On the Banks of the Pampa

Sabari's encounter with Rama is an important episode in the Ramayana. But who was Sabari, a forest-dweller who became Rama's ardent devotee? In On the Banks of the Pampa, award-winning writer Volga narrates the tale of Sabari, born of aranyavasis, once forced into slavery by a power-seeking state, which she breaks free from. It traces the journey of her spiritual awakening and birth into a voice of dissent for the oppressed and dispossessed. Sabari's is a narrative entwined with the forest along the Pampa river - one she comes to dwell in and is at one with. Poignant and piercing, this concluding volume in Volga's trilogy of feminist retellings of the Indian epics drives us to reconsider the meaning of dharma, and rejects ideologies that legitimize conquest and the exploitation of nature. Powerfully translated into English by Purnima Tammireddy, this is a story of resistance - a story for the times we live in, drawn from the classic tale we know so well.