For a life that could possibly be best described as eventful, a slim memoir can often run out of breath in reliving its sweep. This sense of life outpacing memory isn't surprising for the Oxford-educated tribal leader from the Chotanagpur plateau in Jharkhand (then in undivided Bihar), who went on to not only lead the Indian hockey team to an Olympic gold but also became the voice of the tribals in the Constituent Assembly and one of the key figures of the Jharkhand movement. It isn’t clear what drove Munda to pen the 180-page memoir on a sea voyage to Europe in 1969, only a year before he passed away. Even if it was the tedium of the long journey, his retelling of his life and times has left a historical repository.
