Journalist Kishan Vidrohi has been
murdered…or not. There is no witness, no
evidence, and no corpse. His bedclothes are
bloodied and arrows stained with blood have been found in his room.

With the media playing down the death, his protégé sets out to discover the truth. Through the murder – if it is indeed murder – he learns the history of the city and
the country that vanished beneath it. The real estate business, hydropower companies, and transport and urban planners, have descended on virgin land promising development, to a people who find themselves in a place they no
longer own and can barely name. Are they
doomed to life in this realisation of the mythical Lemuria Islands, or will they regain the land of their ancestors?

Playing on myth and magic realism, even while looking at a story that has staged in every part of any developing nation with natural resources on offer, Ranendra forces us to examine the grey shades in the conflict between tribal rights and urbanisation in his
A Country Vanishes.