Disaster, Disease, and the Uncertainty of Recovery in Corrosive Community: Tracing the “Slow Calamity” in Ambikasutan Mangad’s Swarga: A Posthuman Tale

Catastrophes of the Anthropocene are widespread, multifactorial, and subtle, eluding the purview of the government, the media, and conventional frameworks of disaster. Communities suffering from the impacts of such unrecognized forms of ecosystem collapse inhabit detrimental environments and lack sustained support and caring practices. This grim reality underscores the need for disaster studies to integrate transdisciplinary approaches for anticipating, identifying, and mitigating these complex calamities. Depicting such an anthropogenic cataclysm, Ambikasutan Mangad's Swarga: A Posthuman Tale portrays the plight of an ignored community experiencing loss of ecosystem, altered environmental sensibilities, and physical deformities resulting from endosulfan chemical pollution. Through an ecocritical analysis drawing on Reidar Staupe-Delgado's concept of "slow calamity," this article examines how the society of Swarga deteriorates into a "corrosive community" where the casualties are transformed into ecological patients. Further, it observes that due to the moribund existence of the diseased inhabitants, the environmental sensibility of "biophilia" is undermined by the "Anthropocene disorder" (Timothy Clark). Considering the improbability of recovery in times of slow calamity, the article concludes by emphasizing the potential of the emerging field of Planetary Health to inform and strengthen disaster management strategies.