Volume III Special Issue VIII August 2023

Name of Author : Maria Rincy

Title of the paper : Narrating the Undercurrents of the Metropolis: Addiction, Marginality, and the Urban Archive in Jeet Thayils Narcopolis

Abstract: Jeet Thayils Narcopolis 2012 offers one of the most compelling literary portrayals of the hidden histories embedded within the modern Indian metropolis. Set primarily in an opium den on Shuklaji Street in Bombay, the novel reconstructs the social and cultural transformations that reshape the city from the 1970s to the early twenty-first century. Through a fragmented narrative that moves between memory, hallucination, and historical reflection, Thayil foregrounds the lives of addicts, sex workers, migrants, and gender nonconforming individuals who inhabit the margins of urban society. This article argues that Narcopolis functions as an alternative urban archive that records the experiences of communities excluded from official histories of the city. Drawing on urban theory and the concept of heterotopic space proposed by Michel Foucault, the article examines how the opium den operates as a counter-site within the metropolitan landscape. By analysing the novels representation of addiction, gender ambiguity, economic precarity, and spatial transformation, the article demonstrates how Thayil challenges nostalgic depictions of Bombay and constructs a complex narrative of metropolitan modernity. It further situates the novel within debates surrounding Dark India narratives in contemporary Indian English fiction, suggesting that Narcopolis does not merely reproduce images of urban despair but interrogates the structural forces of and social exclusion that shape marginal lives in the city.

Keywords : Dark India, Urban Archive, Cityscapes, Heterotopia, Marginality

DOI :

Page Number : 96-100