Then Came The River

The tea plantations are a unique setting and have been hauntingly described in this book - very few authors have explored the mysterious northeast and very few stories have been written about the place.There are very few accounts of the insurgency in Assam - the book gives an evocative account, weaving the seemingly quiet lives of the characters into the unsettling violence of the movement. There is at once, the uniqueness of the location and the universality of the happenings in a disturbed disrupted land.The novel delves into a complex friendship between two women, deep and strong. Both its forming and its destructive end are compellingly described - as the reader is drawn into the intricacies of their story.Debapriya Datta grew up in Assam and New Delhi. An intensivist by profession, and a wanderer at heart, the author travels and writes when duties permit and is passionate about medical education and outcome research, jazz and bossa nova.In the verdant tea plantations of Assam, Roop Sharma, the daughter of an impoverished tea planter, tries to take her life, but is saved by the river that flows past her town. Then an unexpected friendship blooms between her and Miss Vikranta Barua, the scion of a wealthy tea plantation family, who arrives as a temporary teacher at her convent school. Their intimacy grows and they find happiness as together they battle life's blows, including the insurgency that casts its shadows over the entire state. But their friendship is tested when Vikranta sides with her paramour, who is implicated in harming Roop's family. Set against the backdrop of the militant secessionism in Assam, Then Came the River is about friendship and intimacy, the thin line between love and friendship, and the agony of loving and losing a friend.In the verdant tea plantations of Assam, a lonely young girl, Roop Sharma, tries to take her life, but is saved by the river that flows past her town and by an unexpected friendship with Miss Vikranta Barua, the scion of a wealthy tea plantation family, who arrives as a temporary teacher in her convent school. Their intimacy grows as together they battle life's blows, and find happiness in the turmoil of their lives.But insurgency invades the peace of the tea plantations; chasms are driven into their friendship when Vikranta's paramour is implicated in harming Roop's family.