The Mountain of Bones is a grim commentary on the attitude to food, the deprivation of which is not so much a result of depleted resources as it is a combination of misguided policies and misplaced priorities.
Set against the backdrop of the Bengal Famine of 1943, the narrative simultaneously occurs in three spaces — a village in which an old woman is telling a young girl a strange fable; a flooded area where a man stranded atop a tree with a young boy awaits rescue; and another where the whole theatre of State machinery, bureaucracy, well-meaning Communists, yes-men and the large, faceless entity called the ‘The Hungry Crowd’ plays out. There are no speeches, and truths are cloaked in the exaggeratedly ridiculous.
The Mountain of Bones derives from P. Sainath’s articles on famine and the farmer suicides in Andhra Pradesh and from the playwright's own research on the Bengal Famine of 1943. With strong elements
derived from Manik Bandhopadhyay’s short story Chhiniye Khaynee Keno? (Why Didn’t They Snatch and Eat?) and a collection of Bengali folktales Thakurmar Jhuli (Grandmother’s Bag) collected and
rewritten by Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar, the play is part dream, part musical satire, and part exposition of the absurdities that drive short-term political strategies.
The play has been published by Dhauli Books as part of an anthology titled 'Two Plays on Hunger', currently unavailable for purchase.