Rethinking Ecology: Myth, Meter and Measure in Jungle Nama

This paper offers a depth psychological reading of Amitav Ghosh's poem Jungle Nama (2021) through mythic and imaginal interpretations. Ghosh's poetry, illuminated by Salman Toor, shows how ecological consciousness is inspired by the arts - an interweaving that is a longstanding feature of Indian literary tradition. Ghosh's adaptation of a regional myth into English in a reinvented meter is not about artistic craftsmanship alone, but the psychological underpinnings of the myth, as well. The author draws attention to the endangered ecology of the Sundarbans, a complex forest and water-world that, in some ways, is the main character of the story. Ghosh's approach to climate change is distinctive, as his art is inspired by living histories and cultures. The myth's locale, the mangroves of the Sundarbans, gives the poem a pastoral flavour and reflects, like forests everywhere, the mutuality and inherent tensions between animal and human domains. This environmental context highlights the duality and opposition within the psyche; the notion of twoness is reiterated in the poem in interactions amongst the various characters. The tiger as an anthropomorphic figure resonates with Jung's notions about the anthropoid psyche in the human personality. The essay shows how literary, ecological and psychological strands of imagination intertwine in Jungle Nama, and how art through story, verse and image extends our understanding of climate change.

Rethinking ecology in Amitav Ghosh's Jungle Nama: a Story of the Sundarban1 (Ghosh, illuminated by Salman Toor 2021) evokes the familiar - greed and narcissism at the core of human predicaments. In a seemingly ingenuous folktale of a tiger and a forest goddess, set in the deltaic wetlands