Exploring Climate Awareness and Childhood Innocence in Bijal Vacchrajanai’s Saavi: The Memory Keeper (2021)

Abstract

Cli-fi bestirs as an emanating genre on the grounds of disparate and coercive environmental repercussions. An idiosyncratic perspective on the sweeping ecological and climate crisis was emulated by the writers with an amalgamation of our country’s rich cultural heritage and coeval eco-friendly problems. Traditional narratives are intertwined with futuristic scenarios in order to emphasize the lurking danger behind deforestation. Water scarcity, the rising of sea levels, the melting of polar ice caps and glaciers were the ancillary eventualities of the hasty obliteration of trees and forests. By cultivating ecological concern and understanding, the narrative promotes an early emotional attachment between the child and the fragile natural world.

          The article aims to explore how Bijal Vacchrajanai in her novel Saavi: The Memory Keeper makes use of imaginative storytelling to pinnacle the increasingly erratic weather patterns of the warming planet. It also highlights the unprecedented climate upheaval the mother Earth is going to face in the distant future, and the ways in which complacency hastens that future. By examining the novel through the intersecting perspectives of climate consciousness and childhood innocence, this paper highlights the affective, pedagogical, and ethical dimensions of environmental knowledge. It argues that climate awareness among younger generations is not a peripheral concern but a central theme in contemporary children's ecological literature. The study further explores the novel's narrative technique, particularly its use of magical realism, which transforms a vast and complex global environmental crisis into an intimate and accessible story from a child's perspective. Situating the text within the broader tradition of climate fiction in both Indian and international contexts, the paper demonstrates how children's climate narratives simultaneously preserve the wonder of childhood while gradually cultivating a sense of environmental responsibility and stewardship toward the planet.