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Leonie’s Leap

Title: Leonie’s Leap

Author: Marzia Pasini

Publisher: Atmosphere Press

“Son,” Hridaya whispered again, this time with an edge that made him quiver. “Do you know why you’re here?”

“I don’t,” Leonie answered, still shaken by his visions.

“Then I’ll tell you: this is your last incarnation. Your chance to break free from the cycles of separation and denial that have kept you bound. Do you know what this means?”

“I don’t,” he admitted.

Hridaya took a moment to adjust his robe, then gripped Leonie’s forearm, his voice low. “It means your ancient soul chose to return to this plane one last time for the purpose of liberation. Divine destiny is with you, but you still have the will to reject it. If you turn away, the universe will keep sending the lessons you need to learn. Ignore them, and they’ll get harsher. Do you understand?”

Leonie shrugged in resignation. “What does it matter what I’ve come here to learn?” he murmured, his gaze falling to the ground. “I’m all alone, anyway.”

“Nonsense,” Hridaya countered, his grip on Leonie’s palm firming.

“You are no orphan, but a beloved child of the universe. Though you may feel displaced, your soul is anchored to the womb of the world; your hands inter-twined with the pulse of creation. It is only in the folly of ignorance that we choose to desert ourselves, becoming orphans to our very own souls.

“Look,” he said, squinting his blind eyes as if sensing Leonie’s pain, “I know life doesn’t always add up the way we want it to, but that doesn’t mean we should stop counting our blessings. You see, there is no good or bad luck, really, only wisdom to be gained from our unmendable human condition.

“Our personal stories shape us, but they do not limit or define us. In the end, who we truly are escapes all form and definition. It doesn’t matter, then, what star you were born under or which side of the river you drank from— obstacles will arise either way. You must not get discouraged, son. We are here to pave the way for each other, learning to see clearer so we can love better.

“The fortuneteller paused, as though listening for a distant whisper only he could hear. Then, with his head tilted toward the sky, he continued: “At any point, we can give our life a hundred different names or simply call it grace. It all depends on how well we learn to see through things. Sometimes the greatest trials turn out to be our highest blessings. Other times, we are left with indelible wounds, marks that cannot be erased or repaired. But if we carry our hurt with grace, the scars stitched onto our skin become luminous constellations guiding our way home.

“Now happiness is the common road. But freedom? Here the road forks. The path of freedom is not the way of the masses, nor the aspiration of the tribe. Many of us meddle with freedom, but freedom has little to do with getting things our way, possessing what we desire, or feeling good about this or that.

“Before we’re born, freedom is woven into the fabric of our souls. As children, we understand this instinctively, but as we grow, this knowingness fades, leaving us nostalgic or in denial. Only a rare, disgruntled minority set off on a quest to reclaim what’s been lost. Some journey far, sometimes to the farthest edges of the earth. Don’t get me wrong. At times, the search is required. Yet what really matters is never the distance we travel, but how deep we are willing to dive to illuminate the shadows.

“Son,” the fortuneteller leaned in, his voice dropping to a secretive whisper. “You’ll hear many promising you something better or more. It seems to me everyone hopes to hoard magic, but the pot of gold doesn’t just sit at the end of the rainbow. Treasures pepper the trail. Each day, the path unfolds, ever unwritten. Now tell me, what does your heart long to know more than anything so it may be made free again?”

Silence pervaded the forest once more. A gentle breeze brushed against Leonie’s face as he gazed out at the water, then back at the man. “The truth about my mother,” he uttered. “That is what I’d like to know most.”

Hridaya sighed deeply. “The truth, son, will set you free, but to do so, it must break open your heart first. Are you sure this is what you want to know more than anything?”

A tremor rippled through Leonie’s heart. He knew that the truth, whatever it was, would hit like a punch to his chest.

***

Dearheart, perhaps you, too, have felt the sudden whack of truth—a force you have avoided, fearing it could shatter the world as you know it. Be honest: how often have you told a white lie to help someone save face or feel better? How many times has something inside you desperately wanted to live out the truth, and at the same time hoped it would never be revealed?

There’s no escaping it: the truth is seldom subtle. It’s a hurricane, exposing what you’ve kept covered. If we let the truth be destructive, it will wreak havoc. Yet honesty doesn’t have to be crushing; it can be as gentle as blushing. Gentle honesty is wise and discerning. It doesn’t weaken relationships; it deepens them. Speaking the truth is never about being rude, harsh, or unfiltered—it’s about upholding integrity in the centre of your heart. After all, honesty is a prickly rose. It must be handled with care, carried with grace, and delivered with unbending kindness. Even if it’s tough, lean into the hard conversations softly and speak your heart boldly. Stand for the truth—whatever the cost. Anything less is fickle, unreliable, and untrustworthy.

Dearheart, have you ever wondered about that tingle keeping you awake at night? Where does the fiery inspiration spark from? Why does your soul beckon you in? Consciousness is ever awake, whether you are asleep, stumbling, or taking the leap. It patiently waits for you to unlock the mysteries of your spirit and embrace the liberating journey that awaits.

About the Book

Leonie’s Leap tells of the adventures of a fifteen-year-old orphaned acrobat who escapes his dreary life to join the circus as a trapeze artist. Just as the daring acrobat takes the bold plunge into the unknown, your inner exploration reveals the hidden wonders within.

Your capacity to return to this wild inner landscape is the answer to your deepest longing, the home where every prayer settles. It doesn’t matter where you come from or what path you have chosen—every bit of YOU knows it: you were born to live vibrantly from your depths. The world needs you to dwell in your wildly liberated heart. It breathes through your sacred dreams. Your wings. Your feet.

Are you ready to leap?

About the Author

Marzia Pasini is a writer and life coach devoted to heart consciousness and the sacred return to self. With a background in Philosophy and a Master’s in Comparative Politics from the London School of Economics, she began her career in international development, working with the United Nations and the Office of Her Majesty Queen Rania of Jordan. Two life-altering health crises sparked a profound inner shift, inspiring her to help others reconnect with their inner freedom and truth. She has also authored a children’s book Satya and the Sun, which follows a young girl on a magical journey through her fear of the dark—offering an empowering reflection on change, trust, and the unknown.

Originally from Italy, Marzia has lived in six countries and now makes her home in India with her husband and two children.

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Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Delhi’s Haunted Monuments

Title: Ghosted: Delhi’s Haunted Monuments 

Author: Eric Chopra

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

JAMALI-KAMALI

Menacing Jinn and Forbidden Pasts

Do people who come here ask you about the jinn?’ My question lingered in the air for a bit. I was in the courtyard of a medieval mosque. At nightfall, this monument is entrancing, with its white marble dazzling against the red sandstone and the medallions on the spandrels of its pishtaq (arched entrance) appearing as glaring white eyes.

‘That’s all they mostly ask…’ said the guard as he began to dig through his pockets, looking for a key upon my request. ‘But I have my guru’s blessings, nobody has harmed me! And see this, that very guru allows me to find everything.’ He triumphantly raised his hands and dangled the keys which would open the perpetually locked gate of the graveyard that hosts the supposedly ‘haunted’ tomb adjacent to the mosque.

I remember how strong the scent of the devil’s tree, Saptaparni, was that evening. This is the fragrance of October in Delhi, playing its part as the harbinger of winter. The intensity of the aroma was unsurprising since I was surrounded by trees as I made my way through the Mehrauli Archaeological Park. The moon was aglow, and so was the Qutb Minar, (Fig. 23) India’s tallest minaret that oversees this part of the city like a powerful ancestral force.

There have been times aplenty when I have been warned to not come to this park after sunset, not only because of its forested environs but also for the unseeable forces who are believed to inhabit it. ‘At least tie your hair…’ I am told by the flower-sellers who sit in rows across the narrow road outside one of the entrances to the park. My hair, if left untied, is an invitation for the menacing jinn to follow me, and not only that, they would also leave an imprint across my cheeks: ‘Beware…they will slap you!’

Jinn are ‘intermediary’ and complex beings who are made of smokeless fire, unlike humans, who are made of clay. In Islam, both humans and jinn are subject to the Revealed Law and will be held accountable for their actions on the Day of Judgement. Like humans, jinn are considered ‘responsible beings’ as they possess the freedom to choose how they lead their lives. However, they also have unique characteristics: shape-shifters, invisible entities, and magical trickery. While the jinn do possess these abilities, their power serves as a test, and they will face consequences if they misuse it to terrorise people.

But it is not that these jinn float and reside in the many niches that this historical park is dotted with. There is a particular place where they have found refuge, at the tomb and mosque of Jamali Kamboh—a Sufi, courtier, poet, emissary, and globe-trotter. But if you ever find yourself in Mehrauli and ask anyone about him, you would never hear his name being taken alone. It is always in companionship with Kamali, the identity that local lore has given to the mystery man that Jamali is buried next to.

Together, Jamali-Kamali are found in a single-storied mausoleum as magnificent as the meaning behind Jamali’s name: the one who inspires beauty. Resembling a gem-box, it is even protected like one since special permission is required to see it from the inside, though legends will also have you believe that it must also be kept that way so as to not provoke the wrath of the jinn. The monument that is always accessible in this complex is the mosque, also built by Jamali, and to its north is where his tomb lies, in a cemetery surrounded by other open-air graves.

But on that October evening, my request to be let inside had been granted. As the guard reached the graveyard’s gate, the locks clinked and clanked, and I wondered how I would make a rather frustrating character in a horror movie, much like those who are aware of the consequences and yet become responsible for incurring the curse of the Mummy. But I didn’t have to dwell on this thought for too long for by then, the gate had been opened, and I marched purposefully towards Jamali-Kamali.

A chained wooden door shields this square tomb. To get a glimpse of the interiors, one has to walk to its northern and eastern sides which boast beautiful sandstone jalis (latticed window screens). To its north I went, lured by the devil tree’s scent marrying the aroma of the incense sticks that had been lined right under the screen. The guard told me that somebody had come earlier to the tomb to pray and had lit those sticks. ‘But even when there are no agarbattis here, I still always get a whiff of them,’ he said.

I peeked in through the screen and there they were in their shiny graves, right next to one another—Jamali and Kamali. They rest under a domed ceiling that gleams with magnificent motifs and its edges sing the verses of Jamali. It  appears as if these two spend their afterlife at peace under an ornate galaxy of red, white, and blue.

Having beheld its magic, it was puzzling. How does something so precious come to attain the reputation as one of the city’s most haunted sites? But there were more questions. About its uniqueness: how does such a pioneering sixteenth-century tomb, spanning the period between the decline and rise of two dynastic epochs, find itself in Delhi’s first city? About its multiple identities: how can this monument be a place of horrors and simultaneously a haven of sanctity and an oasis for lost histories? And inevitably, about its enigma, not only due to the jinn, but also because of Kamali: who really was this man, sometimes seen as Jamali’s pupil, at other times his friend, and often, his lover?

It is through the untangling of these various threads which tie Jamali-Kamali together that we may reach closer to understanding what makes this place so astonishing. And thus, the story can only begin at one place…

(Extracted from Ghosted: Delhi’s Haunted Monuments by Eric Chopra. Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2025)

About the Book

Delhi is haunted—by its ghosts, its ruins, and its unending capacity for rebirth. In the shadow of medieval mosques and Mughal tombs, the past refuses to stay buried. Saints, Sultans, poets, and lovers—all linger in the city’s imagination, their stories shaping how we remember what once was.

In Ghosted, historian and storyteller Eric Chopra journeys through the capital’s most beguiling sites—Jamali-Kamali, Firoz Shah Kotla, Khooni Darwaza, the Mutiny Memorial, and Malcha Mahal—to unearth a Delhi that exists between worlds: a palimpsest where Sufis bless kings, jinn listen to grievances, and begums occupy dilapidated hunting lodges. What begins as a search for Delhi’s haunted monuments becomes a meditation on why we are drawn to the dead and how ghost stories become vessels of collective memory.

Blending archival research with folklore, myth, and reflection, Chopra paints an intimate portrait of a city forever in dialogue with its former selves. Through invasions and rebirths, he reveals that Delhi’s spirit resides not just in its monuments but in the unseen presences that linger among them.

Ghosted is a lyrical, haunting journey through the city’s spectral landscape— an invitation to listen to what its echoes tell us about memory and identity.

About the Author

Eric Chopra is a public historian, writer, media creator, podcaster, and the founder of Itihāsology, an inclusive platform dedicated to Indian history and art. He leads a range of heritage experiences at museums and monuments and designs history-musicals in which he performs as a storyteller. Chopra is the co-host of the For Old Times’ Sake podcast and Jaipur Literature Festival’s Jaipur Bytes podcast. He also writes and curates for numerous festivals and events focused on history, literature, and the performing arts.

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Dreiser, Melville: Birds of a Feather

Title: Theodore Dreiser — The Giant

Author: Wayne F. Burke

Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) reached apotheosis of his literary endeavour with his 1925 publication An American Tragedy. In the following twenty years, until completion of the The Bulwark in 1946, nothing he wrote remotely equaled the power of the tragedy. His opus plus Sister Carrie has become a classic—so too Jennie Gerhardt to a less heralded extent. Some of Dreiser’s short stories, such as “Nigger Jeff”, “St. Columba and the River”, and “The Lost Phoebe”, could stand on their own in any American or world anthology. Due to its narrative thrust and other attributes (powerful romance), The Financier was and is the best of Dreiser’s ‘Trilogy of Desire’ (including The Titan and The Stoic). The first three-quarters of the autobiography Dawn made for compelling reading, as did all of the essays in Twelve Men. The Bulwark was and is a minor classic, truncated but yanking at heart strings as adamantly if not for as long as any of Dreiser novels. Newspaper Days, the second volume of his autobiography is a baggy and verbose twin of the heavily, and unfortunately edited, A Traveler at Forty.

“The last great American writer of Melvillean dimensions,” Jerome Loving wrote of Dreiser. Dimensionality and similarity is each writer’s search to uncover and understand the phenomenon of existence. It’s a spiritual quest, though neither men have any sectarian belief (Melville nominally Unitarian). What is and to whom does the “oversoul” of Emersonian transcendentalism belong? To Dreiser, the grand protagonist life itself suggests a something else: God or gods perhaps, behind the display of natural phenomenon. Hs opus suggests that God or gods, or the “Creative Force,” used humankind for his, her, its own purpose; a purpose hidden from humankind’s limited understanding; also theorising possibilities of additional God or gods in the background making use of, let us say, “primary” God or gods, for a like inscrutable purpose.

In his last years Dreiser looked through a microscope for clues to the phenomenality of being—to unravel mysteries of life. Switching gears mid-career, he became an explorer of consciousness who preferred the company of scientists to that of literary brethren (to the detriment of his art, I must add).

 In Dawn, Dreiser theorised that humankind was an invention—a schemed-out machine, useful to a larger something. This theory marked his turn from an early mechanistic belief in universal proceedings to consideration of an oversoul, or creative intelligence, behind or causative to universal phenomenon.

But what “soul”? What cause? What intelligence? Ahab[1] tried to tear the veil that covered the quondam source; tried to expose the phenomenon of so-called “reality,” but being only a man, and mortal, failed—dying in the process. What is the symbolism of the great whale’s whiteness but a concealing veil thrown over appearances? Melville’s scientifically, scrupulously dismantled his leviathan part by part, yielding naught as to mysteries of origins and unquantifiable organic processes, while Dreiser wandered over the same dry speculative desert (as Hawthorne noted) too honest to be or do otherwise.

 Dreiser had his own mystic creed; refusing to conform to any formal doctrine—his views in later years influenced by Quakerism, Hinduism, and Christian Science (which his wife “Jug,” and his character Eugene Witla of The Genius came under spell of). In Newspaper Days, and in a sour mood, he wrote, “Religion! What a mockery! Why pray? Of whom to ask? The one who loaded the dice at the start?” Elsewhere in that same book—and in a better mood—he wrote, “There is a sower somewhere. Is it planet, gas, element, fire? It gardens and sows—what is its plan, and why?”

 Like many ex-parochial students, Dreiser had a profound dislike of Catholicism and her rituals. A dislike engendered, in Dreiser’s case, by scorn of an ineffectual father, John Paul Dreiser. In Dawn, Dreiser wrote of Catholics with ossified brains who rejected natural emotion as sinful; who spent inordinate amounts of time on their knees praying to an immense and inscrutable something which cared not for their adoration or supplication.

He denied sectarian pretense to divine authority and wrote about how little there was to the Christ legend aside from artistic spectacle. Ritual and churchly dogma infuriated him—particularly angered by the priest who at first denied Dreiser’s mother burial in the sacred grove because she was a lapsed Catholic.

Dreiser despised religion in the form of Catholicism as much as he came to despise oligarchy—though early in his career celebrated the power of the oligarch in the character of Frank Cowperwood, of the ‘The Trilogy of Desire’, apotheosis of laissez faire capitalism run amuck.

 Will Dreiser’s work survive the muddle of brave new world exigencies? I hope so. The slow relentless and inexorable pace of his stories, with their accumulation of details, are or seem anathema to the cyborg-screed of flash fiction sound bites in the blogosphere, but the stories he told—all having to do with vagaries of the human heart—though perhaps out of vogue, will never not be relevant to the human oh so human condition.

[1] From Melville’s Moby Dick

About the Book:

Theodore Dreiser – The Giant, is an explication, exegesis, of the fiction of Dreiser plus much of his nonfiction. Included are synopses of each title. Between considerations of the work is a biography of the writer. (Note: Dreiser could be, in his work, pedantic and humourless: this study is neither.)

About the Author:

Wayne F. Burke writes both poetry and prose. He is author of 12 published poetry collections–most recently Whatever Happened to Baby Wayne? Hog Press, 2025; two works of fiction–most recently No Tab For Sully, a novella, Alien Buddha Press, 2025; and six works of nonfiction–including Theodore Dreiser – The Giant, Cyberwit,net., publisher, 2025. He lives in Vermont (USA).

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Love and Crime in the Time of Plague

Title: Love and Crime in the Time of Plague: A Bombay Mystery

Author: Anuradha Kumar

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

Maya is Discomfited

What shall we talk about?’ Maya asked in her irrepressible way, a lilt in her voice. That afternoon she was out cycling with Henry when the rain came down, turning heavy in moments. It was August and the middle of the monsoon season.

‘Tell me more about what you found. More about those…mysterious sketches. You have two minutes,’ Henry rolled his eyes playfully as he pulled out his watch.

Dark, thick clouds loomed over the sea and gathered by the palm trees and rocks lining the shore. Leaving their bicycles against the tall, old Ashoka tree, they had run, like many times before, toward the old Prong’s lighthouse to their right. Its white walls were damp-streaked and moss-stained, and the grey rocks huddled by it were dotted by foamy flecks. The sea swirled in noisily with an insistent rhythm.

They stood on the low stoop, looking out at the gravestones across the road. The door behind, blue paint flaking in places, creaked in the wind. The room in the old lighthouse always smelt musty. It was sparsely furnished with wooden chairs, a table, and a cupboard. Faded red curtains fluttered on the windows. A part of the roof near the fireplace leaked, and rainwater often dripped down into a large wooden tub. Soon, Henry always joked, it would fill up with fish. The keeper, an old Eurasian, waved to them from an upstairs window, his beard flailing through its rusting iron bars.

They were right at the tip of the city on the island of Colaba, and the new bicycles—shipped to Henry only that summer—were safe to ride on, with their evenly spaced wheels, pneumatic tyres, and a chain system. Henry was pleased with these new ‘Rover’ cycles, made by a company in Chicago, Henry’s home town. The wind left a mist on their faces, the gulls were noisy on the rafters, and they waited for the rain to ease.

The Causeway, its white stones grey in the wan light, stretched to the mainland. Built some fifty years ago, it now connected what had been the separate islands of Colaba, and the Old Woman’s Island to the bigger island of Bombay. If they craned their necks and looked to the left, through the palm trees, the stone walls of the old fort were clearly visible.

Henry took his cap off, twirled it with his fingers then placed it back on his head. Maya scraped the soles of her muddy boots against the stoop, and leaned against the door. They heard a sharp clear call, two eagles were majestically scouring the skies, their wings spotted white, and lighting up when the sun momentarily breathed through the clouds.

‘You’ve been thinking about the sketches, haven’t you?’

Maya nodded, her eyes the colours of the stormy sea. The eagles, she was thinking, maybe they were the White-bellied Sea Eagles familiar to these parts.

‘Tell me about it,’ Henry encouraged, stealing a look upstairs, and noting the open window. The keeper was probably all ears. They were always the subject of gossip, and Henry ruefully accepted this, always with a turmoil in his heart. He enjoyed Maya’s company and tried not to think too much of the future; most times he failed. Sometimes he thought Maya felt the same way.

~

Maya had found the sketches only a fortnight ago. In a room, dark, mysterious and unused, at the very back of the grey-stone ‘doctors’ house’ where Maya lived. She had wanted to use the room as a study. The doctors’ house stood on a narrow lane leading off the Colaba Causeway, on the sliver of land where Bombay stretched into the sea in a crab-like way. One walked through the house’s main hallway, and the study appeared after a series of small steps. Next to the study was the covered courtyard and on the left, its lone window faced the garden, with its wooden latticed fence, the bougainvillea and oleander creepers, and tall palm trees. Farther beyond, closer to the sea, lay the asylum and a part of the lighthouse, always visible from the upper floor windows of the doctors’ house. Sounds of the horse-drawn tramcars, the bells of the Afghan Church, the train coming in every morning and in the late afternoon, and the constant rolling of the sea, shaped a pleasing backdrop to everyday life in the house.

Once owned by Hormuzji Dorabji, a merchant whose business interests spread across Bombay, Surat, East Africa and Natal, the doctor Edith Pechey had first rented it when she came to Bombay to manage the city’s first women’s hospital. Soon there were two of them, when Charlotte Ellaby responded to Edith’s invitation, and that was how the bungalow got its name. Then about two years ago, though Maya felt it was much longer, the doctors’ house had a new resident when Maya joined them, a few weeks after reaching Bombay as part of a travelling theatre troupe from Lahore. The troupe soon moved on to another city, but Maya had stayed back. For a while only, she had thought at first, but months had flown by and the ‘doctors’ house’ was her home now. Edith had moved out when she married Herbert Phipson, an American businessman with offices in Bombay, and Maya still stayed on with Charlotte. Finding her feet in a city, warm and lively. Finding her heart too, but with that Maya wanted to take more time.

~

For Maya, the string-bound folder with the sketches was an unexpected find. It lay in the old wooden almirah, lost among dusty old account ledgers, old books, in old Pali and Persian, and crinkled maps brown with age.

‘They look so old, and so skilfully done.’ Henry still remembered the awed expression on Maya’s face the afternoon she told Charlotte and him about it. They had shared Maya’s delight, looking at the sketches—lifelike depictions of birds, drawn mainly in black ink, with distinct colours on some.

(Excerpted from Love and Crime in the Time of Plague: A Bombay Mystery by Anuradha Kumar. Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2025)

ABOUT THE BOOK

It is 1896. A ship docks in Bombay Harbour, and as the workers rush to unload the cargo, a scream rings out. A large black rat, frothing at the mouth, has bitten one of the men.

Within weeks, a miasma of fear engulfs the city as ship-borne rats overrun its nooks and crannies, and more and more of its inhabitants fall sick—and die. Dr Acacio Viegas is the first to ring the alarm—it is the plague. The only way to control it is to sanitize the city’s slums, clean its drains, report any fever, and stay at home. The British Administration embarks on these measures on a war footing—until warning notes begin to turn up at Doctors’ House, where Maya Barton lives with Dr Charlotte Ellaby, and at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital—notes that threaten those who are ‘interfering’ with people’s religion and customs with dire consequences—all signed by the ‘Native Society’.

Maya and her friend Henry Baker, the American trade counsel, are soon hot on the trail of the Society, which leads them to the formidable Rangnekar Bhau, the Society’s founder, and its Secretary, the treacherous Satarkar, who hates everything new and ‘modern’, whether the British and the brown sahibs, and their so-called anti-plague drive, or women like Maya, who think too much of themselves.

As Maya and Henry unravel the mystery, they draw closer to each other and to what could be a future together. And Maya learns more about Reverend Barton, who could have been her father, and the Kashmiri woman who might have been her mother.

Anuradha Kumar once again uses her talent for recreating a period setting and engaging characters to brilliant effect in this sequel to the acclaimed The Kidnapping of Mark Twain, her first Bombay Mystery.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anuradha Kumar has worked for the Economic & Political Weekly. She has an MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA). Her stories have won awards from the Commonwealth Foundation, UK, and The Little Magazine, India. She writes regularly for Scroll.in. Her stories and essays have appeared in publications like Fiftytwo.in, The India Forum, The Missouri Review, among others. Two of her essays received notable mention in ‘Best American Essays’ editions of 2023 and 2024. Her essay collection, The Sound of Lost Memories, was recently a finalist for the Gournay Prize (University of Iowa) and will be published (2027) by Cornerstone Press (University of Wisconsin, Stevens-Point).

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Forever Yours

                                                       

Tite: Forever Yours and Other Poems

Author: Swati Pal

Publisher: Hawakal Publishers

A deathly pall

Sometimes

The silence creeps up

And deafens me,

Tearing into me

Slicing through me

And mincing me to bits

.

And from every bit

Of me

A cry so dark

So desperate

So alien

Longs to burst out

That you would shudder

If you heard it.

It’s as if

In some nightmare

That once I saw

In which

My severed head

Was in my hands

But my shrieks

Could be heard

Far and wide.

.

When my eyes

Opened,

A deathly pall

Hung low over me,

Until it swallowed me whole

And we collapsed

As one

Forever.

.

To be a firefly

Oh, to be

A firefly

Dancing

In the dark,

Spreading hope

With its

Brilliant light

Even as

It is enveloped

In blinding night,

To flash

Before the eyes

And soar

Higher

Into the skies…

.

I lie awake

And pray

I become

That firefly.

.

Whilst I live,

I wish only

To spread cheer

To do good

And then

To melt

Into the ether

And be

Not remembered

Yet not forgotten,

Like the firefly…

About the Book: “The deafening silence of a loved one’s absence turns the poet into the eternal Ma enduring separation. Swati Pal’s poetry also straddles the particular to the universal theme of grief and loss and symbolically suggests compassionate ways of healing the pain … Swati Pal’s Forever Yours and Other Poems holds ajar that mysterious door to the panorama of a mother’s love, loss, grief and hope. Her poems will resonate beyond her individual story.” — Prof. Malashri Lal (Former Head, Dept of English, University of Delhi)

About the Author:  Swati Pal, Professor and Principal, Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi, is a Fulbright-Nehru fellowship scholar, a Charles Wallace scholar and the first Asian scholar to receive the John McGrath Theatre Studies Scholarship at Edinburgh University. Author of several books on theatre, creative and academic writing, her newspaper articles articulate her views on education. Her areas of research interest include performance studies and cultural history. She translates from Hindi to English and several of her translations have been published. She writes poetry and her poems appear in several anthologies; she also has two collections entitled In Absentia and Forever yours and a curated collection called Living On. She is the Vice Chair of the Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies and has been the recipient of several national and international awards, both as a teacher as well as an administrator. 

Click here to read an interview with Swati Pal.

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Tales from Kavali

Title: That’s A Fire Ant Right There! Tales from Kavali

Author: Mohammed Khadeer Babu

Translator: D.V. Subhashri

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

True-blue Palavenkareddy!

It’s only now when he’s running a Palav Center in front of Kavali Court that he’s able to see twenty-six rupees in his hand for every plate he sells, but there was a time in our childhood when Palavenkareddy too was down on his luck!

Palavenkareddy (Palav + Venkareddy) was my father’s best friend. He was also the one who got him married.

When my grandfather Mastan Sayibu was considering giving my mother’s hand in marriage to my father, it seems he went straight to Palavenkareddy to enquire about my father’s ‘conduct’.

‘Don’t worry about that boy, saami! He’s 24-carat gold. You can get them hitched with your eyes shut!’ Palavenkareddy reassured my grandpa and lifted a load off his mind.

Although seven-eight years older than my father, Palavenkareddy, always dressed in white, appeared much younger, with his toned muscles (he was a wrestler once, I might add), shining skin and dyed hair.

At the time of nikah, as my mother was still a young fourteen-year-old, Palavenkareddy used to address her as ‘ammayi’ or ‘girl’, and continued to call her that even after marriage. Whatever his feelings for my father, he definitely favoured my mother and had more affection for her.

If Sankranti was here, Palavenkareddy wouldn’t be far behind. He’d show up with a large steel carrier full of ariselu, manuboolu, laddulu and hand it to my mother saying, ‘Here you go, girl.’ Then he would take my father, my brother and me to his house, fill our leaf-plates full of sweet payasam and treat us to a full festival meal. (This is also the time to reveal yet another truth. Until recently, whenever my mother had to go to a wedding or any other function, she would borrow Palavenkareddy’s wife’s or daughter-in-law’s jewellery as if she had every right to do so.)

I don’t really know if he was into farming or not, but as kids we always saw she-buffaloes tied up at their house. His wife would wake up early and toil hard, tending to the buffaloes all day. Seemingly in an effort to reduce her drudgery, he dabbled in various businesses, but being a man of truth, failed to make money in any of them. Finally, he hit the jackpot when he opened the Palav Centre. And since then, his surname changed from Remala to Palav and he came to be known as Palavenkareddy to everyone in our town.

During our childhood, he owned a cloth store near the Ongole bus stand. Barely a metre would sell each day at the shop, but Palavenkareddy and his elder son could always be seen dutifully minding the store.

Now why I’ve been telling you this long story about Palavenkareddy is because when the month of Ramzan arrived we were forced to draw on his services—thanks to my mother’s pestering.

‘All the ladies in the street are going to Gademsetty Subbarao’s shop and getting themselves whatever clothes they want. Why don’t you also toss me a hundred or two? I’ll go get the children some new clothes.’ My mother had been badgering my father ever since Ramzan had begun.

My father responded with neither ‘aan’ nor ‘oon’. Ultimately, she decided that this was not the medicine for my father’s attitude and cleverly started instigating my grandma.

‘Rey abbaya! How heartless can you get! Even if we adults don’t buy anything, how can you not get a few pieces of cloth for the children? When other children in the street roam around wearing new clothes, won’t ours feel bad?’ poked my grandma.

Who knows what came over him, but he replied, ‘Send the older one and the second one to the shop in the evening. If I happen to get money by then, I’ll buy them some, alright,’ and left for work.

When evening came, with high hopes my mother dressed us up—not just me and my brother but also our sister—and sent us to our electrical shop on Railway Road.

And my father? What did he do? When we reached there, he was sitting at the table with a deadpan face and hands over his head. The moment he saw us, he stood up and said, ‘Not today. Go home,’ then picked up my little sister and prepared to lock the shop.

We were crestfallen. My brother was on the verge of tears.

That is exactly when, like Gods appearing out of nowhere, Palavenkareddy appeared before us. On seeing us, he laughed, ‘Endayyo? What’s up here? All the little Nawabs have descended together.’

My father too laughed and told him the matter. ‘What, Karim Sayiba? The children have come for their festival clothes and you’re taking them back empty-handed? Didn’t you think of my shop? Come, come, let’s go,’ Palavenkareddy urged him.

‘Not now, Enkareddy. We’ll see when I have the money,’ said my father reluctantly.

‘Do you ask for money when you do electric work in my house? Then why would I demand money for the children’s clothes?’ he insisted, herding us along. And so, together we all went to Palavenkareddy’s cloth shop near Ongole bus stand.

‘Karim Sayiba! It’s not as if you’re going to buy clothes again anytime soon, so might as well pick a sturdy fabric that will last a few days,’ he said, opening a wooden almirah and pulling out a tough-looking piece of blue cloth from the swathes of fabric inside.

‘Guarantee cloth. No question of tearing at all,’ he said.

Whenever my father hears the word ‘guarantee’, he forgets everything else and says, ‘Yes, give that one’, and so, he said the same to Palavenkareddy as well.

That was that! Before we knew it, in five minutes Palavenkareddy had cut the cloth and all of us had given our measurements to the tailor Sayibu beside the shop, who promptly soaked the cloth in an iron bucket.

(Excerpted from That’s A Fire Ant Right There! Tales from Kavali by Mohammed Khadeer Babu, translated by D.V. Subhashri. Published by Speaking Tiger Books)

ABOUT THE BOOK: Captured in the innocent voice of a young boy, Mohammed Khadeer Babu’s Chaplinesque-style of portraying misery through humour shines a sweeping light on Muslim lives in coastal Andhra. Populated with strong women, cheeky scamps, virtuous dawdlers and scrupulous teachers, his witty storytelling in the Nellore dialect is a riveting portrayal of the daily struggles of adapting to a majoritarian world in small-town India. Belying the nostalgic memories of childhood are scathing observations of the education system, child labour, social barriers, and casteist attitudes. Yet, the stories also resound with a clear message of friendship, especially among Hindus and Muslims, making this book essential reading in today’s fraught times, to remind ourselves of our inherited legacy of communal harmony—which makes it possible for the young narrator to say, ‘I’ve never regretted even once that I didn’t learn Urdu or that I don’t know Arabic, or that I have never even touched the Quran in these languages, only in Telugu.’

D.V. Subhashri’s unique translation, which retains all the richness of the original, quaint expressions and sounds et al, brings a smile to our faces, while showing us why the book made Khadeer Babu a household name in the Telugu community. This first English translation of his work opens up a new world for us.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mohammed Khadeer Babu is a senior journalist and award-winning writer in Telugu with short stories, anthologies, non-fiction books and movies to his credit. A two-time Katha awardee, his stories have won various prizes at the state and national level and earned him the Government of Andhra Pradesh Achievement Award in 2023.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR: D.V. Subhashri is a multilingual writer and translator based out of Bangalore. Her stories and translations have appeared in various online magazines and her children’s books have won awards in Telugu and English. She is currently translating two books from Telugu and Kannada.

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Travels of Jaladhar Sen

Title: The Travels of a Sadhu in the Himalayas

Author: Jaladhar Sen

Translated from Bengali by Somdatta Mandal

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

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6th May, Wednesday

I had arranged to leave at half past four in the morning; my friends arrived even earlier to bid me farewell. It was a moonlit night, and the entire world lay silent and still. Could this small change in my life affect the grand workings of the earth? I was leaving everyone behind; friends and relatives accompanied me for quite some distance. It was evidently difficult for them to sever the affectionate ties they had nurtured with me for so long. I requested that they not proceed further; in the end, they reluctantly turned back. I, too, glanced back several times to take one last look at them. I couldn’t help but wonder—if this separation from friends was so painful, how much more difficult would it be to part from one’s own family?

A few days ago, I had read Pilgrim’s Progress*, and one scene from the book kept recurring in my mind. As we walked, my thoughts wandered to such reflections. Soon, the sun rose. We began moving towards Hrishikesh. This was an unfamiliar route—rarely travelled by others. After crossing several mountains and forests, we arrived at a small village called ‘Khanu’† around 11 a.m. This peaceful village with only five to seven houses nestled beneath a canopy of trees, resembled a tiny bird’s nest. A small stream meandered near the village. We went and took shelter under a tree by the stream, and, parched and famished, we gratefully drank its water to our hearts’ content. After eating our meal there, we resumed our journey around 5 p.m.

After leaving the village, we noticed two monks walking ahead of us. Since it was just the two of us travelling, I thought, why not join these holy men? At least the four of us could travel together for a while. We quickened our pace, but when we caught up to the two sanyasis, I felt a mix of amusement and irritation. One of them turned out to be my former servant, whom I had dismissed twenty or twenty-five days earlier for theft. His transformation was remarkable—dressed in the elaborate robes of a sanyasi, with tangled hair and constant chants of ‘Har Har Bom Bom’, he was barely recognisable as the thief he once was. It was sheer bad luck on his part that our paths crossed that day.

I recounted the whole story to Swamiji, who commented, ‘Perhaps his companion has some money in his jhola, and he has disguised himself in this manner to swindle it.’

Indeed, there seemed to be no limit to the number of people who cloaked themselves in saffron robes, with matted hair and a kamandalu, only to engage in theft, deceive innocent people, or even commit heinous crimes when the opportunity arose. Readers will encounter many such so-called sadhus in my travel narrative.

At first, my servant seemed confident I wouldn’t recognise him in his new guise. He appeared smug, believing that his ‘western intelligence’ would outwit my ‘Bengali intellect’. Seeing us, he began chanting ‘Bom Bom’ even louder, as if to reinforce his act. Unable to tolerate his pretence any longer, I burst out laughing and said, ‘Aare lounde, kabse chori chhod ke sadhu ban giya?——Oh, you scoundrel, since when did you give up thievery to become a monk?’

He was utterly stunned and rendered speechless by my words. I then explained everything to his companion, a naïve and well-meaning man. This stout young fellow had accepted my servant as his disciple, feeding him well in exchange for a few religious sermons. I said, ‘Sadhu, you may keep him and feed him—I have no objection. But if you have any money in your jhola, guard it carefully. If a man can become a sadhu in ten or twelve days, there’s nothing stopping him from becoming a murderous dacoit in a few hours.’

Later, I heard that the sadhu heeded my unsolicited advice.

By evening, we reached Bhogpur. This village was home to many people, and the presence of small brick houses suggested that some wealthy residents lived there. Close to the homes of these affluent villagers stood a dharamshala, built and maintained by the villagers themselves. Travellers and sadhus from afar could find shelter here, with food and amenities provided by the locals. However, if a traveller carried money or the village had a shop, they need not rely on these dharamshalas.

There is a great deficiency of dharamshalas in Bengal. In many respects, we are far more developed and civilised than people from other parts of India; however, we are so preoccupied that we do not have the leisure to spare time for travellers or sick people who might perish on their journeys. Of course, it must be acknowledged that there are still a few among us who are exceptions to this. Nevertheless, I feel that the uneducated Garhwali farmers, who help others, offer shelter to the distressed, and wholeheartedly care for guests, are far more sincere than the educated people of Bengal.

We spent the night at the dharamshala in Bhogpur. Exhausted from the rigours of travelling, we had no need for food and instead went straight to sleep.

7th May, Thursday

We resumed our journey early in the morning and entered the forest of Hrishikesh, which we had traversed before. Although the forest was familiar, the path was entirely unknown; we could not determine whether we were following the same route we had previously taken. We reached Hrishikesh at 1 p.m. and rested beneath a tree, still without any food. Once the afternoon sun’s glare had lessened, we resumed our journey and reached Lakshman Jhula by evening.

The few shops overlooking the Ganga at Lakshman Jhula were bustling with travellers. A group of Udasi sanyasis had arrived that very day. They were Sikhs.

(Excerpted from The Travels of a Sadhu in the Himalayas by Jaladhar Sen, translated by Somdatta Mandal. Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2025.)

THE BOOK

In the summer of 1890, Jaladhar Sen left behind a life of domesticity and embarked on an adventure across some of India’s most sacred landscapes, from Hrishikesh, all the way to Badrinath. Armed with little more than a blanket, a staff, and a book of songs by the renowned Bengali poet and Baul singer Kangal Harinath, he journeyed through perilous mountain passes, snowbound valleys, and remote pilgrim towns—seeking not the divine, but solace for a life fractured by loss.

Sen’s deeply personal travelogue chronicles the breathtaking beauty of the Himalayas—the roaring Alakananda, the towering peaks of Nara and Narayan, the spiritual might of Shankaracharya’s Joshimath, the bustling markets of Srinagar, and the ethereal stillness of Badrinath—along with a vivid cast of characters—from stoic sadhus, cunning pandas and officious police personnel to ailing young boys, large-hearted villagers and even fellow Bengali pilgrims. In the shadow of the Himalayas, Sen reflects on the complexities of faith, the hypocrisies of ascetic life, and the profound tenderness of human connection.

Blending diary observations and literary flourish, Himalay—first published in 1900—had once captured the imagination of a generation of Bengalis, inspiring them to travel far beyond their homeland. This English translation reintroduces Sen’s compelling account to a new audience, highlighting its historical importance and enduring charm as one of the earliest modern Bengali narratives of the Himalayan experience.

 THE AUTHOR

Jaladhar Sen (1860–1939) was a Bengali writer, poet, editor and a philanthropist, traveller, social worker, educationist, and littérateur. He was awarded the title of ‘Ray Bahadur’ by the British Government. In 1887 he suffered the greatest loss in his life when his mother, wife and daughter died in quick succession. Overwhelmed by grief and seeking solace, Jaladhar moved to Dehradun at the foothills of the Himalayas, where he worked as a teacher. It was during this time, in 1890, that he travelled to the Garhwal Himalaya. This journey inspired his travelogue Himalay.

THE TRANSLATOR

Somdatta Mandal is the Former Professor of English and Chairperson at the Department of English & Other Modern European Languages, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. Somdatta has a keen interest in translation and travel writing.

Read an interview with a the translator and a review by clicking here

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Ostia Antica: The Fatehpur Sikri of Rome?

Title: An Abiding City: Ruminations from Rome

Author: Neeman Sobhan

Publisher: University Press Limited (Dhaka)

Ostia Antica

Sometimes, when my visitors to Rome, arriving in the sweltering month of July or August, voice over-zealous ambitions to ‘do’ Pompeii, I don’t have the heart to discourage them. But I beg off from accompanying them. I have nothing against Pompeii as such, but I am not sufficiently suicidal to relish the thought of trudging miles of arid ruins under a punishing sun for the twenty-third time!

It’s at this point, usually, that I try to sell what I call my ‘Lazy man’s Pompeii’: Ostia Antica. I could have called it the ‘Poor man’s Pompeii’ as well, but the riches of the ancient city can almost equal a Herculaneum to the imaginative tourist. And its biggest plus-point is that it is so much closer to Rome (as against Pompeii, about 200 kilometers away, towards Naples), and may I add, that much shadier!

Less than an hour away from Rome, Ostia Antica was founded in the fourth century B.C by King Arcus Martius (a historical persona of whom I readily admit to being shamelessly ignorant) it became Ancient Rome’s commercial and military port, and during Emperor Constantine’s time, it boasted a population of 100,000!

Ostia reminds me of another ancient city I once visited and loved: Fatehpur Sikri in India, the Mughal king Akbar’s doomed capital near Agra. The comparison to Akbar’s city is justified because, although Ostia is a remarkable example of historic Roman towns like Pompeii and Herculaneum, unlike them, it was not destroyed, rather, like Fatehpur Sikri, it was abandoned.

While the Mughal city was abandoned due to a lack of sustainable water supply, in the case of the Roman city, it was mosquitoes. Strange but true that an epidemic of malaria drove out the inhabitants of this once flourishing port city. An odd quirk of history and biology that a puny anopheline community managed to drive out a powerful anthropical one, hundred times its size!

A quick reminder here: in talking about Ostia, we must make a clear distinction between Ostia Antica, the archeological site, and the present-day beach town of Ostia, a popular seaside resort within the municipality of Rome, further down.

The excavated areas of ancient Ostia abound in numerous ruins and reminders of a thriving commercial city of times past: public and private buildings, streets, defensive walls, and harbors.

I find the residential streets most fascinating because it brings to life a real world of ordinary people. Much has been written about Roman tenement-housing and remains of these buildings abound in Ostia.

Reconstructed models apparently reveal that a typical apartment block could be five-storeys high, and that the flats were probably quite functional, mostly reached from courtyards or from the street by stairs running between shops on the ground floors.

I think of all this as I stop at a crumbled courtyard here, touch a moth-eaten wall there, step over a threadbare threshold, or mount a mysterious flight of steps that end abruptly in mid-air, leading nowhere.

For me, it’s in this residential environment that I find the faint but persistent pulse of a bygone life. Visiting it on some empty afternoon, while I might be sitting on the broken steps of a roofless room, I can surmise the life of the ordinary man or woman who once lived here: I smell the fragrance of fresh baked bread in the gutted bakery next door; I hear the sound of children playing in the silent streets, or the hum of voices in the tavern with its dusty counter; and suddenly, the entire history of the humble populace seems to be whispered and echoed by the sea-spiked breeze among the pines and cypresses.

Let the Archeologist and Historian keep their details. To me the romance of a ruined city is not necessarily in the structures themselves, in the revealed or concealed splendor of its remains, it is in the mystique of its very presence, its undefined shape as a messenger from lost times, telling us stories of the long ago.

A dead city serves to remind us that it once existed, and that the past, although it is no more, is never completely wiped out, never obliterated from the collective memory of the world. In leaving behind its footprints, the spirit of the city has defied negation and accompanies me this afternoon.

And thus, I love to sit, under the peristyle of a vanished villa, absorbing the atmosphere of this long-deserted city, contemplating the history not just of this particular Roman town, but all the nameless cities of countless civilizations in the past. I wonder at the basic story it tells of our collective and individual engagement with Life, of the heroic audacity of the human spirit attempting, again and again, to build its sandcastles against the wind, trying to carve a permanent niche on the elusive surface of Time.

Whether the crumbling habitation is in Ostia Antica or Mohenjo-Daro, in Petra or Machu-Pichu, in Moinamoti or Fatehpur Sikri; each is a monument to the Spirit of Man, the builder of cities, the creamer of dreams.

[ Extracted from An Abiding City: Ruminations from Rome. Published by UPL (University Press Limited, Dhaka), 2002 ]

ABOUT THE BOOK

An Abiding City: Ruminations from Rome is a fresh look at Italy and Rome from the perspective of a long-time resident of non-Italian origin. Neeman Sobhan, living in Italy, since 1978 wrote for two decades a personal column in the Bangladesh English language daily, The Daily Star, spinning vignettes and sketches out of her daily encounters and reflections living in Rome. Here, in vivid prose and poetic detail are selections from her work.

Among some of the myriad themes in this collection of essays and poems: the charm of everyday Rome; the romance of history; the adventure of the expatriate’s eternal quest for home; the poetry of seasonal transformations; the mysteries of relationships; the kaleidoscope of life in general, and of one woman in particular, who within her journey through the Eternal City, shares with her readers her passage through life.

The writing is enhanced by ink sketches by Italian-American artist/writer Ginda Simpson.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Neeman Sobhan is a Bangladeshi-Italian fiction writer, poet, columnist. She writes in English, and her fiction and poetry have appeared in many anthologies and literary journals within the sub-continent. Till recently she taught English and Bengali at the University of Roma, La Sapienza.She lives in Rome with her husband. She has a collection of short stories, Piazza Bangladesh (2014) which has been recently translated to Italian; a volume of poetry, Calligraphy of Wet Leaves (2015) and a collection of her columns, An Abiding City: Ruminations from Rome (2002). Presently, she is finishing her first novel, and lives between her home in Rome and Dhaka.

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From Rasa to Lhasa

Title: From Rasa to Lhasa: The Sacred Center of the Mandala

Author: M.A.Aldrich

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

In 1904 at the behest of a suspicious imperial government in India, a British expeditionary force under Colonel Francis Younghusband occupied Lhasa in a fruitless search for evidence of Russian meddling in Tibetan politics. Prior to this bellicose assignment Younghusband had spent years exploring the remote, blank spaces of late nineteenth century Central Asian maps and acquiring an unusually sensitive insight into Asian religion for someone in his position. After visiting the Jokhang Temple, Tibet’s most sacred shrine, he penned a description that still resonates today.

Here it was that I found the true inner spirit of the people. The Tibetans from their mountain homes seemed here to draw on some hidden source of power. And when from the far recesses of the temple came the profound booming of great drums, the chanting of the monks in deep reverential rhythm, the blare of trumpets, the crash of cymbals, and the long rolling of lighter drums, I seemed to catch a glimpse of the source from which they drew. Music is a proverbially fitter means than speech for expressing the eternal realities; and in the deep rhythmic droning of the chants, the muffled rumbling of the drums, the loud clang and blaring of cymbals and trumpets, I realized this sombre people touching their inherent spirit, and in the way most fitted to them, giving vent to its mighty surgings panting for expression.

For Tibetans, the Jokhang Temple is at the heart of a mandala, a circular geometric design that serves as a symbol of the universe as well as a visual guide to complex and esoteric Buddhist principles. The devotional ritual of circumambulation around the temple reinforces its status as the sacred center or a “life-pole.” It is the geometric center of Lhasa’s three imaginary concentric circuits: the three korlam that are pathways for pilgrims to practice the dharma by circumambulating the Jokhang.

Eight protective shrines were built around the Jokhang. There are other nearby sites tied to the legendary account of the construction of the temple in the seventh century. Some of these sites are still used for worship, while others have become shops or residences; sadly, some have disappeared into the ether over time. The sacred and the secular were not separated in the streets of Lhasa, just as the normal and supernormal were entwined indivisibly. To expect otherwise would have come as a shock to the residents of old Lhasa and sounded downright silly to them.

For nearly all of its existence, the Jokhang Temple was Lhasa in the minds of Tibetans. Ninth-century Tang dynasty chronicles suggest Lhasa might have consisted of nothing more than mobile encampments for nobles, soldiers, and nomads, with only two permanent buildings constructed in stone (the Jokhang and its sister temple, Ramoche); but Chinese chroniclers did not always examine the ways of barbarians with much care. Lhasa did not come into being as a modest-sized city until the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, the Jokhang was felt to be synonymous with Lhasa, the “Place of the Gods.” Even in recent times the city’s bus drivers cried out “Lhasa” to their passengers to announce arrival at stops near the Jokhang Temple.

Tibetans reaffirm their view of religion as permeating all elements of the phenomenal world by perceiving them in the form of a mandala. Indeed, the mandala model applies equally to the universe as a whole, to the country, … to each city, to each temple and shrine, and, tantrically, to the worshipper’s own body. The realization of one’s own identity with these larger designs is the attainment of salvation.

ABOUT THE BOOK

A sweeping, magnificent biography—which combines historical research, travel-writing and discussion of religion and everyday culture—Old Lhasa is the most comprehensive account of the fabled city ever written in English. It is a portrait not only of a city but also an entire people—both those who still live in occupied Tibet, and those who are in exile.

‘[This book] brings you closer to the real spirit of Lhasa.’—Lobsang Sangay, former head of the Tibetan Government in Exile

‘This remarkable history should be compulsory reading for travellers, academics and armchair historians. Experts will find that Aldrich has shaken the kaleidoscope of the history and geography of Lhasa and Tibet into new and illuminating patterns. Immersing himself in the place and its past, he unravels the colourful threads that make Lhasa and Tibet so fascinating… This splendid book is a compendium of knowledge about the city and its place in Tibetan history and culture—including, of course, religion.’—Alan Babington-Smith, President of the Royal Asiatic Society, Beijing

‘Aldrich has provided in these pages a whole simulacrum of a country and its wonders. What shines in the book and gives it life is not only his amazing knowledge and understanding of Lhasa and Tibet but also his passion, enormous humour and, above all, love for its people.’—Adam Williams, author of The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure

‘Aldrich has produced an outstanding narrative focused on one of the most interesting cultural capitals in Asia… [A] fascinating history that will continue to attract readers for a long time to come.’—Jonathan S. Addleton, author of The Dust of Kandahar

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

M.A. Aldrich is a lawyer and author who has lived and worked in Asia since the 1990s. Besides Old Lhasa: A Biography, he is the author of The Search for a Vanishing Beijing: A Guide to China’s Capital Through the Ages,The Perfumed Palace: Islam’s Journey from Mecca to Peking and Ulaanbaatar—Beyond Water and Grass: A Guide to the Capital of Mongolia.

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Keep It Secret

Title: Keep It Secret

Author: Snehaprava Das

Publisher: Black Eagle Books

It was for the first time Karisma had entered her father’s room after he was discharged from the Amrit Hospital. He had suffered that massive paralytic stroke a month and a half back, the night on which she had announced that she had transferred her shares in the company and debentures in the name of Sunil Arya, the company’s junior partner. Doctors had little hope of any significant improvement in his condition. Karisma had engaged a couple of nurses from the hospital who worked in shifts and took care of her father. A doctor visited the house twice a week to examine his vitals.

‘How are you, father?’ Karisma asked. Her voice had a formal, indifferent note. A brief sparkle came to the eyes of the man who lay helpless in the bed. He tried desperate to move his hands that lay dead and stiff.

‘This is the last time you are seeing me father,’ she said softly. ‘I will be leaving this place. I have no idea what I am going to do but I will not return here. I have made all financial arrangements for you. Aruna aunty will see to it that you are taken care of properly as long as you are alive. There will be no lapse in your treatment.’

The man’s eyes darted around revealing how desperate he was and his lips quivered as if he struggled to speak out something but the only sound he made was a muffled groan.

‘I know what you want to say, father,’ Karisma said, a deep agony in her eyes. ‘But I cannot continue to live here now. You have to be alone. Didn’t you want to live in a palace and own heaps of wealth? I have transferred all the amount to your account and authorized Aruna aunty to do all transactions on your behalf. You have avenged the injustice done to you years ago, though I would not call it a heinous sin as you have always believed and made my poor mother believe it to be one. But what did I do to deserve the punishment you meted out to me, father? Which father would subject his daughter to such devilish exploitation? But of course, you were determined to torture your poor wife for the slip she made by punishing me, by snatching away every damn thing I loved, by utilizing me to slake your hunger for money. What a fool have I been to fall for that dirty ‘princess’ trick you played with me! I have never wanted to be a princess father. I was happy in that small tenement house, with the love of my mother.  That was genuine and not fake, motivated by greed and hostility like yours. And of course, there was Ronit! My Ronit! The only silver lining behind my gloomy clouds of despair. You destroyed that too. I do not believe in the existence of a world beyond this one, or that of a hell or a heaven. Each of us has to atone his sin through a penance, through self-afflicted torments, like mother did, like I have been doing all these years. My sin was just that I had a look that constantly reminded you of the slip my mother made.’ Karisma paused for a breath and looked at the eyes that had sunken into the pale, desiccated face. A few drops of tears trickled down from the corners of the dull eyes. Karisma wiped the tears with the end of her sari. ‘There is nothing I could do to help you father.. This is your nemesis and you cannot escape it. And I give you my word father, I will not let the truth come out to the open, ever! It will always remain a secret.’

 She rose to her feet and cast a long pitiful look at the inert figure, then turned and walked towards the door. A frantic but low and muffled animal howl rippled across the room, bringing her to a halt. She repressed the urge to look back and strode out of the room, breaking into a tearless, dry sobbing.

About the Book

Keep It Secret, a collection of ten stories, has in its agenda an effort to cross over the flimsy and floating border between the substance and the shadow, to explore into the jungle within, to study the secrets carefully concealed behind the mask of pretence and shamming of an agreeable and acceptable facade.

In the words of Andre Malraux, ‘Man is not what he thinks, he is what he hides.’ 

The aim, thus in a way, is to unravel the truth man hides and strives to protect it under a falsehood, that, at times projects, reveals itself through a behaviour pattern which may appear absurd. It intends to push aside the deceptively glossy screen of fake complacence, and traverse into that murky, elusive terrain beyond the ordinary logical perceptibility.

This excerpt is the from the title story, a tale of  personal vendetta.

About the Author

 Dr.Snehaprava Das, Former Prof. of English, is a noted author, poet and translator. She has three collections of English stories, five collection of English poems, and thirteen collection of Translated texts (Odia to English) to her credit. She has received  The Prabashi Bhasha Sahitya Samman, The Jivanananda Das award, The Fakirmohan Anuvad Sammana  and Lakshmi Narayan Mohanty translation awards for her contribution to literature.    

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