Ecofeminism is a branch of Ecocriticism that shows the relationship between ecology and feminism. It studies how the oppression of women is interlinked with nature. Naturally the “Land” is compared to a feminine gender as it is fertile and nurtures the life similar to a female who nurtures her family and finally owned by a male as a property.

Ecofeminism as a movement started in the 1970's and 80’s, specifically determines the connection between the domination of nature and the exploitation and oppression of women. Ecofeminism is a term popularized through various social movements and through activism against environmental destruction. The term Ecofeminism is coined by a French feminist Francoise d’ Eaubonne in the year 1974. Ecofeminists critiques the connection between patriarchal violence against women and nature.” Ecofeminism is a value system, a social movement and a practice but it also offers a political analysis that explores the links between androcentrism and environmental destruction” (Birkeland 18). According to Janis Birkeland, Ecofeminism is defined as the combination of value system, social movement and practice and also it tries to connect the problems encountered by women and the environment. . In other words, in the combination of feminism and environmentalism emerged Ecofeminism as “domination” is the key aspect that kinks both “isms' '. Ecofeminism on the whole projects the idea that life in nature is maintained through cooperation, mutual care, love and respect. Ecofeminism emphasizes respect towards nature and women.

Environment is viewed in countless ways and it is vital to consider our connection with nature. As a modern society, all the industrial practices separate humans from nature and as a result, biodiversity is lost\and people all over the world are suffering. The present world is facing eco-disasters and now is in danger. Increasing technologies and science are no means a solution to the prevailing ecological problems. It lies in the attitude of the people towards nature.

If seen through the lens of Ecofeminism, the root of revolution (Ecofeminism) dates back to the environmental activist movements especially the Chipko movement, which originated in Uttar Pradesh. This movement paved a way for other environmental activist movements and pushed us to rethink our model of development. Chipko movement means a movement against forest destruction and in detail explains how the Bishnois sacrificed their lives in order to protect the trees. These Bishnois became famous when the king of Jodhpur, Maharaja Abhay Singh ordered his soldiers to bring woods for his palace, when they tried to cut the trees a Bishnoi woman named Amrita Devi came forward and showed her protest through hugging a tree but the head of the soldiers did not have a heart to stop their mission and so ordered the soldiers to cut the trees. Amrita Devi hugging the tree uttered “Saving a tree is more valuable than one’s head.” As expected she with her three daughters were axed for encircling the trees.

Many people lost their lives in preventing the felling of trees, nearly 363 Bishnois got killed and after knowing this, Maharaja came directly to that village and apologized to the people for what happened and proposed a new rule that cutting of any green trees thereafter is prohibited. To honour and to pay tribute to those 363 Bishnois in that village they have a memory called “Khejarli” for the martyrs. Thus, women participated in a number of ecological movements to ensure and safeguard their relationship with nature.

Vandana Shiva an Indian scholar, Philosopher, Environmental activist and an anti- globalization author mentions the Chipko movement as the Women’s movement. Through many movements and actions, women marched forward with their aim to protect the trees from felling and the reason behind was sustainability. There has always been an eco-consciousness in an Indian psyche as our culture always gives importance to nature, seeing nature has something divine and also worshipping it as goddess. Vandana Shiva in her book Staying Alive quoted that, “Women in India are an intimate part of nature, both in imagination and in practice” (Shiva 37). Shiva expresses that women are often directly involved with nature, through their work and are the guardians of natural resources that are needed to sustain the family and community.

The village women had to collect food, firewood, fodder and water from the forests. So, they depend upon the forest resources for their livelihood. Deforestation made people travel on foot to collect food, firewood and water. Trees also serve as a refuge in an open field and help the women who work in the agricultural field to take shelter under it. Since women are concerned with the issue of sustainability and they support forest conservation. Women’s harmonious and non- violent relationship with nature made them participate in the Chipko movement. The Ecological movement led by the Bishnois and the Chipko movement are the best examples of ecological movements in India initiated by women. The former movements were led for the protection and conservation of nature. Women at the cost of their lives spontaneously took action to save the trees from felling.

Thus, here it is found that in this Ecological movement women took a leading role. The Bishnois led this struggle for the protection and the preservation of nature. Love, respect and care for the natural world are the fundamental principles of Bishnoi religion. Bishnois relationship with nature and their sacrifices makes a way for the Chipko Movement of 1973.

Vandana Shiva stated that the Chipko movement is “an extension of traditional Gandhian Satyagraha”. According to her, there is a relation between women and nature and expressed that they are related “not in passivity but in creativity and in the maintenance of life”. In India Nature is viewed as sacred and forests are worshipped as “Aranyani” or “The Goddess of the Forest”. Thus, the words of Vandana Shiva absolutes “women are embedded in nature, producing life with nature therefore taking the initiative in the recovery of nature”. Nature’s help has been clearly explained in this novel and how it helped in the sustainability of people through these lines, “Nature provided food for the livestock that grew strong and sturdy and yielded plenty of milk. The cattle also gave manure and dung cakes to burn along with wood in their kitchens, besides the excellent flooring material made from a smooth paste of cow dung” (Nambisan 89). Thus, nature provided nourishing livestock to the people who were dependent on it.

Kavery Nambisan is one of the women writers, who brings out the connection between women and the environment through her novels and one such novel is A Town Like Ours. Kavery Nambisan was born in the midst of aroma (coffee plantations) in Karnataka, Coorg. She studied there itself to become a doctor in St. John’s Medical College and then went to England but as she found that environment was not favourable to her she returned India to work in the rural sector. As a surgeon she carried her profession to all the remote countries who could not avail the medical calls. She won Tata Excellence Award for her contribution as a doctor in TamilNadu. At first she married Dr.K.R.Bhatt, who was her colleague at St. John’s and this marriage ended after completing 18 successful years with a daughter named Chetna. She then married Vijay Nambisan, a well-known poet and started her new life with him. Nambisan is now working as a medical advisor in Tata Coffee Hospital in Kodagu.

Kavery Nambisan stepped into the writing career through a magazine for women but she did not find a heart to continue that magazine and so managed to write stories for Children and that took her to a great level. She won an UNICEF CBT award for the Children’s story named “Once upon a Forest” which was later telecasted. Nambisan at first wrote under her original name Kavery Bhatt and her works include, The Truth, The Scent of Pepper (1996), Mango Coloured Fish (1998), On Wings of Butterflies (2002), The Hills of Angheri (2005), The Story that Must Not Be Told and A Town Like Ours (2014).

Mango Coloured Fish is a novel and it talks about a woman whose marriage is fixed with a man she does not love. This work shows how a woman is dominated and not allowed to make her own choices even in her marriage life. On Wings of Butterflies is set in the women’s movement in Independent India and tells the story of a group of women entering into politics. Nambisan’s recent book The Story Must Not Be Told was chosen for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2008 and currently she is working on a non- fiction titled “Why Should Health Be a Luxury Item?”.

Kavery Nambisan’s novels can be studied from an ecofeminist perspective..This paper focuses on how the protagonist Rajakumari is associated with nature and also about her psychological growth interlinked with the environment and with the other characters in this novel. The researcher will further critique the condition of Indian women under patriarchy and how anthropocentric activities in the development process affect nature and women.

A Town Like Ours being the seventh novel of Kavery Nambisan revolves around the character Rajakumari- a retired prostitute of the village Pingakshipura and narrates some life incidents of people whom she had met in her life. She is an expert in reading human’s character and behaviour. She is given a place or a room near the temple and she narrates the whole novel sitting near the small window, which she considers as her passport to the world outside. She sits there with a bidi in hand and then examines the situation outside. She also shares her own story of how she was pushed to be born as the third daughter in her family despite her two elder sisters. She explains how she has been harassed by the people around her and that affected her psychology.

Kumari’s family background was not so well and it often gave her many challenges to deal with. She became insane when her father itself called her “Chudayil” and this made her to think more about her life and came upon a chance to escape the family. She thought that this escapism would do great wonders in her life but all in vain. She has expressed the daily routine of a village girl which has been absolutely framed by the society. This can be proved through the following lines, “Like any village girl I worked in the fields, fetched water, gathered dung, stacked sun dried sheaves of paddy and fed the chickens” (Nambisan 25). Kumari, the narrator of this novel tries to explain the condition of village girls who were summoned to do their domestic works as their full-time job.

In Pingakshipura, there are two categories of people- older generation thinks of the varieties of paddy and other grains that were used to be cultivated in that village and the other- younger generation, who have tarred roads, schools and colleges. Sugantha Enterprises was a factory that is being developed in the village in the vast acre. Then one after the other many buildings started to be built in the village and so it was not like a village but a “busily rising town”. Nambisan has beautifully explained the transformation of the village into a town through these lines “the hill is being chewed by dozens of stone- breaking, stone drilling, stone- crushing, stone- powdering and hill- destroying machines for the construction of shopping complex” (Nambisan 9). These ways they destroy nature in order to make a profit out of it, this happens when man witness’s nature only as a resource to be profited.

Sugantha Enterprises provided canals for water but dug all the bore wells and poisoned it. There came a water scarcity because of this emerging factory and contaminated the soil with the chemicals that turned the colour of the people’s hair from black to white. This had an effect on women, who struggled to get married because of the white hair and on the other hand the factory started to contaminate the surrounding land which caused disturbance to the ecosystem. This became a serious issue in the village Pingakshipura and even people filed cases on this factory.

Sugantha Enterprises was a detergent factory set up on 1.35 acres of land and the people who sold their lands to the Sugantha boss were settled with enough money to buy a house and motorbikes on which to zoom in the country roads with a proud gaze. This showcases how people fall for materialistic things instead of natural wealth. They do not know the seriousness of selling the fertile land and so act stupidly with the only aim in their mind to achieve materialistic satisfaction.

The factory had its impact on the workers within two years as they have gone deaf because of the continuous heavy sound. A case has been filed on behalf of the workers stating that no precautionary methods were carried for the safety of the workers which lead them to lose their hearing capacity. The workers' family used to shout instead of conversing in a normal tone, this became usual for them and unusual for the others who were not affected by this factory.

The Sugantha Enterprises in order to keep their relationship with the workers, they set up a medical camp specially for the workers at free of cost but it is heartbreaking that for all the problems the doctors prescribed painkillers to suppress the pain of the workers. It is to be noted that the owner of the factory Sugantha, built his house three kilometres away from the factory in a safe zone and thus cunningly he escaped from all the problems but does not forget to enjoy all his money. One important thing is that the present owner of Sugantha factory is the then priest of the temple Pingakshipura, who had forgotten all his priestly duties and the red eye of the God Pingakshi.

Thus, business started to flourish in the village with the degradation of ecology. At first Sugantha factory started with the production of agarbatthis that turned even the smell of the streets into an artificial one- “The smoky, oily, cow and urine smells of our village were overcome by the delicate aroma of incense made from a blend of camphor, synthetic rose and the trusted sambrani” (Nambisan51).Natural scent of the village was turned artificial through these chemicals, and this was the starting point of the transformation of the village into a town.

Kodagu, a beautiful place with bliss of nature that had been invaded by trade, which had transformed the fertile land into commercial buildings. Malayalis were the first to enter Coorg and now it gave space for the Sugantha factory to expand its empire. The factory produced many things and one such was pesticide. Water was the only thing that became extinct or lacked and so literally the earth was raped for water. This is evident through the following lines, “The experts drilled into the bowels of the earth, going right through its heart...” (Nambisan 55). The digging of bore wells continued till the number became nine. Pesticides were used with water in order to get rid of the insects. They sprayed the pesticides on plants only with the intention of vanishing the insects but it made the soil lose all its nutrients. “Chemicals are the sinister and little recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world – the very nature of its life”.

Rachel Carson in her book The Obligation to Endure talks about the use of chemicals as pesticides which destroys the nutrients in the soil. Thinking that pesticides would kill all the insects that would destroy the plants and crops, man eventually destroys both human and nature. This in turn disturbs the food chain also. The narrator in the beginning itself mentioned the transformation of cow into a buffalo because of the contamination of the ecosystem.

The environment of the village got totally changed because of the over usage of chemicals that contaminated the air and it caused a great problem not only to the humans but also to the animals. One of the examples is the cow transformed into a buffalo, “She is one of the many wonders you will see here, the animal that was clearly a cow and is now a superb boulder of a buffalo” (Nambisan 6). There is also a sarcastic meaning hidden in this sentence, Cow is worshipped as an holy animal especially in the village by the people but here in this busily rising town the holiness couldn’t be found as it is replaced by industries and so this is merely a curse that has befallen them as the people not only moved away from nature but also from their divine power in Pingakshipura.

There occurs a dislocation of village because of the factory as the village started to lose all its power and fertility, people were also in a depressed mood thinks of how productive once was their land” Our village, that once was will be a memory no more fields of ragi, turmeric and mustard”, “for without the grassy fields what do the cows and goats feed on?” (Nambisan, 56). The people realise their mistake but did not take any step to stop that. Sugantha factory prospered well and the sales were success, this made the boss to arrange a meeting in order to show how he and his workers flourished because of the factory. Sugantha boss intentionally made people to believe him and “If Sugantha prospers, so will we” (Nambisan 56) was the thought lingered in their mind. Factory merely attracted all the people by doing them a favour at first and then it’s hard to believe that they had set a trap. First thing is that, they gained success by entering into people’s mind and unknowingly trapped them.

According to an Indian mythology, When a Brahmin longs for money he is hounded by the Gods and made to eat the money in the Naraka or else left in the Pathala where he is given a cold bed of coins to sleep. This concept can be applicable to Sugantha boss, who is also a Brahmin and concentrates mainly on money. “Money turns a man into a machine and deprives him of happiness”. Although he has enough wealth to enjoy his life, he does not seem to have happiness with him. Thus, he is referred as “This richest man in our town is also the poorest” (Nambisan 58). It is an irony that a man with all the wealth is referred to as the poorest, this is because of his disability to enjoy happiness.

The narrator’s depression made her strive for the protection of Mother Earth. She cries “Mother! Bhoomi Thayee! Are you there, do you really reside inside the earth? For she alone is everyone’s mother” (Nambisan 59). The narrator applies motherly quality to earth. These incidents can be taken as an example to prove how anthropocentric activities affect nature and women. With the invasion of technology and industries humans are moving away from the earth. This is evident by the following lines, “These changing habits mark the beginning of a distancing from mud and soil” (Nambisan 74). This statement explains that moving of humans towards technology is the starting point of distancing them from nature.

The narrator then talks about a childless couple Manohar and Kripa and goes on further only to explain how they paved the way for the misunderstandings that led them to get separated for the first time ever in their fourteen years of marriage life. Manohar worked as an associate professor in a college and Kripa was a maths teacher but had an interest in painting too. Mano does not like Kripa’s paintings and tells her not to paint at all. “My paintings are my responsibility” (Nambisan 70), these are the words uttered by Kripa and it shows that, through paintings women expressed their unexpressed feelings and found that as their responsibility. Thus they break down there.

Manohar being a short tempered man leaves the house and rents a room in the town, where he is accustomed to live with a Marathi Brahmin as a roommate. The Marathi Brahmin gives ideas to Manohar and also explains how to flatter women. He also makes Manohar understand the universal psychology of women. He says women have a weakness towards gifts like ornaments, dresses. He makes Manohar to clearly understand this concept. Then the Brahmin unveils the propaganda of Indian women. He says, “A Wife should be your loyalist, your defender and your security. Obedient are the most charming” (Nambisan 24). The above line clearly shows the attitude of men upon women. He lays down the above qualities for an Indian woman and gives his own life experience, he says, his wife’s thinking does not exceed his family. He assures confidently that his wife would not even have the heart to cross the family even in their thinking. This clearly shows how Indian women are controlled even in their thinking. “My wife’s thoughts are confined to chaste matters, to husband, children, the near and dear” (Nambisan 25). While narrating the story of Manohar and Kripa, she included her background also. She expresses her grief for ruining her education and spends time by regretting her past through connecting it with the present. She thinks that, she would have not been like this if she was educated. It shows that how education has been denied for women, this is evident through the following lines, “If I had carried on beyond the sixth class, I would not have ended up in this one- window room with a cow turned buffalo for a company” (Nambisan 34). The narrator regrets her past of not acquiring proper education.

Then moving into the story of Saroja and Sampathu, who were united deprived of their past. The narrator explains this sentence, Saroja had been married to a man in a big family and there she was not happy because of the torture she encounters through her husband’s brothers. She was also suppressed by her husband, when she happened to say “I am better than you” (Nambisan 39) and this happened while Saroja found herself well and a good swimmer, she was excited and tried to express her excitement which returned her with a great dismay.”I’m better than you, she laughs. Look, Vasu, I’m better than you! Never tell a man you’re better at anything, and if you know you are, spare no effort to hide the fact” (Nambisan 39). It became mandatory to hide all the facts and talents of women only because of patriarchy. Once her life gave a choice to murder her husband she did it and with all her courage and managed to escape from that place with her son. Then came to the city where Sampathu had a shop, Saroja saw Sampathu with a small girl. Thus they decided to stay in the same place and this is how they were united as a family.

Days passed and one day Sampathu opened up with his past to Saroja, he said how his sister’s daughter became his own daughter. He explained to her how poor their family was and how unexpectedly his sister delivered a girl child which turned her husband mad and killed his sister. It made Sampathu disappear with the child and he faced several problems while growing her. He named her Rukmini and owned a taxi with which they lived. Thus from then on they started to live unitedly as a family and Saroja took good care of both the children. Saroja and Sampathu promised each other to lead a good and healthy life. At the daytime Sampathu worked with his taxi and during the night Saroja turned the taxi into a tea shop and sold bajjis and bondas. Their domestic life gets affected, when Gundumani tries to trace his father and thinks of the tie that could connect his present life.

Then, Saroja got a job in the house of a doctor and worked there in the daytime. This made them to earn some money for their family, Saroja was also given a place where she and Sampathu built a house for themselves and it was her dream to live in a house but unfortunately she was asked to leave the job as they do not need a helper in their house, so Saroja with all her things got ready to leave.

Her dream also got diminished along with this, the author compares this situation of Saroja to a pumpkin plant that had started to grow and climb the house but unfortunately it withered likewise when Saroja had started to climb despite all her problems with the support of the house where she joined to work but unfortunately she was deprived of the support and so her life was as miserable as the pumpkin plant. This shows the eco and feminist concerns of the author which can be called together as Ecofeminism. The lines which showcases this concept were, “Her pumpkin plant which had started to climb the bamboo poles supporting the house has already started to droop, its palm sized leaves have lost their moorings and withered” (Nambisan 86),

In the author’s style, the life of Saroja and life of Sampathu’s sister is explained in a sentence, “Saroja gives birth to a male and lives, while another young woman delivers a female child and is punished with death” (Nambisan 160). It also delivers a sarcastic meaning that, only women who give birth to a male child survive and a woman who gives birth to a girl child suffers throughout her lifetime even from her birth. Saroja then had an encounter with a man called Devaraya, the then Vice President of the panchayat. Saroja when left alone in her taxi cum house happened to hear about Devaraya from whom she can get some land so that they can build a home there. During these years Sampathu had saved quite a sum of money in the bank and Saroja thinks that can be used to buy the land. Devaraya was a cunning person from behind as he acted in every situation very cleverly, to be precise he had a plan for everything and he did everything with a purpose. Saroja decides to get help from him and so goes to meet him but an arrogant Devaraya expects to quench his lust from her, this becomes a problem for Saroja to fulfil her wish. “He covets power as much as he lusts for the radiant blackness of Saroja’s skin” (Nambisan 161).Saroja had only one dream throughout the novel and that is to own a home for themselves and that could even be a place with the roof, all she wanted was a home to sleep rather tired of their taxi. Saroja might think that they suffer from identity both in their family and also of not getting a permanent place to live. She desired to live in a house like all the others live beside them and her only dream in life was that.

Of all the cases, women are the one to get affected as in Manohar and Kripa, Kripa is denied from her paintings and of Saroja and Sampathu, Saroja had escaped a terrifying past, murder of her husband. The reason behind this murder was the torture undergone by Saroja by her brothers in law. At last the narrator left the story with an open ending whether Kripa and Manohar will join? And will the family find that girl Rukmini?

Many Indian concepts were found in this novel; one thing is that Sampathu was born in a wealthy village which had all the fortunes. Sampathu’s family also lived there with plenty of natural wealth but with the exception of money. He from the childhood itself started to work in the fields and was a good young farmer like his father. Many Indian parents’ thought would be, if they had two or three sons they wanted a son to be with them till their death and such was the case with Sampathu also, they wanted Sampathu to be with them till their end.

His parents were pleased; it is always good to have a son inducted into farming at an early age. With one son in the police and the other in the army, they were happy that the youngest son would be near at hand when they were old and infirm (Nambisan 89).

Another concept of Indian parents was, they should marry a girl of their family immediately when she attains puberty and they followed this as a custom.” A girl must be married within six months of having flowered, that being their outer limit” (Nambisan 90). On the other hand, men do not have such rules to get married at an early age, they set all of their concentration upon women and their only aim is to suppress women and to have them under control.

Then the author brings out the Indianness of the society on women, in village women are allowed to wear only saris and that too she should cover her face when she encounters another man other than her husband. This is evident through the following lines; A married woman must wear a sari even when she sleeps. “The sari being six yards long is enough to cover modesty, which includes the face when she has to appear before any man other than her husband” (Nambisan 90). Thus, women were deprived of freedom from all the sides of the society and are likely to be controlled in all walks of life. These were some of the Indian concepts explained.

Kavery Nambisan is a writer whose heroines succeed in maintaining a complete balance in life by asserting their individualism within the boundaries of social bondages. Nambisan’s novel highlights her desire, efforts and failures of the Indian society. She has witnessed both tradition and modernity and is sure about presenting only the tradition. Though her heroines are modern they are bound by tradition in society. She comes to the conclusion that Indian women are different from the westerners.

Nambisan’s depiction of women’s world is authentic, realistic and credible. Nambisan writes with the aim to connect people with her characters so that they could feel pain, sorrow and all the emotions of the characters. The main concern of all her writings includes women and nature and each of her stories depicts the family relations. She covers all the aspects of women like modern, tradition, career oriented, and self sustained and middle class married women. She weaves her story with one of these aspects instilled in her character and knowing the sensible side of women, she introduces them as mother, sister, wife or daughter. Nambisan’s writing not only portrays all of these but she connects herself with the character through her search for identity.

The Female characters of Kavery Nambisan reveal the presence of a definite quest for a true self identity. Kavery Nambisan’s women centred novels and short stories give us a psychological insight into the writing of women’s mind; especially one belonging to the typical Indian background. Nambisan examines the emotional world of women and gives voice to them. Another thing is that Nambisan’s writing always coincides with nature and women.

Many contemporary Indian novelists concentrated on depicting the external aspects of life basically in rural India. Nambisan tries to examine the dialectical relationship between the internal and external aspects of life. The fiction of Kavery Nambisan is relevant to all times because she writes about the predicament of modern man. She beautifully swims into the woman's mind and explores her inner psyche. Literature for her is not a means of escaping reality but an exploration and inquiry.

Nambisan, when compared to other authors, focuses mainly on the exploitation of women and nature and it can be felt through her works. So she basically has concern over the arising environmental problems and the suppression of women in all walks of life and her novels are a kind of awareness to people in order to make them realise, what they have done to nature. Her novel makes the readers step out from their daily busy routine for a second and it helps in feeding the reality of life to them. Nambisan must be appreciated for creating such a beautiful novel. It has the power to give beautiful insights to the readers as the narration was in a natural way.

Janis Birkeland in his book Ecofeminism, “We see the devastation of the earth and her beings by the corporate warriors, and the threat of nuclear annihilation by the military warriors, as feminist concerns”. This statement explains that humans can witness the destruction of the earth and here the author has mentioned the earth with a feminine gender and through industrialization and through the chemicals that are pumped into the environment through various ways and this thought is more like how an ecofeminist concerns about the earth and her beings (people). It is to be noted that whatever the trouble humans may make to the earth, it remains passive and this itself unveils motherly quality of the earth. The earth survives with all the troubles and wounds that humans create to it. Research has proven that 80% of global climate refugees are women. Women are the ones who contribute themselves wholly towards the environmental problems as they have more concern over nature more than men.

The disconnection between man and nature leads to an ecological crisis. “Deep ecologists reason that man’s failure to identify and empathize with the rest of nature results from the way he experiences or visualizes the world” (Birkeland 29). Janis Birkeland in his book Ecofeminism states that the failure of human- nature relationship was because of how man looked upon nature. Man identified nature only with the power he had and failed to identify it with compassion and love. This has become the first and foremost reason for the prevailing environmental problem.

`Kavery Nambisan had concentrated not only about women but also about nature, she explicitly delivers her concern for women but has an inward connection towards nature that she explains indirectly and fortunately she has found the interconnection between women and nature and expressed this concept through her writings. Nambisan being the Indian author had experienced all the problems that could encounter women and so she is an expert in expressing her experienced feelings.

The narration of this book makes the readers feel like sitting with an old lady who tends to share her grief along with the story of the village which undergoes a change and the main thing is that her narrative grabs the attention. Nambisan has a free flow in writing and her narrative was in a very natural way that attracted many of the readers. Nambisan is happy about the progress but laments about the loss that encounters with the transformation. The whole village, Pingakshipura is being brought to life through Nambisan’s writing. Nambisan takes the readers again with great sensitivity and fierce clarity, into the heart of rural and small-town India and into the lives of everyday people, where everything is extraordinary. She pens this novel with the surface and deep layered narrative. The words she used brought the town to life and reality.

On the whole, A Town Like Ours is a novel narrated only by a woman and the whole story is seen from her point of view. She explains the immediate transformation of her village into a town and unveils some people’s story which fills the rest of the novel. In a nutshell, the whole novel talks about the transformation of a village into a town through industrialisation which suppresses nature and on the other hand talks about the reality of women who were also suppressed by men in the name of patriarchy. Both talk of suppression and it is proved that suppression of women is suppression of nature and they are intertwined.

It is true that a village needs to be developed but not in these terms. The ecosystem of the village should not be affected in terms of development. The people should ensure this fact as they themselves get affected by these development activities later, especially women. The food chain also gets affected and this event could lead to a catastrophic destruction of nature and human beings. Thus the liberation of nature is the liberation of women.

The problems of the environment are increasing day by day and it has no other solution rather than binding and supporting nature. There are many problems that affect the environment and the problems such as global warming, pollution etc which have no particular remedy rather than to love nature and to reduce the use of technology. Technology and industrialisation takes humans away from the tradition and especially nature.

The recent demolition by fire in the Amazon forest can also be taken as an example as the environmentalists says, the fire had first been lit by the local farmers and cattle herders and the reason behind was to inherit the vast area of that forest for their use, unfortunately the fire had spread and demolished most of the huge and dense forest. When analyzed keenly, the root cause for this destruction was man and his idea to utilize nature rather than to protect it. This incident can also be taken as an example for anthropocentric activity which disturbs nature. Man here had only the aim of capturing the land with his power and it has now changed into a big issue. This is an attitude of man showing his power over nature. More than half of the Amazon forest had been burnt and it might bring many problems to the humans on earth as without much trees, the earth gets heated up and its effect can be seen through many ways such as melting of the glaciers and this on the whole projected as Global warming.

This is a biggest issue when compared with recent years and this has been called the International Environmental Disaster as Amazon is the world’s famous rainforest which helps in cooling the earth’s temperature. It has a vital role in bringing rain to the earth and also helps earth to lessen its temperature. It can be regarded as the foolish act of man who had decided to get rich with the utilization of the forest because it helps only the rich people and the poor stay poorer and humans need to be ashamed as he runs behind the materialistic world not at all concerned about nature.

The researcher has linked the twin concerns of women and environment. It is necessary to love nature and to lend a supporting hand because as human beings each and everyone has the responsibility to protect nature on one side and women on the other. People should change from anthropocentric perspective to ecocentric way of life. From all these problems it can be understood that when nature gets suppressed, it suppresses humans also, especially women.

References.

Anantharaman, Latha. “Rustic Vignettes.” The Hindu, 4 Oct. 2014, The Hindu.com/books/literary-review/a-town-like-ours-bookreview/article6471254.ece.

Birkeland, Janis. Ecofeminism: Linking Theory and Practice. Temple University Press, 1993. "Books and Conversations–Writing About Reading and Speaking, 7 May 2018, booksandconversations.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/a-town-like-ours-bykavery-nambisan/. Accessed 6 Feb. 2020.

Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Mariner Books, 2002.

"Historian: Republican Push to Replace Obamacare Reflects Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America."Democracy

Now!www.democracynow.org/2017/6/29/republican_push_to_replace_obamacare_reflects. Accessed 10 Feb. 2020.

Mies, Maria. From the introduction to Ecofeminism. Zed Books, 2014.

Nambisan, Kavery. A Town Like Ours. Aleph Book Company, 2014.

Shiva, Vandana. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. Zed Books, 1988.