Devdas Kakati writes with passion. Equipped with a rich repertoire of words, he effortlessly moulds the language to suit the occasion. He writes forcefully with conviction. Garnished with some scintillating passages and lyrical interludes his writing becomes both poignant and persuasive. Once started, the reader would like to move right through the many intriguing situations and evocative passages. He takes the reader smoothly from crisis to crisis.
In the story Satyaki dropped school to join the militants, comes back after 20 years to his teacher for guidance-I was told that society cheated us. After 20 years of jungle life we got nowhere. I am now asking myself who cheated whom? Did society really deceive us? Or, we are deceiving society?? Or, we are deceiving ourselves???
Said Sipra - The discipline and hard work of the cadets impressed me. I started liking them. At night I quietly cried for them. They were so innocent and they were being trained to be mindless killers. And I was teaching them history. It was so incongruous.
The reader will want to go back to some passages to absorb the sheer beauty or reflect over the intriguing issues of life. The narration brings out the ambience of Majuli vividly. Devdas Kakati, Professionally a scientist with a Ph.D. from England, is at heart a very sensitive humanist, who has occasionally written fictions and poems. Edited The Brahmaputra Beckons while he was at IIT in Chennai as Professor. He spent the last part of his life in Northeast India and retired as Vice-Chancellor of Dibrugarh University. His present interests include problems of existence in marginalized societies. Devdas Kakati lives with his wife in Guwahati, two kilometres away from the banks of the Brahmaputra. They have a son and a daughter-in-law.
