Page - 29 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/02

Playing with Words, Worlds, and Images | 29www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/2, 15–30 theme of your books is ecology, nature, other-than-human animals. Could you tell us more about why this is so central for you? Patil: Aranyaka does it most explicitly, but all my work stirs with a strong sense of the spatial, a sense of responsibility towards, and connection with, nature. Kari is very alert to the decay in the metropolis around her, the smell, the polluted water. There is an underlying anxiety about the state of the crumbling urban world. In Adi Parva, a river is the narrator. In Sauptik, the river is still in the backdrop, now gone dark and oily. Sauptik articulates the war between human inhabitation and the forest. I grew up in Goa, which is as close to nature as one can get in India. This is part of my life and it is important to me. I have now started living much more in Kātyāyanī [the protagonist of Aranyaka] territory. It has been my own journey to move from an intellectual concern for ecology to a lived experience of being close to the ground. One thing I always struggle to explain to my European friends is that you really understand Kālī yuga [the last, and darkest, of the world’s four ages] when you live in India, you really know apocalypse. When you live in Europe, you feel immortal, like you deserve to go forth and multiply. Not in India, being here is a prophylactic. Dissolution is imminent here. Bornet: Amruta, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with us. This conversation has been so insightful and thought-provoking. One last ques- tion to conclude: can you tell us about your future projects? Patil: I am writing a book called The Sum of All Colours. It straddles India and Europe, it is an alternate ethnography that uses the language of art and colour, theory and eros. The book was meant to be a sequel of Kari, but it has its own mind. It’s been a bizarre, important year of stasis. My work has always been solitary, but I sought affirmation and resuscitation in physical escapes. But now there is no leaving. We’ll see what that does to the work. Bibliography Asimov, Isaac, 1991, Chronology of the World. The History of the World from the Big Bang to Modern Times, New York: HarperCollins. David B., 2006, Epileptic, New York: Pantheon Books. Galeano, Eduardo, 2010, Mirrors. Stories of Almost Everyone, trans. by Mark Fried, New York: Nation Books. Herbert, Frank, 1965–1985/2005–2019, Dune, 6 volumes, New York: ACE. Lutes, Jason, 2018, Berlin, Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly. Patil, Amruta, 2008, Kari, Delhi: HarperCollins India.