When A Bridge Tells Its Own Story: A Review Of Ram Setu – The Memoirs Of An Enchanted Bridge

Imagine a bridge that is not merely stone and coral but a living witness to three millennia of faith, politics, science, poetry, and conspiracy, and that is precisely what Arup K Chatterjee achieves in this daring, genre-bending work, allowing the Ram Setu itself to speak the story of its own existence.

The Bridge as Autobiographer

Written in the first person as the memoirs of the bridge (yes, the 48-kilometre chain of limestone shoals between India and Sri Lanka narrates its own autobiography), the book is part literary experiment, part historical excavation, and part philosophical meditation.

The voice Chatterjee crafts for the Setu is ancient yet wry, devout yet sceptical, wounded yet indestructible. It remembers that an army of monkeys under Nala and Nila built it, Tamil Sangam poets sang of its beauty, nineteenth-century British surveyors called it ‘Adam’s Bridge’, and dynamite-wielding engineers sought to blast it open for a shipping canal, which makes it quietly rage.

The narrative moves fluidly across registers. One moment, the Setu is recounting the churning grief of Sita walking across it barefoot after her rescue; the next, it is dissecting NASA satellite images and geological papers with the cool detachment of a retired professor.

The author studded the book with references to the Valmiki Ramayana, Kalidasa, the Rajatarangini, Portuguese chronicles, Madras Presidency gazetteers, and modern oceanography, yet he ensures it never feels like an academic tome. Instead, it reads like an impossibly erudite bedtime story told by a bridge that has seen everything and is slightly tired of human nonsense.

Some of the most unforgettable passages are when the Setu turns ironic. It mocks the 2007 affidavit that denied its man-made origin, then gently forgives the politicians who withdrew it.

It laughs at treasure hunters who dove for Hanuman’s lost jewels, and it ribs both the devout who want it declared a national heritage monument and the rationalists who insist it is nothing but a natural tombolo.

Efforts to Erase the Bridge

In one delicious chapter titled ‘I Have Been Cancelled Before It Was Fashionable’, the bridge lists how governments, courts, and activists repeatedly tried to erase, rename, or blow it up.

Chatterjee’s prose is lush without being purple. Sentences glide like waves over coral, “I have carried the footsteps of gods and smugglers, pilgrims and marine biologists, lovers who believed the tide would hide their kisses and soldiers who planted landmines where once vanaras placed stones.”

At just under 280 pages, the book is mercifully concise, yet it leaves you feeling you have travelled across centuries.

The only minor quibble is that the enchanted tone occasionally flirts with preciousness; a few readers might find the bridge’s self-pity when discussing modern pollution or the Sethusamudram project a touch overwrought. But that is a small price to pay for a work this original.

The Memoirs of an Enchanted Bridge is that rare book that can sit comfortably on the shelf next to Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy and Roberto Calasso’s mythological retellings. It will delight mythology lovers, irritate ideologues on both sides of the rationalist–devotional divide, and quietly enchant anyone who has ever stood on the shores of Dhanushkodi and felt something older than history stirring in the wind.

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