Discovering Telenapota

DURING the conjunction of Saturn and Mars—yes, Mars, most likely—you, too, might discover Telenapota.

- Premendra Mitra

In other words, when you have unexpectedly been granted a two-day break from the suffocating pressure of work, if someone comes and tempts you, saying that somewhere there is a magic pool filled with the most incredibly simpleminded fish anxiously waiting to swallow any bait, and you have often spent unsuccessful hours angling without a catch, you may suddenly find yourself on your way to discovering Telenapota.

To discover Telenapota you will have to catch a bus packed with countless people late in the afternoon, and suffer the crowds, the jolting, the heat till, by the time you get off an hour or two later, you are drenched in sweat and covered with dust. You will be quite unprepared for the stop when it comes. Before you know where you are, the bus will have disappeared into the distance, over a bridge across the low swampland. In that dense, dark forest, night arrives even before the sun has set. A strange wind blows through the eerie silence. You won't see a soul anywhere; even the birds, it seems, have flown away, perhaps in fright. You will feel a strange dread slowly rearing its head out of the lonely marsh.

You will leave the main road and stand near the swampland. There appears to be something like a storm drain cut into the undergrowth but this gets lost in thick groves of bamboo in the distance.