A Polyphonic Reading of ‘Titas Ekti Nadir Naam’ Representation of Women, River and Solitude: A Literary, Feminist, Sociological and Philosophical Analysis

Abstract

Adwaito Mallabarman’s ‘Titash Ekti Nadir Naam’ (Titash is the Name of a River) is not just a narrative portrait of a marginalized community—it is a polyphonic literary expression woman, river, and loneliness emerge as symbolic representations of an alienated existence. Themes such as motherhood, love, broken dreams, and the crisis of selfhood are intricately interwoven within a historical and ethnographic context. Characters like Basanti, Ananta’s mother, and Anantabala are not simply fictional creations—they are the silent embodiments of the self-effacing lives of Bengali women, shaped by centuries of patriarchal erasure. In the figures of Kishore and Ananta, one perceives the ruptures and existential anguish born of a crumbling patriarchal social order. As Sudhindranath Bandyopadhyay observes, the evolution of the Bengali novel can be seen as a parallel to the region’s socio-cultural transformation. In Bangla Upanyaser Kalantar, he notes the genre’s capacity to register the tension between personal longing and historical rupture (Bandyopadhyay, 1961). River and woman—these two stand side by side, as if mirroring each other: one as the carrier of cultural memory, the other as the reflection of existential void. Their co-presence unfolds as a lyrical metaphor—both nourishing and dissolving life in the same breath. This study explores the aesthetic sophistication, feminist undertones, sociological density, and philosophical inquiries embedded in the novel, where the tension between aspiration and attainment echoes the timeless failure inherent in the human condition. Therefore, ‘Titash’ becomes not just the name of a river—but the tribute to a disappearing world.