SONG OF THE GOLDEN SPARROW A NOVEL HISTORY OF FREE INDIA

DeScriPtion

Guilty of the crime of sleeping on the job, the lowly yaksha Prem Chandra Guha,

is banished to India on a punishment posting. During his stay here, he must write

a sufficiently riveting history of the land of his exile. Prem Chandra arrives in

India on the first dawn of her independence and fate brings him to Netarhat,

an obscure town near the forests of Chhota Nagpur. It is here that he meets

Manhoos, an orphaned urchin who repairs motor vehicles for a living, and his

friend Mary, a feisty tribal girl from the nearby Santhal village.

Assuming the shape of a common sparrow, Prem Chandra turns into an

unobtrusive observer and follows the fortunes of Manhoos and Mary as they

travel to Calcutta, and then to Rishikesh, Bangalore, Ahmedabad... As they

plunge from one adventure to another, a series of figures play key roles in their

lives: the Naxal leader Charu Majumdar; Satyajit Ray, in his crisp dhoti and

clipped accent; the ever-giggling Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; the powerful business

magnate, Ameer Premji; and even a mysterious man with a 56-inch chest.

On the broader canvas of India, other events are playing out. Indira Gandhi

declares an Emergency; a new party, the Jana Sangh is formed; Siddhartha

Shankar Ray cleanses West Bengal of Naxalism and Jyoti Basu brings in thirty

years of Communism; somewhere, a dam is built, and hundreds of tribals are

rendered homeless, elsewhere, a masjid falls, a deadly virus rises and the ground

of India shakes beneath her feet...

Song of the Golden Sparrow is the story of Manhoos and Mary, and mirrored in their

tumultuous lives, is the history of free India from 1947 to 2022.