This is a work of fiction. But the Mahanadi is real. The river has been running through central and eastern India for longer than any of our stories, longer than our cities, longer than the names we have given to the places it passes through. It does not need our witness to be what it is. It is what it is whether or not we are sitting on its banks.But we go to the river anyway. We go because the river gives us something that other places do not: the experience of being...