The book begins with a short poem about a forest nymph asserting that the deep forests will forever be green despite dragons that try to paint them red. Indeed, the flora and fauna of Dandakaranya are described lyrically like characters themselves. The age-old woods come across as a force powerful and primeval, contending with men, modernity, machines and murder. In mythical times, Rama himself had marvelled at their beauty during his banishment from Ayodhya. The forests were smouldering even then.
Inside Fuming Forests draws the reader deep into Bastar, where the silence of the sal trees hides more than just shadows. For Anjula, raised in England but bound to India by blood, a year at her ancestral estate is meant to be a pause before university, a chance to breathe in her father’s legacy. She comes to India not as a tourist but as one coming home to the Bhansi Estate, where her great-grandfather had built a magnificent colonial bungalow, the Nandan Van. Anjula finds the landscape unattractive in comparison to the English countryside (p. 5). But the first five months make her adjust to the family home of paddy fields, eucalyptus and sal trees, tomato plantations and fruit orchards, which Anjula had inherited along with her father’s sister, Mala Bua (p. 6). Her live-in companion, Mahua, a tribal girl hardened by betrayal, teaches her the local ways and language while Anjula teaches English at a centre set up by her family for empowering the locals (p. 8). Anjula realizes that she has a wonderful ‘opportunity to encapsulate a whole pulsating world of awakening, the natural elements meeting the glory of simulated light, and the entire cycle being as virgin and as primal as these ageless forests’ (p. 57).
However, when Assembly elections are announced, Anjula finds herself in a world on edge—timber smugglers circling the forests, corporations eager to strip them bare, and insurgents who see the trees as both shield and battlefield, their hidden caches of arms turning the forest into an armoury. When a silent warning turns into a midnight escape, Anjula is forced to run, clutching little more than her knapsack and her faith in those she barely knows. Mahua and Sameer, a teacher with his own haunted past, become her companions through a landscape alive with both beauty and peril. Each step into the forest pulls her deeper into secrets of her family, her people, and herself.
There is a passage here that contrasts the ‘philosophy’ of Anjula, which is of ‘stability, peace, and advancement’ (p. 60). ‘Would this daily rampage ever sustain the development of the greens? Would these country folks ever be able to meet shoulder to shoulder with the other town people in knowledge between Left-Wing Extremists and security forces, politicians, forest inmates and “Adivasi simpletons”?’ (p. 61). The Maoists finance themselves mostly by looting weapons from security personnel but also replenish their personal bank accounts and improve the lifestyle of their relatives in the city (p. 62). It leads to a vicious cycle of ‘drying the government capitals and padding the Naxalite strongboxes’ (p. 63).
Anjula comes to realize that however beautiful and seemingly reassuring the Dandakaranya forests were, they were invested with devastation, distress and crime, and were ‘perpetually fuming’ (p. 65). When the call comes from England saying that King’s College, London, had confirmed her place in the Law School, Anjula decides with instant clarity. Mala Bua endorses it through her tears.
Tense, lyrical, and deeply human, Child Psychologist Ira Saxena’s novel captures a land where power and greed clash with loyalty and belonging. The chapter headings are evocative. Inside Fuming Forests is not just a story of survival, but of what it means to claim one’s place in a world determined to take it away.
Perhaps to young adults of today, some with backgrounds similar to Anjula, certain words could have been explained in the body of the text or annotated in a Glossary, e.g., Naxalite, Maoist, and even Dada-log. Their ideological history, however distorted later, needed some mention. The basic idea of Communism required to be succinctly presented in the context of this very relevant and contemporary book.
Dipavali Sen Debroy is a retired academic and author of Kusum (CBT), Subhadra (BlueRose) and Duhshala (Kavya Publications). She is also an enthusiastic reviewer of books in The Book Review and The Radical Humanist.