Fragmented Consciousness and Marginal Realities: Memory, Madness, and Marginality in Arun Sarma’s Sri Nibaran Bhattacharya

Abstract

Among the dramatists who had been consistently striving to bring in new modes of expression in Assamese theatre, Padmashree Arun Sarma and Sahitya Akademi Winner, stands tall in the list with his inventive plays such as Jinti, Urukha Poza, Nibaran Bhattacharya, Purush, Ahaar, Siyonr, Kukur Nechiya Manuh etc. His play Nibaran Bhattacharya, is considered a significant mediation in contemporary Assamese drama, that is deeply engaged with themes of memory, madness, and marginality. The play, through its characters, highlights psychological breakdown and appeals audience and readers as well to consider it not simply as a personal tragedy but as a replication of collective ordeal and socio-political estrangement. In the backdrop of postcolonial Assam, the dramatist emphasises the historical ruptures with an objective to explore embedded memory as a narrative apparatus that disrupts stable temporality while simultaneously foregrounding the maladies of the past. At the same time, it should carefully be noted that the figure of madness develops as both a symptom and critique—an embodied form of dissent against normative structures of rationality and authority. The play attempts to question institutionalized conversations of rationality and their connivances in quieting subaltern voices.