‘The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar’: Indra Das’s novel celebrates found family and friendship

In Indra Das’s new novel The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar, a young Ru lives in Bowbazaar of Calcutta. In school, the bullies call him a “serpent from nowhere”. Since his family is unable to point to their roots, he makes fantastical origin stories of his family and himself. Sometimes, he tells his school friends that he is an Indian but descended from St George who killed a dragon (the schoolboys told him that the boys who looked like him have nothing to do with Christian saints). When he tells his mother that the boys ask him if he is from Nagaland or China, she answers, “They especially don’t know anything about who we are and where we’re from. Narrow minds can’t hold true places.”

Childhood and belonging

Having this ache to belong runs through his entire childhood until he meets Alice, the daughter of Crystal Dragon. He restrains the urge to mislead her and thus begins a friendship. His pride, which had forced him to spin fantastical yarns to impress school kids, takes a backseat as he now considers himself an “un-warrior man”.

In this make-believe world, memory and identity are constantly at loggerheads. Can one exist without the other? Should they? What if your own people, your own...

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