The great war of Mahabharata was over. The battlefield was strewn with the decapitated bodies of men. The entire clan of Kauravas had been annihilated. Krishna, the supreme god incarnated as man, stood on this blood-soddened field with the damned lot of the widows and queen Gandhari who had lost all her 100 sons to this carnage. As royal mother witnessed the extent of damage that had been done, she emphatically imprecated upon the god incarnate a mighty curse—that he too shall be a silent bystander to a similar destruction that would wipe clean the Yadava clan of which he was the lord. That the women of his race too shall bewail the loss of their beloveds as does the women now in the field of Kurukshetra. That the majestic land of Dvaraka, which he has built with so much care shall drown in the sea, as does the land of Bharata in blood in tears. And he himself shall lie all alone, unattended, in his final hours on earth, and die a sad death. Thus begins this journalistic enquiry into the life of Lord Krishna.

Sanjib Chattopadhyay's The Last Few Days of the Blue God, traces the key moments in the life of the Vishnu avatar as he walked on earth in various forms—the notorious child of Gokul and the mystic lover of the Gopikas of Vrindavan, the slayer of Kansa and the lord of Yadavas in Dvaraka, and finally the master diplomat who orchestrated the great war of Kurukshetra. His entire life has been one of teaching, of schooling on the various ideals and moralities. It was he who expounded the mysteries of life and death and of this creation to Arjuna in Gita. He reminded that he is providence, and he is the cause and effect.

The Last Few Days of the Blue God is a journey, into the life and soul of Krishna, and through him the entire mankind. The book also marks the authors debut into the spiritual writing. The teachings, the lessons that the god incarnate has expounded throughout the 125 years of his life, the teachings that traverses the boundaries of time and still remain relevant in our day-to-day lives, is upheld in the simplest fashion in this book. In this book God is a flesh-and-blood human who succumbs to the turn of fate like the rest.

This Original title in Bengali is a winner of Sahitya Akademi in 2019

Translators: Riddhi Maitra

Release date

Audiobook: 21 December 2020