Achinta Guha 1 The last stretch of the journey into Shyamal Ghat was unnervingly silent. Rik Sen leaned forward in the jeep, squinting through the cracked windshield at the red dust road that seemed to curve endlessly between patches of dying sal trees and bamboo groves. The BSF checkpoint he had passed thirty minutes ago had been completely unmanned, its boom barrier half-lowered and swinging loosely in the wind. Even the guard dogs, usually the first to bark at a stranger, were absent. Overhead, a low grey sky hung like a lid, pressing down on the earth with a stagnant…
