Dharitrira Kanda (  The Weeping Earth)
Publisher: Chaturanga Prakashani, Bhubaneswar,Odisha,India / Prachi Sahitya Pratisthana, Binode Bihari, Cuttack, Odisha,India
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Cuttack,Odisha, India
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 390
Description: No change in text or diction in any subsequent editions,
Table of contents: title: Boon turned  into Bane : is the tragic  theme of this full length narrative titled " Dharitrira Kanda", meaning the "Weeping Earth". The novel  is  based upon the woeful story of a batch of aspiring bright scholars, who were toiling hard in a Chemistry Laboratory, of a famous higher education institution, for their doctoral degrees, under the able guidance of teachers who were themselves renowned Scientists of their times. Those were the glorious years when India was proclaiming her special place in the comity of Nations as a Republic that won her Independence from the colonial power that be , after the prolonged war , not by weapons, but by Satyagraha(  Non Cooperation- agitation ) under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. But what went wrong? Just with in a decade after the Independence of the country in 1947, the first sign of collapse of the Gandhian bubble was visible in India, first  in her higher educational institutions,  that were  at par with the Oxford and Cambridge universities of that time. Suddenly these  Universities and Colleges of great reputation of India began to wilt under the depredations of the local politicians and sooner than later those institutions of learning  were turned into political work shops, devoted to train and recruit agents and workers of the Netas who were fighting their own battles for survival in  elections after elections.; title: The novel is a vivid,step by step description, of the above process of decadence that turned the boon to bane of the  three protagonists who, in the wake of Independence of India were  dreaming of becoming  great scientists of their time with some original contribution of their own. But alas! They were compelled to seek their futures under some political ideologies instead!