Of dissolved creatures and the tumbling earth

Sonali Prasad’s debut novel, Glass Bottom, is a climate-fiction story about mothers and daughters set against the backdrop of the Arabian Sea. The novel weaves together personal narratives with larger themes of environmental destruction and the impact of climate change.

- Saurabh Sharma

The beauty of art presents itself to sense, to feeling, to perception, to imagination; its sphere is not that of thought, and the apprehension of its activity and its productions demand another than that of the scientific intelligence. Moreover, what we enjoy in the beauty of art is precisely the freedom of its productive and plastic energy," wrote Hegel in The Range of Aesthetic Defined. Unbidden, the statement came to mind while reading Sonali Prasad's debut novel, Glass Bottom. The New Delhi-based journalist's climate-fiction about daughters and mothers that proffers vignettes akin to a Kiran Rao-arthouse screenplay begins with a glimpse into the mind of Gulmohar (Gul), who works at a science centre in a cyclone-prone area near the Arabian Sea. She is obsessed with her braid, and her pride in her long hair is reflected in the envious gaze of others, which further encourages her to maintain the image for them. Other than her, the principal cast of characters includes Gul's daughter, Arth; Luni, a migrant from the northeast, who works at a beauty parlour; and her daughter, Himmo (Himani).