Aranyak, which means of the forest, is narrated by Satyacharan, a jobless graduate from Calcutta who accepts a post as manager of a vast estate in the jungles of Bhagalpur and Purnia in Bihar during the 1920s. His task is to lease the forest out to tenant farmers, which means overseeing its destruction. At first he is lonely and homesick for the city.
Over six years he comes to love the silent grasslands, moonlit hills and wild flowers, and the people who live on the margins: landless labourers, a destitute schoolteacher, a botanist who plants seeds in the forest, a tribal king descended from a once-proud dynasty, and an old man who hoards grain. Their poverty and dignity are drawn with compassion and without condescension.
The novel is loosely plotted, almost a sequence of sketches, and its tone is elegiac. Long before ecology became a public cause, it registered the price of turning forest into farmland and the guilt of a man who loves what he helps to erase. Rimli Bhattacharya's English version is subtitled Of the Forest, and the book is often read as an early Indian work of environmental literature.
Book details
| Author | Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay |
|---|---|
| First published | 1939 |
| Original language | Bengali |
| Translated by | Rimli Bhattacharya |
| Genre | Literary fiction |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 250 |
| Setting | Forests of Bhagalpur and Purnia, Bihar, 1920s |
Themes
- Wilderness
- Deforestation
- Tribal and landless communities
- Solitude
- Guilt of progress
Who should read it
Readers drawn to nature writing and quiet, reflective novels about humanity's relationship with the land.
If you liked this, try
- Pather Panchali
- The Hungry Tide
- Walden