https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i2.083
Drowsy Dispossession: Exploring Solastalgia through the ‘Sleepy Hollow’ Metaphor in K.R. Meera’s Kalachi
SUMI TP
Research Scholar
PG and Research Department of English
Amal College of Advanced Studies (Autonomous), Nilambur, (Affiliated to University of Calicut)
and
Assistant Professor
Department of English, MES Mampad College (Autonomous)
DR JAHFAR SADIQ P
Assistant Professor
PG and Research Department of English
Amal College of Advanced Studies Autonomous, Nilambur
(Affiliated to University of Calicut)
Abstract: K.R. Meera’s 2025 Malayalam novel Kalachi traces protagonist Fida’s strenuous journey to the remote Kazakh village of Kalachi—infamously known as “Sleepy Hollow”—to reunite with her ex-lover, Ijaz, imprisoned for an alleged physical assault of rape on a local woman. Sleep emerges as a compelling metaphor and recurring motif, manifesting as prolonged, incapacitating somnolence that reflects Fida’s tormented psyche and weakened body. This somnolent condition, drawn from Kalachi’s real-life “sleeping sickness” that happened between 2013 and 2015, results from high carbon monoxide levels in an abandoned Soviet-era uranium mine, compelling residents into days-long unconsciousness. This paper is an attempt to reframe this phenomenon as a defensive response to solastalgia—the “homesickness at home” coined by Australian professor and philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2005—caused by environmental degradation, political upheaval, and existential dislocation without physical migration. Fida’s journey, undertaken amid extreme conditions and the lingering COVID-19 crisis, confronts her guilt over misunderstanding and misjudging Ijaz, whose own “sleepy hollow” episode resulted in his crime. This paper analyses sleep as a somatic metaphor for solastalgia, linking the villagers’ mass inertia and Fida’s personal collapse to broader anxieties of ecological degradation and cultural and political uprootedness in postcolonial contexts. This study thus makes a deep understanding of how environmental angst induces psychic paralysis, focusing on constructing a vital framework for reading displacement in contemporary postcolonial Indian literature.
Keywords: Solastalgia, Sleepy Hollow, Environmental Displacement, Psychic paralysis, Postcolonial literature
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