The Song of the Road

Pather Panchali, a vibrant ballad that begins with joy and ends in determination, chronicles the glorious discoveries along the path of everyday life- from spots for secret picnics and the flavour of desserts, to the pleasure of fulfilled dreams and lessons embedded in disappointed hopes. Written by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, the Indian-Bengali author and serialised in the Bengali monthly magazine, Bichitra, in the late 1920s, it came out as a book in 1929, stunning the literary world with its originality. In Bengali, Pather means road and Panchali means folk song. So Pather Panchali is The Song of the Road. It is the story of two children, Durga and Apu, growing up poor in a village otherwise rich with forests, a river, a rail track on the edge and magical yarns.