Nightmares with teasingly symbolic undertones, events that are difficult to disbelieve, yet more difficult to believe, obsessions that pass off as the bench marks of normalcy—all together contribute to the narrator’s confusion and push him into the outer edge of the mind. This narrator named Debasis, a settled, middle-aged, utterly ordinary bloke, becomes aware of his somewhat neurotic state of mind, and tries, in his own eccentric way, to regain his mental/emotional well-being by re-living and scribbling down his past encounters, events, etc., which turn out to be equally confusing, equally engrossing. The characters associated with his past are a curious lot—some crazy, some funny, some sublime, some bawdy—but all believably human. It is the story of every sensitive individual living in a postmodern, strife-torn world which could be an enlarged version of The Wave Crest Lodge situated on the beach of the Bay of Bengal. The novel abounds in sudden turns and surprises. It ends with a hint of hope: the confusion will always be there, but the ordinary, simple man living in the valley may not die of thirst as long as there is a perennial stream on the top of the mountain.
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