River of Fire

It was the season of beerbahutis and rainclouds sometime in the 4th century BC. In a cool grotto Gautam Nilambar a final year student at the Forest University of Shravasti chances upon Hari Shankar a princeling yearning to be a Buddhist monk. He falls in love with the beautiful sharp-witted Champak. And thus begins a magnificent tale that flows through Time through Maghadhan Pataliputra the Kingdom of Oudh the British Raj and into a Time of Independence. This fiery river of Time flows along the banks of their lives as they are recreated over the centuries through the ripples and the eddies keeping them together keeping them apart. The story comes full circle in post-Partition India when Hari Shankar and his friend Gautam Nilambar Dutt meet in a grotto in the forest of Shravasti and mourn the passing of their lives into meaninglessness their friends who have left for Pakistan and what remains of their country of which they were once so passionately proud. What happens between then and now is history full of the clangour of conflict the deviousness of colonisers the apathy of maharajas and the irrelevance of religion in defining Indianness. This great novel originally published in Urdu in 1959 is easily one of the most discussed in contemporary India widely acclaimed as a literary landmark.