In India, rivers ebb and flow through our lives, from essential water to home electricity. Yet, they are relegated as extractable resources, exploited in the name of development. The River of Stories by Orijit Sen, dives deep through the cracks of this myopic and counterproductive system that engulfs the non-human world in its relentless pursuit of ill-planned advancement. This novel contextualizes the Narmada Valley Project and Narmada Bachao movement to highlight indigenous perspectives on Narmada/Reva as a cultural, spiritual, and ecological entity deserving of respect and protection. This paper applies the theoretical framework of material ecocriticism, which posits 'material ecocritical agency'—the innate ability of matter to influence itself and other matter—as a counternarrative to anthropocentric exceptionalism. This paper also investigates how, in this novel, Narmada as a material-ecocritical agent shapes itself, the broader ecosystem and the environment around it.
Sandra Krishna A. R. (Thu,) studied this question.