OONGA

every now and then, the lush Green of the hills is hacked by wastelands of bleeding red Earth and limbless tree stumps. Over these, a signboard ‘India aluminum inc.’—With a big eye—keeps an eerie, humming, omnipotent watch. And it is with riveting cinematic metaphors like this that devashish Makhija transitions his film oonga into a powerful novel that sits deep in the clash between adivasi, Naxalite, the CRPF and a rapacious mining company. The story moves between lyrical innocence and militant justice, fear and brutal oppression—nuanced, sensitive, ramping up the Tempo till all explodes. But at the heart of the churn is the little dongria kondh boy, oonga. Desperate to see a performance of sitaharan, he goes on an epic journey to the big city—to return as the Blue adivasi prince of the forest, Rama himself! And, rama-like, he must now take on the gun-wielding demons who have swooped on his village after abducting its passionately idealistic but pragmatic teacher, hemla Didi.The book hurtles breathlessly forward to expose the dystopia development’ and conflict of ideologies, complicated by the fault lines of language—showing how peaceful people become victims of violence and are forced into battles they don’t want to fight.

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