Joleswari by Obayed Haq [Hardcover]

The river's water is muddy and swirling, much like the eyes of the people. Houses are submerged, farmlands are washed away, and human corpses float next to banana trees. Everyone is running in search of a piece of dry land. Hell is not only fiery but can also be submerged. The people along the banks of the Meghna River realized this anew during the flood of eighty-eight. Kajol, an expatriate from America, is drifting in that hell with two talkative boatmen and a boat. Moving past the fictional villages read in books, he has come to a real village submerged by the flood, where farmers do not go to the field with smiling faces, but instead float their sons' bodies in the water. Where children do not play picnics, but, exhausted from hunger, open their mouths to gulp in air. Where fathers do not bring vermillion from the market for their mischievous daughters, but instead take them to the gentlemen on the barge to sell them to quench their hunger. Where all the sages have turned into thieves. In those villages, there is no sound of flutes, but there is wailing. There is no fragrance of wildflowers, only the smell of corpses. There is life there, there is struggle. And somewhere in that place, there is Jaleshwari, whom Kajol has set out to find.