The Runaway Boy starts with the character of Garib Das, a peasant in rural East Bengal from the lower-caste Namasudra community. Only six ...
The Runaway Boy starts with the character of Garib Das, a peasant in rural East Bengal from the lower-caste Namasudra community. Only six years have passed since the independence of India and the creation of Pakistan, but for Garib’s community, this momentous historical event becomes synonymous with the horror of Partition.
The author, Manoranjan Byapari, poignantly novelises this two-sidedness. When freedom from colonial rule coincides with blood-curdling post-Partition violence in several parts of the subcontinent, the narrative seems to ask the question: independence from what? And for whom?
“Garib” means poor, a meaning that the novel makes painfully literal, beginning with Garib’s endeavour to procure some rice for his ailing, pregnant wife. But this deceptively mundane mission foregrounds a grim picture of a feudal caste society: the oppressive Brahmin landlords with their dehumanising untouchability rituals, the oppressed peasants at the receiving end, and the twisted logic of interdependence used to justify this oppression.
Garib somehow manages to get some rice. It isn’t enough, and the “ocean of hunger” in his stomach incapacitates him. But he returns to the news of his son’s being born, and, for a moment, forgets his hunger. No sooner does he prepare to make rice for his wife than a village...
