From Debt Trap to Death Trap
Damodar Mauzo
ARANYAKAND: FOREST SAGA by Mahabaleshwar Sail Oxford Novellas, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2015, 136 pp., 295
August 2015, volume 39, No 8

‘A man does what he must—in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers, and pressures— and that is the basis of all human morality.’ John F. Kennedy
‘We could do it, you know.’ ‘What?’ ‘Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we could make it.’ When Suzanne Collins wrote this in The Hunger Games, she probably was unaware of the kind of forest that exists in Forest Saga. Mahabaleshwar Sail’s depiction of a taut tension-filled drama for survival is profoundly universal and yet distinctively individual. The brilliantly plotted and fast-paced novella has characters that are thoroughly realistic and pragmatic yet idealistic and naive; sympathetic and amiable yet resentful and indignant, meek and compliant yet courageous and persevering. The entire drama, packed in little less than a hundred pages, is tense and engrossing. It is a ruthlessly told story that will certainly resonate with readers of all kinds.

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