The Last Gift

<p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Celebrated author Bappaditya Morena arrives on a </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>long holiday at quiet and quaint Daman a sleepy </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>town on the western coastline of India one summer </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>many decades ago. He brings with himself the memory </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>of a dormant but much-alive history of violence </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>exodus exile and suffering none of which can be </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>overcome by Mayurakshi Gupta emerging into her </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>own as an author out of the shadow of her mentor </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Morena. Love is inevitable between them so is </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>estrangement and bitterness social awkwardness and </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>emotional turbulence and eventual sublimation and </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>transcendence of it all. </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>As literary craft and music fuse to take their love ahead </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Mayurakshi discovers over decades the unlikely ways </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>in which her mentor's inspiration can weave magic for </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>her. In addition to being a personal story of intimacy it </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>is also a story of the history of the Seromon community </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>to which Bappaditya belongs. The Last Gift is a story </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>of intense intimacy suppressed </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>sexuality turbulent memory and </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>restless desire and the eventual </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>victory of art and creativity over </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>all else.</span></p>