An Eco-anarchism analysis of Manjula Padmanabhan’s The Island of Lost Girls

Abstract

Manjula Padmanabhan is a science fiction writer who started a new trend in Indian English novels writing in the 21^st century. She is a distinguished playwright, artist and fiction writer. She is known as India’s first woman cartoonist. The Island of Lost Girls (2015) is one of the most beautiful creations of Manjula Padmanabhan. The novelist writes in the tradition of dystopia of H G Wells and Aldous Huxley. The novel, The Island of Lost Girls, reflects many imaginary enclaves where gender based identities have been created on the basis of power play and sex ratio: male only and female only. Such enclaves are gendered in their construction: and define the identities, gender, sex and sexuality of the residents. Both of such enclaves are technologically equipped and have controlled natural means of production and development. All natural phenomena have been denaturalized and regulated with technologically produced artificial body organs and elements. In these enclaves all that is natural and ecological has been made artificial. Technology has destroyed ecological system of the enclaves where no natural growth takes place. Here, power politics defines pleasure, manners of dressing, development of body organs, sexual preference (most of the times, compulsive or forced), masculinity and femininity, homosexuality and heterosexuality, pervasiveness and alike.