Luck

A hunt goes brutally wrong in the jungles of Karbi Anglong. A young magistrate on a police raid is saved from inhumanity by the sight of a hen and her chicks. A solitary bachelor brings home a pigeon and learns the pain of loving a wild thing. An egret visits a man on a moonlit night. Three schoolboys chance upon a leopard and her kill in the hills outside Guwahati. In lean, taut prose Dhruba Hazarika writes of moments when men encounter animals and the natural world often, also the moments when they encounter themselves. These are poignant, memorable stories from a literary imagination of uncommon honesty and sophistication.