The age of ‘climate fiction’: how Indian novels and cinema have spotlighted stark realities with more nuance than the West

In Janice Pariat’s latest novel, Shai’s story begins with a declaration — “to go back to where I came from — the wettest place on Earth”. No genre switch, this Works like Pariat’s, Amitav Ghosh’s The Living Mountain, and Kartiki Gonsalves’s film The Elephant Whisperers are constructing climate realities where the environment exists as a backdrop, a protagonist, but also as a vehicle for imagining a world beyond devastation. The rise of ‘climate fiction’ in the West almost designates climate stories to be a new genre, as if environmental degradation were a recent phenomenon. ”Joya JohnAssistant professor of literature, Krea University The focus of Western cli-fi on the individual, or one particular corporation as the ultimate ‘villain’ also means people fail to attribute responsibility to the big oil and gas corporations for fossil fuel emissions. In Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island, a character proclaims: “Sometimes, it seemed as though both land and water were turning against those who lived in the Sunderbans.” The future of the ecologically fragile Sundarbans and its 4.5 million inhabitants is entangled in loss and despair, as they struggle to withstand the ravages of climate change.