Author(s): Rejoan Ali

Abstract: In the era of capitalocene, natural resources including water and waterscapes are to be used for profit based vision. Capitalism provides access to the resources to the rich of the resources while the marginalized sections of the society face scarcity and are forced to live in inhabitable environmental conditions. In the name of materialistic progress, capitalist activities fuel the degradation of the environment. This phenomena casts severe irrevocable impacts on nature, and on the lives of "ecosystem people" destroying their interrelationship with the non-human world (Gadgil & Guha, 1995, p. 3). The perception of exceptionalism and exemptionalism nourish the causes of exploitation of the non-human world, biodiversity, ecological balance, and segregation of humans from non-human. Akkineni Kutumbarao's Telugu novel Kolleti Jadalu translated into English by Vasanth Kannabiran as Softly Dies a Lake (2020) presents water contamination and passive death of the largest freshwater lake in India. This eco-memoir echoes the exploitative deeds of the greedy and the consequences of such anthropocentric conducts. This paper shall attempt to study multifarious engagement with water by employing theoretical perspectives from the field of Blue Humanities and Ecocriticism. This paper also intent to read capitalocene's slow violence with an emphasis on how the corporate culture disrupt the interrelationship between human and non-human in Kolleru, the village beside the lake, how the degradations, contamination of the lake affects marginalized communities and nature, and how the lake influences the identities of the people.

Keywords: Blue Ecocriticism, Capitalocene, Human/Non-human, Identity, Water

Article Info: Received: 23 Feb 2026; Received in revised form: 26 Mar 2026; Accepted: 31 Mar 2026; Available online: 03 Apr 2026

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.112.47