Fiction Reveals Truths that Reality Obscures

"Change is always occurring. In a slow, silent and beautiful way, change has been occurring and it will continue to do so. But you're all meddling with its process. And because of the interference of you nagariks, not just humans but every other being on the planet- the water bodies, the trees, the mountains  alike are suffering too. Everything and everyone is subjected to violence. I'm simply asking you to try and stop that intrusion. Thus far, nature has prospered only through collaboration. Instead, the civilised ways are driven by force and hostility, and everything integral to nature is being looted" . 

Sabari, an old tribal woman, born in the lap of forests who knows it like the back of her hand, says the above to Lord Rama when he visits her. The open and gentle dialogue between the two characters in Volga's On the Banks of the Pampa, translated from Telugu by Purnima Tammireddy, discusses many questions, all of which are both contemporary and urgent.

In the wake of all that has happened and is still happening in Jammu, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab - flash floods, landslides, cloud bursts, destruction and loss of life on an unprecedented scale - the toll of our unscientific development and mindless avarice is explicit. It's  immense and incalculable that we cannot turn a blind eye anymore. As rivers rage with a brown fury and logs of wood pile up and choke the gates of dams, it's time we stop and ask - Is this what we call 'being civilised'? What does urban or developed mean?  What's the cost at which we earns these tags?

"We forget the original sequence - observe, marvel, understand, respect, love. A new order has emerged in its place - observe, loathe, ridicule, attack, control". 

On environment, civilisation, development, the road to change and associated costs, on state and citizenship, borders and boundaries, this slim novel, an imagined extrapolation of a very ordinary event in the epic Ramayana portrayed with a bold feminist stroke, is a proof of how fiction mirrors reality closely, often unraveling truths that reality 'coyly' obscures.