Writer, critic and reporter Somak Ghoshal recommends a book that gave him his first taste of life in the wild. 

Growing up in a big city, I was surrounded by a concrete jungle long before I had a chance to see a real one. But, as I turned eight, I got my first taste of life in the wild when I read Chander Pahar (Moon Mountain), a novel by the great Bengali writer, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, as part of my school curriculum. 

The story, set in 1909, is about a young man called Shankar, who lives in a village in Bengal. He refuses to get a job at the local jute mill and spends a life of drudgery. Shankar dreams of travelling the world and witnessing all its wonders. Luckily, a neighbour helps him land a job with a company in Kenya that is building a railroad between Mombasa and Kisumu. Here, Shankar encounters nature at its wildest — towering baobab trees that pierce the skies, lion attacks on his camp, coolies dying of snakebite, even a mythical creature called Bunyip, with three toes on each of its four legs. 

Bandyopadhyay’s story kept my classmates and I mesmerised. Most of us had seen lions and snakes at the zoo from a safe distance. Chander Pahar showed us, for the first time, their fearsome aspects, the demonic force with which they can retaliate when humans start to encroach into their habitat. As a young boy, I was gripped by the terror and excitement of Shankar’s adventures, but as an adult, I recognise Bandopadhyay’s unspoken messages. A nomad of heart who loved travelling to the interiors of Bengal and its neighbouring states, he worshipped the natural world, chronicled its beauty, and was pained to see it destroyed by greedy industrialists. 

In Chander Pahar, the African forest is turned into a living, breathing character, punishing humans for their folly, but also hypnotic, beautiful and nurturing. As the story ends, Shankar and his friend Alvarez set out on a quest to find gold and diamond mines, but it’s their thirst for adventure that drives them, not any desperation to loot King Solomon’s Mines. 

Bandopadhyay’s story introduced a city-bred eight-year-old to the many faces of nature. More wondrously, he achieved this feat without ever having gone to Africa, or anywhere outside India — simply through his vast reading and imaginative genius.