Poetics and Politics of Literary Cartography: Secular Allahabad in Neelum Saran Gour’s Invisible Ink and Requiem in Raga Janki

Abstract

This article intends to critique the poetics of “literary cartography” and politics behind it through close analysis of Neelum Saran Gour’s representation of the city of Allahabad (recently renamed Prayagraj) in Invisible Ink (2015) and Requiem in Raga Janki (2018). Mapping of spatio-religious experiences in Gour’s fiction connotes that literary cartography is an emerging alternative field that can generate topographical knowledge visualizing intangible spatial ethos. Therefore, place becomes an important interdisciplinary construct to examine sociocultural and religious spaces through literary imagination. The preamble of the Indian constitution emphasizes secular ethics, which is currently debated as in a state of crisis. Rereading Gour’s narratives within and beyond the adaption of a topographic and figurative framework of literary cartography infers that such “mapping” of spatiocultural experiences can help in establishing and sensitizing a secular ethos across genres and geographies.