One of them was that snakes announce their invisible presence by emitting the smell of the fragrant Gobindahog rice. It is about the author of “The woman and the serpent”, the Bengali novelist and short story writer Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay (1898-1971). Born in a zamindar family, Bandyopadhyay would later write scathingly against the zamindari system and the inequalities it contained. Initially a Gandhian, Bandyopadhyay was committed to the labouring class and the marginalised, whom he observed closely as a social worker. To return to Bandyopadhyay, it is high time that more of his works are translated.