Soliloquy of a Wandering Pilgrim

When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. In other words, I don't improve, in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable.- John Steinbeck Photo: Dinesh Korday The morning I left home I had high fever. It was a legacy of a recent respiratory tract infection. A kind flight attendant offered paracetamol and the  temperature was under control. Thankfully some some infections in life are still remediable or should I say medicable. Reaching Mumbai I was glad to meet my friend Dinesh Korday. While together we enjoyed coffee I showed him the book that was taking me back to Africa, once again after 3 years. Good coffee, a close friend and...

In 1937, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay chronicled the adventures of a Bengali boy named Shankar. This novel was named 'Chander Pahar' (English: 'Mountains of the Moon', as the fiction refers to a range of mountains and not a single standing mountain). 'Chander Pahar' went on to become one of the most loved adventure stories in the Bengali literature. In his lifetime, Bibhutibhushan wrote 16 novels and over 200 short stories. Interestingly, even though most of Bibhutibhushan's works were largely set in rural Bengal; in this particular novel the writer chose the setting of 1909 Africa. Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay (1894-1950) In the story 'Chander Pahar', our protagonist Shankar gets a lucky break to go out from his little riverside village in Bengal to work for the Uganda Railway. Thus begun his sudden and long journey from the mundane to the extraordinary. A roller coaster ride through adventures involving the infamous man eating lions of Tsav...