Coils of the Serpent is a novel portraying the life of Chandan Mohan, an energetic youth of Danpur village, who grows up in its pastoral surroundings, strives to harmonize its hostile communities, transforms its festering and pot-holed main street into a brick-lined road, initiates the adult education programme, and strenuously endeavours for its all-round progress. Unfortunately, he is constantly threatened by the coils of serpents—both natural and human—each one as dangerous as the other. Dularia, his wife, makes a series of determined efforts to salvage her husband's life from these perils, risks her own life at every step, and does succeed partially, but fails to withstand the enticements of a dazzling urban temptress.
The novel depicts, through periodic does of humour, the binary worlds of dreams and disillusionments, of primitive innocence and urban craftiness, of feudal idealism and modern pragmatism, of unshakable devotion of a docile rural wife and prismatic flirtations of an urban seductress. It also examines the tangled and puzzling questions of traditional and modern values, deceptions of men and guiles of women, as also the theatrical display of male-dictated punishment and meticulously planned female vindictiveness.
The novel grips the reader with its spell-binding narrative till he comes to the startling conclusion of the story. |
