Circles Of Hell: A Novel

Searing and graphically described, CIRCLES OF HELL is a tale of innocent and hapless refugees who paid the price of India?s freedom. Stripped of their lands, their homes, their children, their past and future, they trecked the hunger-racked, fear-filled miles to freedom to find that they had escaped the tiger?s paw only to land on the crocodiles mouth. Rabidas, an affluent farmer in Noakhali district of East Pakistan leaves behind his green fields and cow sheds and crosses over to India with his wife-Komola, his younger son-Malik and younger daughter-Durga. In the process he loses Roma, his elder married daughter who is carried away by the blood-thirsty fanatics and finally sold to an aging Muslim landlord. Malik too is lost in the crowds. Roma escaped the Muslims but is kidnapped by Hindu gangsters in Hindustan and forced to prostitution-her only escape being suicide. Lolit, Rabidas? eldest son, returns home from sea after ten years and then comes to India looking for his parents. Hindustan, their dreamland, offers no real safety. The simple, illiterate peasants fall an easy prey to the town sharks, lured by the bribe touts at every turn, in desperation, they clear the jungle and snake-infected areas to grow crops and try hard to gather the tattered remnants of their self-respect. But the goondas and avaricious landlords are out to steal the fruit of the peasants? hard labour. And the meek, starving men are now determined that the harvest is going to be a colourful one-coloured with blood. Lolit, besides himself with endless torment and suffering, finally finds out his family in their new settlement only to be involved in the final confrontation?.