Call of The Land: A Tale of Growing Up in Two Novels

A lyrical prose stylist and a master of gently-paced narratives which draw inspiration from myths, fables, legends and epics, Sudhin N. Ghose is among the finest, yet often neglected, pioneers of Indian writing in English. He is best remembered for his quartet of novels—And Gazelles Leaping, Cradle of the Clouds, The Vermilion Boat and The Flame of the Forest—published between 1949 and 1955, which follows a young boy as he grows from a wide-eyed child into a disillusioned adult in semi-rural Bengal. The first two novels of the quartet, collected here, comprise a brilliantly idealized portrait of childhood and early adolescence. And Gazelles Leaping is a fable about the innocent pleasures of childhood, and the evils of the world which forever threaten it. An orphan and his pet, a Manipuri elephant, and their friends—Heera and her nanny-goat; Mazdoor and his donkey White Beauty; Tu Fan, a Chinese boy, and Soetomo from Java—attend Sister Svenska’s kindergarten on an abandoned estate in rural Calcutta. However, their seemingly idyllic life is disrupted when a rapacious corporation from the big city swoops in to take over their school. In Cradle of the Clouds, a young man prepares to leave for Calcutta. Amidst apprehensions and warnings about the perils of the big city, he revisits his adolescence: his search for a profession among carpenters, watch-repairers and potters; a summer spent teaching Santali children; his first brush with love at school; and his intense re-enactment of the legend of Lord Balaram and his plough which ended a harsh drought and brought rain. This omnibus edition of two timeless coming-of-age classics is heart-warming, enchanting—and, with its dream-like narrative and compassion, an alternative reading of Indian reality in the mid-twentieth century, when the country was negotiating change and modernity.