The Drowned and the Standing: A Novel

It is March of 2026. The West Bengal assembly election is thirty days out. A forty-five-year-old political operative named Biswanath leaves Siliguri at dawn, with seven companions, in two white Toyota Fortuners. For the next month he will travel the seven districts of Bengal doing the work that no campaign report describes. Persuading the rebel candidate. Silencing the country newspaper. Redirecting the loyalty of a booth captain in a constituency where margins are narrow. Applying pressure where pressure has been promised.He is the son of a refugee from East Bengal. His father voted, in every election of his life, for a party that had no chance of forming a government in this state. That party is about to take office. Biswanath has been waiting for this for twenty-eight years without quite letting himself name the waiting.The road takes him through every layer of Bengal's long history. The ruins at Gaur. The battlefield at Plassey. The Adivasi country of Purulia. The coal belt of Asansol. The Sundarbans, where the tiger and the human have arrived at terms neither alone could have written. And the city the bhadralok have been grieving for over a century, which his party will win this election without quite winning.By the fourth of May, when the count begins, the question is no longer who will win. The question is who will drown in the season of rains this election will turn out to have been. Read more