Told in the form of a story within a story, a voice narrates the tale of a people residing in the foothills of the Himalayas, where they once lived in harmony with the Living Mountain (though this harmony is broken from time to time by warring with neighbouring clans & villages). They had perfected a balance of living by respectfully maintaining their distance from their sacred mountain, decreed to be out of bounds by the law of their ancestors. That is until the day the intruders come charging with weapons. 

'The Living Mountain' is a fable for the voices unheard, the songs unsung & the dances that are forgotten from an era of humanity when indigenous cultures thrived living close to the rivers and mountains and forests of the world. Until the Age of Anthropocene was ushered bringing with it greed, discord & irreverence of the ancestral knowledge and way of living. Until these mountain people (who are now called Varvaroi) were enslaved and colonised by the new kind - Anthropoi for their selfish reasons: to ascend the slopes of the sacred mountain & to discover & take by force the riches that lie in the womb of Mahaparbat. What follows is a mad grab for riches and resources by both Anthropoi & Varvaroi resulting in near-catastrophic consequences.

Amitav Ghosh raises pertinent questions on the ownership of resources & land: who is the 'rightful' master of land? Is it the people who lived there for centuries? Or the colonisers who waged war & broke the native laws by asserting their right to rule & take what they desire? Or does it belong to no one? In a world governed by hungry merchants (corporations & billionaires), it isn't long before the Living Mountain (Earth) no longer has anything to give & the once potent life-sustaining mountain is no longer a protector but a destroyer, bringing damage to the life of the Mountain folks, ravaging their villages with landslides & avalanches.

The question is how long till we learn the same lesson before the Mahaparbat comes crashing down beneath our feet?