What happens to a young man when he comes home from Delhi to Assam, after his mother’s demise? When he chances on a conversation on his father, who he believed, had lost his life to insurgents, in the forest that was both his work and his passion?  How does he face the unravelling mystery on what really happened twenty five years ago? Where has the forest beneath the mountains gone? 

What follows is a gripping story of a journey of discovery, as he meets people  who are part of his childhood memories, new faces and ideologies, a medley of characters from  forest department folks, elephant catchers, local journalists, police and insurgents. The painstaking search as he relentlessly pursues what really happened to his father, and gets caught in the whirlpool of conflicting events, of life at the margins of geography and social sensitivities, as authority, ideology and circumstances clash, leading to the wiping out of an entire forest.

Ankush Saikia’s anecdotal writing, detailed and extremely vivid descriptions paint a slice of life canvas of  life in Assam amidst insurgencies and its deep mark on people’s lives and emotions. His well researched references to historical facts gives this work of fiction, credibility.

The Forest Beneath the Mountains is for a relaxed and immersive reading, that allows the reader to savour the tiniest of details beautifully and powerfully penned down by Saikia. To share empathy with those whose lives are at the margin. The book makes one conscious of how incidents rooted in history enmeshes with socio economic and political contexts to leave far reaching imprints that go beyond lives, to ecology itself, to a forest that once thrived beneath the mountains.