The Ecological Impacts in the Select Novels of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

The word Eco Criticism was coined in 1978 by William Rueckert. Cheryll Glotfelty, one of the chief originators in the study de nes Eco Criticism as, “the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment”. Many Indian writers like Raja Rao, R.K.Narayan, Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, and Arundhati Roy contributed considerably to eco criticism. Chitra Banerjee uses the diverse basics of nature in the rst novel, The Mistress of Spices. She makes use of aquatic life as the setting. Indian Spices are entwined in the novel, used by Tilo skilfully to cure and restore to health, the Asian community in Oakland. Nature is presented in the full cycle of creation, preservation and destruction. In the second novel, The Palace of Illusions she presents man as self-centred and how he surpasses Nature. The Palace of Illusions is a re-reading of the Mahabharata, from an Eco critical standpoint. She censures men’s ego and insatiable greed resulted in the destruction of both his kind and nature in the War of Kurukshetra. This present paper aims to study multifaceted ecological aspects in the myths of India from the perspective of The Mistress of Spices and The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni