Negotiating the Camaraderie and Conflict in Human/ Nonhuman Animal Relationships: A Select Reading of Dhruba Hazarika’s Luck
Abstract
There exists a proclivity to attribute human beings with the traits of animals, often to connote something derogatory. The endowment of human beings with reason ostensibly distinguishes them from other animals. Though fundamentally human and non-human animal lives coexist, the paper stresses on the species fixity and dovetails the two as autonomous entities, thereby charting the dynamics existing between them. This paper endeavours to examine the representation, articulation and politics of the relationship shared by humans with non-human animals in select short stories of Dhruba Hazarika’s Luck (2009). Instead of stressing on a particular cataclysmic eco-disaster, the text succinctly encapsulates familiar encounters between humans and non-human animals, raising ethical and ecological concerns that conjure a ubiquitous appeal.
Keywords: human, nonhuman animal, nature, environment
When animals behave like humans or when humans behave like animals, don’t be surprised because in every animal there is a human and in every human there is an animal! -M. M. Ildan
Akin to humans, the nonhuman animals have ubiquitously featured in literature since antiquity, evident in the beast tales, fairy tales, epics etc. Though they appear physically, they function as allegorical manifestations of human traits and their world. They materialize in fictional work as minor figures coming in contact with the human characters. However, they have also been adopted as subjects and protagonists in themselves, in their skin, stripped of any anthropomorphic representation. Dhruba Hazarika’s collection of short stories, Luck (2009), projects a simple, yet honest rendition of the changing dynamics between humans and nonhuman animals. They adhere to the naturalistic portrayal of animals and uphold familiar affairs that are universally relatable.
Dhruba Hazarika (1956-) occupies a significant space in the Northeast Indian Anglophone literary canon. His popular works include A Bowstring Winter (2006), Sons of Brahma (2006), and Luck (2009). His writing is saturated with an arresting negotiation of the troubled and the pristine, home and the wild, people and animals, humanity and cruelty. The tryst and strife existing between humans and the non-human animal lives form a salient constituent in his oeuvre. Moreover, instead of posing as mere backdrops, the non human world fashion as primary characters in his texts intricately weaved with their human counterparts. This paper endeavours to examine the representation, articulation and politics of the relationship shared by humans with the non-human animal lives in Dhruba Hazarika’s Luck. The sundry accounts of the text deals with the non-human animal world and in turn the enigma of the human soul and the complexities of human actions. The paper shall engage in the selected four narratives: “The Hunt”, “Luck”, “The Leopard” and “Ghostie”.
In the opening story, “The Hunt”, the diegesis assumes a semiotic status between a human being and an animal. The text deals with a group of individuals on the hunt for a deer in the wild. It depicts the unmitigated supremacy of humans over the non-human world owing to its reason, agency and scientific advancements. The pristine natural habitat of the animals in the text is disrupted by the incoming of humans, vehicles and arms. The four individuals venture into the forest intending to kill a deer at the wee hours of the morning. However, the thrill and sport of the action is diluted at the discovery of the shot deer impregnated with three foetuses. The doctor in the group undergoes an emotional turbulence since he too had lost his wife during childbirth. The moving image of the doctor lying on top of the slain doe strikes an empathetic chord and posits that lives are non-hierarchical. He is hence enlightened of the same vulnerability that living beings share, in this context the humans inflicting pain on the non-human species. However, Hazarika projects the troubled yet organic process of the doctor who has a tragic past but does not hinder from exercising cruelty on his non-human counterparts. It is ironical that his profession of saving lives is only limited to human beings. It is imperative to contemplate if the remorse and grief would have surfaced had the doe not been pregnant. Nataram, the driver however does not implicate a similar conscience of guilt as he continues to skin the doe. The story also exposes the rampant poaching of animals prevalent in the region: “You couldn’t carry the doe in one piece to Diphu. The guards at the check-post at the 6th mile would nail you for less” (Hazarika 2). In The Grasshopper’s Run (2009), an old Naga says that in contrast to the population of the hills who hunt for food for their families, the others hunt for fun. According to Huggan and Tiffin, the trajectory of human civilisation unveils the way humans have been pushed to the peripheries, and the strategic precarity unleashed on select sets of people, synonymous to a treatment “like animals”. Hence, when those trials are condemned it inadvertently illuminates the idea that “it is acceptable to treat animals cruelly, but not to treat people as if they were animals” (135). Hazarika in “The Hunt” upholds the sacred and indigenous tradition existing between the humans and environment as they offer one of the deer’s ears on a dry leaf to the forest gods. In a similar vein, the end suggests their anticipation of the forest gods to forgive them of their action.
In the titular story “Luck”, the author delineates a reciprocal relation between the narrator and his tamed pigeon. The text opens at the coerced stay of natural life in the domestic realm. The spectacle of the transaction of animals at the market insinuates their facile commodification and in adjunct, the convenient human proprietorship. The narrator’s past is marked by a lack of pets, as they retrieved their freedom abruptly through escape or death. The narrator failed to tame a mongrel as it cried for help when boxed and escaped the very moment it was let loose “seeking his own home” (Hazarika 6). This exhibits the discrete idea of home for humans and animals: “the sparrows we caught; the parrots, the chicken, the ducks and the rabbits that we bought. Like guests who had been forced into being guests, or people who has strayed into camps that cut off their freedom, they stayed awhile, enlivening the compound, and then, when the spell came, they were gone and there was nothing you could do about it” (6). Pramod K. Nayar in his book Ecoprecarity (2019) observes that animals were inherently a part of human everyday. The incoming of industrialisation and mechanization caused many of them to be displaced from “the street, the farm and the home”, and hence, animals gradually turned as pets (4). The narrator believed his house is cursed since animals and birds, and even humans did not live long. However, the prolonged stay of a pigeon at his house debunked the persisting notions. The story is a poignant rendition of a bond shared between the narrator and Luck, the pigeon. The text also meditates on loneliness of humans and the adjunctive yearning for companionship: “It is good to feel wanted” (Hazarika 16). The narrator’s personal encounter with loneliness arouses compassion towards Luck, and he brings home more pigeons as he didn’t want Luck to be lonely, that is, undergo the same fate as him. His one-sided conversations and apprehension of Luck’s movements grants a humanlike attribute to the latter: “the next morning the young ones had gone...Luck looked down at me, gurgling out his sadness. I understood” (12). It evokes the spirit of the Romantic poets that established a profound connection with nature and its different entities. Luck progresses from a sulky demeanour to assume a position of “the man in the house” (14). The camaraderie evolving between the two is evident as the narrator feels a “sinking feeling of immense loss” (15) at the thought of losing Luck, otherwise missing for the escaped pigeons. Though Luck undergoes mating and subsequent fathering, the solitary narrator too bears paternal instincts towards Luck, evident in his cradling and comforting his wounded body. The return of Luck after months to the narrator in his bruised state exhibits a reciprocal relation, marked by a sense of security entrusted by a non-human species to a man. Luck’s final flight from the narrator’s house however denotes the innate tendencies of the wild. The story is analogous to a biographical account of Luck with his transformation “his daughters and sons, grandsons and two great grand-daughters” (12) that fills the void in the life of the narrator. The story also projects the futility of human endeavours to restrict natural life to suit its own purposes.
In “The Leopard”, the narrator portrays the laws of the jungle. In contrast to human beings who hunt for sport and experiencing the exotic, the hunts by animals are steered by hunger. The food cycle is organically processed with the predatory animal and the prey. The narrator along with his two friends on a climb encounters a leopard feeding on their lost cow. The story is set before the advent of acute deforestation, and unplanned and chaotic human settlement: “This was in the days when our hills were thick with trees-large, wide trunks and tree-tops so leafy that when it got really hot you could rest for a while in the shade and carry on, refreshed” (Hazarika 29), connoting its therapeutic value. As described vividly, the hill was a natural habitat for foxes, porcupines, snakes, leopards etc. The human-animal conflict as a recurring phenomenon reifies in the story. The hegemonic spirit of human beings is thwarted the moment the boys witness the leopard: “...we were running blindly down the scarp, our senses magnified by a fear more vast and wild than anything we would ever again feel in our blood” (32). The sight of the leopard engendered a “strange and terrible splendour” (32), adjunctively with a sense of fear. The story also exhibits the illusory triumph of human beings over the animal world, as the villagers kill the leopard on its way to hunt cattle from sheds. The spectacle of a villager discovering two starving cubs later underscores the way human beings have invaded the spaces of other species to suit their personal needs. It is hence ironical that human beings suffer and adjunctively complain of the wildlife hampering their lives and living. Plumwood refutes the existence of humans and animals in separate realms, and opines that they both exist in both realms at the same time. The humans often treat the predatory animal agency with authority and aspire to “impose human moral values upon the nonhuman, reinforcing the human supremacist illusion upon both worlds” rather than discerning and upholding the coexistence (Ohrem and Calarco 95).
The story “Ghostie” delineates the abject treatment of the eponymous character, a stray dog, at the hands of neighbourhood boys. The tale mirrors the quotidian scenario of the streets, of humans displaying their unprecedented might over animals. The young narrator along with his two friends, Jycbo and Deep encounter a stray dog and name him Ghostie, owing to his sudden presence in their neighbourhood. Ghostie displays no signs of threat, but is subjected to the abuse of the three boys and others, thereby causing minor to serious physical injuries. The atrocities meted out on Ghostie are initiated by Jycbo by hitting a ball on his nose sans any excuse: “This was the first time. Later, there would be other missiles, more damaging than a football” (Hazarika 29). The narrative fashioned as a reflection on the narrator’s past also brings in justifications to nullify the critical enquiry of innate human tendencies to evoke violence on life forms considered inferior to him. The cruelty on Ghostie by the young boys attempts to escape liability as “young boys...are condemned to walk the ragged line between innocence and evil, occasionally being casually cruel as only children can be. It’s a rite of passage. Maybe that is what explains what we did to Ghostie” (69). The problem is rooted in the ease of acceptance by the society of this menacing attitude of children on the pretext of childish traits. In fact, they are driven and fuelled by similar activities precipitating by the adults, evident in the case of Pyn. Ghostie is hit by Pyn, a plumber, by a stone “the size of his fist” to avenge the loss of his rooster, despite possessing no evidence of Ghost consuming it. The “strange” feature of Ghostie’s unaffected demeanour despite the physical blows invites curiosity and interest. The narrator too splashes boiling water on Ghostie that he could “never, to this day, been able to explain why he (I) did that” (74). The penultimate attack on Ghostie contours the fragile human ego and its constant aim to conquer the other. Sanjay, a newly arrived resident of the neighbourhood, learns the strange characteristic of Ghostie and in an attempt to extract a reaction from him as an act of submission shoots at an eye of Ghostie with his air rifle. The hegemonic masculine attribute of unleashing pain on others and concealing one’s own is reified in Sanjay and the narrator. Sanjay further accuses the boys of their inability to prove Ghostie’s pain: “The fucker feels pain! You sissies had no balls, no balls, that’s all!” (79). In a parallel vein, the narrator act of locking himself in the bathroom to escape his friends’ gaze on his emotional self conforms to the common equivalence of exhibiting emotions with weakness. The narrator realizes his crime and seeks to help the injured Ghostie but the end hints at the latter’s death.
The literary rendition of the common affairs and unpretentious language is what conjures the sui generis essence of the episodes in the text. Hazarika also grants equal gravity to the human and animal characters in his book. The unethical and irresponsible behaviour towards animals counter the civilizational “advancements” human beings have hitherto heralded and promoted. The surge in anthropocentric outlook has deemed not just the non-human animals as inferior but the other entities of the environment to adopt a back seat. The wanton disregard and insensibility towards them and the insidious distancing from nature emit inklings of serious consequences in future. The text posits the brutal activities of humans towards other life forms, but also depicts that the latter allows the former an insight to the self. Thus, apart from nature in general, the human nature in the text is subject to perusal. Gandhi has rightly said that “the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”. However, Hazarika’s text surprisingly has no apparent women agency, inviting deliberations on eco-feminism. The stories in its unique way draw on the contact materializing between humans and nonhuman animals that give forth an ineffable tenor. The discussed accounts though rooted in the Northeast India engender a pervasive environmental concern.
Works Cited: