At Childhood’s End: Trauma, Survivance, and the Healing Fantastic in Abhishek Majumdar’s The Djinns of Eidgah

Abstract

This essay explores how Abhishek Majumdar’s play The Djinns of Eidgah embraces the non-mimetic mode to capture the dyscatastrophe (Tolkien) in the valley – the loss of childhood, radicalization of youth, and the inconceivable brutality and violence. It will analyze how the play casts the radicalized youth as djinns, fantastical beings made of ‘fire, dust, and smoke’, who are caught in the liminal space between life and death, between captivity and freedom, much as the valley is. As the Djinns warn ‘not to expect reason from a world gone wrong’, the play too effectively uses the fantastic to depict the chaos and madness so unrealistic that it challenges the boundaries of the realistic parameters. The paper also examines the use of Dastaan tradition -- legends and stories to add a mythopoeic dimension to the narrative which signals the loss of innocence and a contrapuntal imagining of the past against the trauma of fractured and dislocated present while also presenting a trope for healing, resistance, and survivance.