The Postcolonial, Environmental and Ecological Perspectives in Haroun and the Sea of Stories Dhriti Shankar College

Ecological coordinates of environmental parameters surface persistently in Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories as markers of generic wellbeing. Although apparently simplistic, these motives are embedded in processes of cultural meaning-making the local implications of which might well be lost on a reader unfamiliar with the tropological groundwork that Rushdie invokes. Located among such competing tropes are the nonhuman living (and nonliving) beings dwelling in the planet Kahani. Butt the Hoopoe, for example, is worth our attention in this context, for it is an object which variously lays claim on conflictive epithets of vehicle/bird/bus-driver/machine etc., and occupies a liminal position as a result.

The Hoopoe can be read as a direct embodiment of what will be called a Vāhana in the Hindu mythological pantheon. A Vāhana denotes a being, typically an animal (mythological or real), that a specific deity uses as a vehicle. The twist that Rushdie injects here is that the Hoopoe is not a live being at all. Instead, interlacing the mythological with the modern technical world, the Hoopoe is made just an ingenious mechanical marvel invented by "P2C2E" (Processes too Complicated to Explain) of the Gup city. The mechanical bird...