Chronicles of Rampur (ePub)

Advocate Kumaron is the only lawyer in town. He lives in a crumbling seaside resort on the east coast of India, which was once the retreat of British expatriates reluctant to return to the bleak landscape of end-of-war England, now the dilapidated haunt of low-end tourism and pot-smoking backpackers. The lawyer's meagre income is supplemented by the equally meagre profits from his hotel, run with fastidious eccentricity. Gradually the sleepy pace of the town gives way to startling and dramatic events. The variegated cast of characters is woven into a tapestry that presents the human panorama in all its peculiarities. The politician who has risen from dirt-poverty to unimagined heights – bloated and flatulent – whose unbridled greed finally decrees a grotesque downfall. A naive young woman from Tyrol, Austria who, wandering wide-eyed through the exotic East, unwittingly seduces an accidental lover to abandon hearth and home. The bishop who, driven to random promiscuity by an unwilling wife, falls from grace. The temple head priest who, unable to face competition along modern business lines, finally resorts to inadvertent violence. A Greek tobacco heiress seeking her inner self and who pa­­­sses from one avaricious and lascivious guru to another, finds a melancholy end in the savage carnality of a young lover. Both entertaining and thought-provoking, The Chronicles of Rampur combines the sombre and the joyous to reflect the chaos of modern India.