Mirroring Narratives: An analysis of spatial representations in Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games

Abstract

With the rise of global, local and glocal movements, the questions of space have increasingly gained significance. Modern geographic studies underline the mythological, symbolic, perceptual and representational aspects of space. Consequentially postcolonial narratives exhibit a keen interest in reflecting and analyzing the hidden politics of spatial representations. Postcolonial Indian fiction too sheds light on the political nature of spatial representations. Vikram Chandra’ s novels exemplify such a theoretical turn towards the representing place and different modes of spatial representations. In Sacred Games, Chandra presents city as a text. Like any other text, city is composed of various sings working towards to communicate culturally significant meanings. The novel joins with the current trends in cultural geography that read landscape as a text. The novel also introduces a wide variety of spatial representations in order to bring to light their political nature. Chandra also seeks to underline the complexities involved in spatial representations.