A Death in The Forest – Paromita Goswami

Description

Bookended by ‘a death’ and ‘a birth’, this collection of short fiction takes the reader through the gamut of experiences and emotions — love, loss, anger, laughter; rebellion, protest, submission, redemption — in their literal and metaphorical ramifications. The stories convey the joys, trials and adversities of life in the tribal hinterland, but always in the overhang of receding identity of not just the people but also the place they inhabit, the setting as much a character as those who bring it alive on these pages.

This is a chronicle of an India hidden from the breathless world of Insta posts and social media captions, far from weaponising oligarchies and religious extremism; this is a self-contained world with its own microcosmic issues that are close to the grassroots, the everyday lives of those hidden from our textbooks and newspapers, from the madhouse of national television channels; a continuing saga of places and people and situations that do not even peep at the peripheries of our urban consciousnesses.