Walking the Streets: Psychogeography and the Politics of Exclusion in Selected Works of Ruskin Bond

Abstract

Psychogeography involves the study of the interrelationship between the human psyche and the surrounding physical environment. Both as a theory and as a methodological tool, psychogeography can be utilized to understand and analyze how space – especially urban space as the centres of capitalism, consumerism, and authoritative control by capitalist forces – impacts our lives and our attitudes and becomes an integral factor in the formation of our sense of self and identity. Integral to psychogeography is the concept of walking, often referred to as the ‘dérive’, which signifies a sort of aimless drifting through the city streets with the objective of resisting the lure of capitalist consumerism while simultaneously re-centering the gaze to the street level to draw attention to those who populate the fringes and the margins of society and whose lives and stories have mostly slipped through the fissures of history. The article provides psychogeographical analysis of selected works by Ruskin Bond to show how his writings document not only the changing landscape of many of India’s cities and small towns due to the impact of modern capitalist urbanity but also how the development and evolution of the hill stations from the time of the British Raj have, time and again, reconstituted the dynamics of power and position based on notions of race, culture and other socio-political factors. Through Bond’s fictional and non-fictional accounts, it is thus possible to examine the politics of social exclusion and marginalization which characterizes not just urban spaces but human spaces in general, thereby bringing to the foreground issues of identity and belonging which are essentially intertwined with the spaces that surround us and which we inhabit.