Nim Hawa by Anirban Bhattarcharya [Hardcover]

"This book is a journey—or perhaps a return journey—where someone passionately searches for an El Dorado. What is now considered akin to an El Dorado was once as simple as water for this traveler in their earlier days. The place marked on the map is Barbil, a small mining town in Odisha's Keonjhar district. The unique blend of arid terrain and lush greenery that existed in mid-80s and early-90s Barbil might be hard to imagine without having seen it.

In front of the house was the main road, next to it the railway line; across the tracks lay the tribal market, beyond the slope stood eucalyptus trees, and homes of several Bengalis... Behind the house, there was a pond, fields, the Thakurani hill; as evening descended, distant drumbeats echoed, and during winters, foxes came down from the hills.

This fragment paints a vivid picture of life in a small town, filled with memories of black-and-white TVs from the 80s-90s, Chitrahaar, the first tunes of Kumar Sanu, Maradona, Gold Spot, and the proper nouns of this little town."