Corporeal Deviance and Narrative Power in Ashraf Hamsa’s Thamasha and Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People

Abstract

This paper is a simultaneous examination of deviant bodies in the Indian- Malayalam film, Thamasha(2019) written and directed by Ashraf Hamza and the Indian novel, Animal’s People(2005) written by Indra Sinha. It examines the body narrative within the given texts as subtle and enlightened space. It also explores body space in the world of commercial cinema as well as literary convention. The paths taken in the problematization of the subjects are similar to a great extent, as they project and circumvent the particular disfigurements and disabilities that they represent, through subjective and self -conscious choices. The narratives take on a series of subversions aimed at breaching the cycle of body prejudice and dominant gender perception. The discussion focusses on theorizing the idea of body image, body consciousness and objectification with respect to the narrative trajectories of the film as well as the novel, looking at the constitutive subject positions of the protagonists vis- a- vis the societal perceptions of an evolving postcolonial world and its history. An examination of the sequence of counter-narrative strategies, leading to the textual construction of agency of the deviant bodies presented, is attempted here.