Between the Lines: When the Forest Speaks Back- Animals in South Asian Literature

Published every Friday, Between the Lines is a weekly column by Namrata. This week, she talks about animals in South Asian Writing.

A tiger moves through the Sundarbans, half myth, half shadow. The tidewater rises around mangrove roots, and from the other side of the swamp, a bird calls, its voice thin and human in its ache. Somewhere in a city far from this wet wilderness, a stray dog noses through a heap of garbage; a crow watches from a parapet. In South Asian writing, animals are never just creatures of the wild or the street. They are metaphors, yes, but also neighbours, gods, ghosts, companions, and witnesses. They carry the scent of rain, the sting of guilt, the patience of survival.

To write animals in this part of the world is not to step outside human experience, but to look at it slant, through the eyes of what we fear, worship, and so often neglect.