The River of Stories, widely regarded as India’s first graphic novel. At first glance, it is a vibrant, poetic account of the Narmada Valley and the people who live along the river. But underneath its artful storytelling lies a searing critique of modern India’s development model—a model that celebrates monumental growth while crushing those who stand in its path. The River of Stories is not just about a dam or a river. It is about who gets to decide what progress looks like, and at what cost. Through the lens of the proposed Sardar Sarovar Dam project on the Narmada River, Sen explores themes that remain disturbingly relevant even today: the exploitation of rural India to feed the ambitions of urban centers, the erasure of indigenous voices, and the way grand development projects become engines of systematic exclusion. The Cost of Development: W...

  Crossing Borders: Liminality and Linguistic Exclusion in Carol Ann Duffy’s "Originally" Carol Ann Duffy’s  Originally  is a haunting meditation on identity, memory, and the disorientation of migration. Drawing from her own childhood move from Glasgow to England , Duffy presents a deeply personal yet widely resonant account of displacement. Central to the poem are the intertwined themes of  liminality —the experience of being caught between two states—and  linguistic exclusion , the alienation that arises from being linguistically marked as "other." Through these lenses,  Originally  becomes more than a nostalgic recollection; it emerges as a powerful commentary on how language and place shape the self. Liminality: Between Two Worlds The poem begins in transit:  “We came from our own country / in a red room .”  Immediately, we are introduced to a liminal space—neither fully anchored in the past nor comfortably settled in the present. Th...

  Madness, Masculinity, and Class: Rethinking Tim the Ostler in The Highwayman Alfred Noyes' The Highwayman is a hauntingly beautiful narrative poem that tells a tragic love story between a dashing highwayman and Bess, the landlord’s daughter. It’s a poem known for its romantic language, atmospheric setting, and tragic climax. However, buried within its moonlit stanzas and galloping rhythm lies a darker, more complex commentary on class, desire, and the dangerous ways we mythologize love and masculinity. One figure central to this undercurrent—yet often overlooked—is Tim the Ostler. Tim is not the romantic hero. Nor is he the heroine. He appears briefly in the second stanza, described with grotesque imagery: “His hair like mouldy hay, He lurked and listened, his eyes were hollows of madness, his face like a peached road.” Tim is Bess’s secret admirer—or stalker, depending on how one reads it. He is also a symbol of working-class invisibility and resentment, portrayed in the poem no...