Agnirath by Samaresh Majumdar [Hardcover]

This is my country. My birthplace - the commitment that echoes from the heart of all Indians is not always expressed aloud. Some people from certain regions, confined within geographical boundaries, wish to disconnect from the mainstream of India, from its philosophy of life. Such a situation arose in the northern part of West Bengal, in the Darjeeling hills. In those serene, quiet, sun-drenched, and snow-kissed hills, the fire of unrest ignited. The young man whose presence shines like a light throughout the entire story of this novel is Sayan. He had come to the hills for treatment of his incurable illness at Dr. Uncle’s small clinic, ‘Niramaay’. The light of service that Dr. Uncle had kept burning in the clinic is undying in its strength. Brown, Matthews, Kankabati, Padma Bahadur, Dr. Tamang, Choto Bahadur, the American woman Elizabeth, and others are either neighbors, assistants, or well-wishers of Niramaay. All of them have found a place in their hearts for Sayan. A strange myth has formed around him. Brown found a resemblance to the face of Jesus in Sayan’s features. Could Sayan be that eternal savior, the great man? This possibility has also crossed the heart of his beloved, Manandini. Even the poor, illiterate hill people have started thinking that Sayan is someone from the divine world. As the story circles around Sayan in the hills, the old 19th-century traditions of their ancestral house in Kolkata begin to crack and shatter. A rebellion begins to simmer in the corner of their home. This fire is further fueled by Sayan, who is suffering from leukemia. But one day, this fiery boy was consumed by the violent fire of the hill’s savage tiger. Elizabeth had started thinking about and working on the various issues of the hills. One day, she was humiliated when four errant youths, arriving in a jeep, stripped her naked. Sayan, in his frail condition, had desperately tried to intervene. But in the end, he too was caught in the burning embrace of the jeep's flames. That flaming chariot slowly ascended the sky, moving towards some distant heavens. Then, as millions of flaming chariots, it spread throughout the universe. The scope of this novel by Samaresh Majumdar is not limited to the hills or the plains, but extends from the depth of the human heart to the boundless universe. Such a life-encompassing novel has rarely been written in Bengali literature.