Anil Nijhawan

‘The Bengal Tiger’s Silent Roar’ is a powerful, fast-paced, highly atmospheric novel with a passionate love story at its heart. It explores the widest range of human emotions.

Thirty-year-old Tarun, who has learning difficulties, wants to get married. His mother is horrified; she considers him incapable of raising a family. This is a dramatic and highly engaging story of Tarun’s struggles to find a wife in a society where the families arrange marriages. His boss’s daughter, Sangeeta, is trying to befriend him, while he has fallen in love with Manju, the daughter of his house cleaner. The problem is Manju is already married. Can Tarun prevail despite fearsome obstacles and find a woman to marry whom he truly loves?

Evocative and beautifully written, this powerful novel presents life in contemporary India with vivid realism. Not since A cobra’s bite doesn’t hurt has a novelist succeeded in conveying – with truth, dignity and power – the inhumanity of abandoned children on the streets of cities and towns across the country.

Those who have read the pilot copies have described it variously as audacious – bold – humorous – politically controversial.

The key protagonist here is Kalu, a chamar boy abandoned at birth by his young mother. Kalu narrates his life story in the form of an open letter to Prime Minister Mr Modi of India. Kidnapped by a gang of child traffickers from an orphanage near Haridwar, he is trained to pick pockets and forced into a gang of thieves in Bangalore. When Babu, their ruthless gang master murders his best friend Ramesh, Kalu – fearing for his own life – runs away to Kolkata. While still being pursued by Babu he meets and falls in love with Tanya, an educated career girl from an upper middle-class family.