Train to Shimla
In the early 1970s, nineteen-year-old literature student Abhishek Banerjee accompanies his enigmatic professor, Arvind Sen, on a journey to the turbulent Northeast, tasked with researching the establishment of the first central university in a divided Assam. The region is a flame with political unrest: demands for separate states, cultural preservation movements, and civil agitation echo across hills and rivers—precisely the conflicts that shaped modern Northeastern India.
Yet for Professor Sen, this trip is more than academic. As he revisits towns and villages, memories of his youth resurface—a time when he had arrived in the Northeast with nothing but curiosity, courage, and a profound love. He remembers the girl who became his heart, the people who trusted him, and the fragile revolution he quietly ignited to protect both culture and identity in a land on the brink of transformation.
Through these recollections, Abhishek witnesses the intersection of personal desire and political upheaval, understanding that history is not only written in documents but lived in the hearts of those who dare to shape it. The professor’s story unfolds like a tapestry of love, sacrifice, and the relentless pursuit of justice, showing a Northeast both vibrant and fragile, poised between tradition and change.
In the end, Abhishek becomes the custodian of this tale, penning a book that captures not just a revolutionary scholar, but a man whose past bore the weight of love, loss, and a nation in transition—a story of courage and devotion that time almost forgot.