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This paper provides an analysis of Anosh Irani's novel The Parcel, with a particular focus on queerness and disease within the Hijra community of prostitutes in the tropical setting of Kamathipura, the notorious red-light district of Mumbai, India. The paper delves into the novel's nuanced portrayal of queerness, exploring how it intersects with the theme of disease within the tropical milieu. Extending the theoretical works of Elizabeth Outka on disease, and Erving Goffman on stigma to the queer tropics, the study explores how these elements interact and influence the lived experiences of the Hijra community. The paper highlights how the novel presents contagion and disease as a pervasive aspect of the characters' lives, shaping their experiences and identities. The tropical enclave of Kamathipura is examined for its role in compounding the challenges faced by the Hijra community, including health disparities and social stigma. This study contributes to literary scholarship on queerness and health in the Indian tropics, offering a deeper understanding of the realities faced by marginalized communities.

India has been swept by pandemics of plague, influenza, smallpox, cholera and other diseases. The scale and impact of these events was often cataclysmic and writers offered a glimpse into the everyday life of ordinary people who lost their lives and livelihoods and suffered the angst and trauma of mental, physical and emotional loss. This paper focuses on the devastation caused by pandemics especially in the Ganges deltaic plains of India. Through selected texts of 20th century Hindi writers – Munshi Premchand, Phanishwar Nath Renu, Suryakant Tripathi Nirala, Bhagwan Das, Harishankar Parsai, Pandey Bechan Sharma – this paper aims to bring forth the suffering and struggles against violence, social injustices and public health crises in India during waves of epidemics and pandemics when millions died as they tried to combat the rampant diseases.

In modern parlance, landscape can be understood in various contexts that range from urban and rural, to emotional and repressive, to revolutionary. The concept of landscape is thus an entanglement of nature and culture. It is simultaneously a spatial and mental entity and involves a temporal dimension (Tress & Tress, 2001). Through a close reading of Anita Desai’s novels Cry, The Peacock and Where Shall We Go This Summer, this paper investigates the environmental landscapes of the tropical Indian settings, and the psychological landscapes of the two female protagonists. The novels self-exploratory journeys of the central female characters Maya and Sita, bring forth the anguish of middle-class Indian women who live a life of lack, loss and longing in an oppressive patriarchal system that does not give them space to express themselves or be heard. Through these narratives, the paper examines how landscapes of the feminine psyche, landscapes of tropical India and landscapes of middle-class Hindu women present an ecofeminist quest for integration of self through nature.