Slayer of Kamsa: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis
Here’s the final front cover of the mass market paperback edition of SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis, published in September by HarperCollins India under their Harper imprint. I really love what designer-illustrator Pinaki De has done with the colours and texturing and graphics. Initially, I was concerned that there were too many elements and colours but once he changed the colour scheme and added the layers of texture, all my doubts vanished. Now, I love this cover! It’s now officially my favourite cover of all my books and their various editions – and when you consider that there are over one hundred editions of over a dozen books, that’s a LOT of covers.
This is the cover flat (the full cover including the back, spine and front laid out flat) – the text blurbs have yet to be added on the back cover as well as the spine text, publisher logos, ISBNs, etc. The book is scheduled to go to press in mid-August so I hope to receive my copies by end-August or first week September, probably just a day or three before you start seeing them pop up in your neighbourhood bookstore. Less than a month now to the start of my long-awaited Krishna Coriolis series! It’s been in the writing stage since 2004 and as you know by now, it tells the life story of Krishna while also overlapping with some incidents of the Mahabharata. In fact, the Harivamsa of Vyasa which provides us with most biographical information about Krishna is a part of the Vyasa Mahabharata itself. When I realized back in 2004-05 that my Mba retelling was growing too huge to fit into one series, I decided to follow in the footsteps of the great Krishna-Dweipayana Vyasa and split the Krishna story into a separate series. And here it is now.
Excerpts will start around mid-August, probably 16th August, to whet your appetite for the book’s release in September. Mark your calendars and keep in touch!
Vengeance of Ravana: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series – on the path to publication
This is the almost final cover design for the Penguin India edition of VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana. I’m posting it here along with some good news. The first is that I have finally resolved the textual issues I had with the manuscripts of VoR and SoS and as a result I’ve finally (finally-finally-finally!) decided that both books ought to be published. This means that the series will end at eight books, not six or seven, and that I have finally been able to deal with the Sita banishment issue in a manner with which I feel satisfied. It’s only taken me six years – which is longer than it took me to write the first six books in the series! But it’s done. VoR will be released in a mass market edition by Penguin in a few months, followed within three months by the mass market edition of SoS. I’ll confirm publication dates once Penguin informs me of the same.
For those of you – “you few, you happy few!” – who’ve bought and read the exclusive limited signed AKB BOOKS edition of VoR and have ordered the exclusive limited signed AKB BOOKS edition of SoS, this may not be reason to jump up and down, which is bad for your joints anyway. But for the vast majority of Ramayana Series readers out there, I’m sure you will be happy to see why I chose to rescind my own earlier decision to end the series at six books and chose to continue it in these two additional volumes. I can’t promise that the answers I provide in these two books will please everyone. Indeed, they may please no one. Because the point of writing these books is not to please or displease, it’s simply to complete the mental journey I embarked upon when I began writing Prince of Ayodhya and finished that first book way back in the year 2000, long before any publisher was willing to even look at such a manuscript, let alone publish it. Today, I have journalists, readers, editors, booksellers, publishers and others who keep writing to me and telling me that I’m responsible for a wave of resurgence in Indian mythology. I really don’t give a damn about any resurgence or the commercial ramifications of making mythology “cool” as one editor put it. What I do care about is the wealth of great Indian literature that has been ignored by the world for so long in favour of other mythologies and legends of the western hemisphere and that deserves a wider readership and exposure.
As I’ve always said to anyone who praised me for the series: This is not about me. It’s not my story alone. It’s our story. Our history in fact. I’m proud and happy to have been the one to retell it in my humble and flawed attempt. But I’m not anyone special or talented for having done it, just a product of a great culture and people that share one of the world’s finest storytelling traditions. In my opinion, the finest.
SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis – Book your copy now!
Courtesy of designer Pinaki De and Editor Saugata Mukherjee, here are two sneak peaks of the almost-final cover design of the Harper edition of SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis, published by HarperCollins India. It will be available in all Indian bookstores in September. If you want the AKB Books Signed Limited Edition Hardcover, all you have to do is fill up the AKB Books Request Form to book your copy. (No advance payment required.)
Sons of Sita, Slayer of Kamsa, Dance of Govinda…and Mba: Book 1
Update: Corrected from 5 to 4 titles based on availability.
Just a reminder to use the AKB Books Request Form to book your limited signed copies of the above titles. This particular list of my next 4 titles will stay online until 31st August 2010. After that, a new list will be put up which will be valid for the next three or four months. And so on. Due to the number of my published titles and the high demand, I am not able to offer signed copies of previous books at present, just the titles listed above. Each of these will be limited signed (but not personalized) editions and once this limited stock is over, these titles will not be available again! So book your signed copy now and don’t miss your chance to be one of very few readers worldwide to own one!
And in case you were wondering, it doesn’t cost you a rupee (or even a paisa) to book these copies! 
Dancing with Govinda, Slaying with Krishna
And, coming close on the heels of the glowing praise from Chiki Sarkar of Random House India after completing work on my first major non-fiction book The Valmiki Syndrome, here’s another outpouring of compliments from Saugata Mukherjee, my editor at HarperCollins India who will be publishing SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis, my retelling of the life and adventures of Krishna and also a companion series to my Mba. Saugata sent me a very warmly worded email after reading the final draft of DANCE OF GOVINDA: Book 2 of The Krishna Coriolis recently. I’ve only edited out the other business-related matters, but didn’t need to edit a single word or phrase of negative comment on the two books – because there were none!
Spent most of last evening reading this – it’s got everything in equal measure to make it a blockbuster! It’s simply unputdownable (probably also because I am at the end of the KAMSA edits) and I can see you’ll probably lead a whole new generation of readers into mythologies but in a cool, contemporary way. Also, on the other hand, I feel SLAYER will in many ways bring back a lot of AB (not the grand oldman of Bollywood!) lovers – it’s a perfect first book for a series like KRISHNA…there’s hardly much I can do to enhance the readability of the book, since it is quite beautifully written.
News and Updates: The latest from the Bankerverse (again)
As with the last update on 11th June, those of you who’ve been keeping tabs on the right-hand News & Updates column may not find many surprises here. But there was one important announcement that wasn’t in that last update and a couple of minor ones, so here goes…
Waiting eagerly for my next books? Book your copies now!
AKB Books, the limited signed editions of a few select titles of my work, available exclusively via this website, are all currently sold out. However, if you wish to ensure your copy of any forthcoming AKB Books title, all you have to do is fill in the Request Form to book your copies! Don’t worry about payment – you will be contacted once the book is available and informed of the necessary details.
AKB MBA is on its way at last!
After all the ups and downs of the past several months (and years), I have finally found a way to share my Mahabharata retelling with all those of you interested in reading it. No, it still won’t be mass published and distributed in bookstores worldwide – I’ve already explained earlier why that isn’t likely to happen anytime soon – but it will be available from this website in a few months, before the end of this year. If you wish to ensure your copy, please fill in the Request Form now, and keep in touch with this website from time to time.
THE VALMIKI SYNDROME
Next in line for publication is THE VALMIKI SYNDROME, my first major non-fiction book being published by Random House India in a few months. As mentioned earlier, I have chosen not to offer any sneak peeks, previews or sample chapters from this book, unlike all my earlier titles. In fact, I’m not saying a word about this book until it’s released! You’ll just have to wait and see what it’s about.
SLAYER OF KAMSA
As outlined in my Epic India Library plan, my Mba Series will run in parallel with the Krishna Coriolis. While my Mba will be available exclusively via this website, the Krishna Coriolis series will be on bookshelves across India, thanks to HarperCollins India, the publishers! The first book, SLAYER OF KAMSA, will be out in stores before the end of 2010. The series is an action-packed retelling of the life and adventures of Lord Krishna from before his birth until after his death on the mortal plane, written in a narrative style suitable for Young Adult readers. The Krishna books will be much shorter than the Ramayana Series books and written in a far more compact and thrilling narrative style. SLAYER OF KAMSA will be followed soon after by DANCE OF GOVINDA. These first two books in the series will follow Krishna’s story from before his birth until the day he confronts and kills Kamsa. I’ll post excerpts as well as the cover design here sometime in August. So don’t forget to check back!
SONS OF SITA
Delayed but not forgotten! My seemingly interminable revisions are finally approaching an end. As I’ve mentioned earlier, after considerable thought, I decided to cancel mass market publication of Vengeance of Ravana, extract a substantial portion of that book (VoR) and add it to the manuscript of SoS. That required a fair amount of revision and rewriting, hence the delay. Many of you have pre-ordered copies of SoS and have been waiting eagerly for them. Once again, apologies for the delay and thanks for your patience. SONS OF SITA will be available in its signed limited AKB Books Edition in August. For those of you who have been asking, there will be a few copies of VENGEANCE OF RAVANA also available. Please note that I’m unable to inform each person individually by email, so you will have to keep in touch with this website for further updates.
PRINCE OF AYODHYA, the Graphic Novel
The first volume of my long-awaited graphic novel adaptation of my Ramayana Series, written by me and illustrated by Argentinian artist Enrique (Quique) Alcatena is ready to enter the publication pipeline. Those of you who have seen sample artwork from this comic or have been following its development for the past several years will be aware how much work and patience has gone into its creation. I will confirm publication dates in a month or two, once I know for sure.
TEN KINGS
My first historical battle epic, TEN KINGS based on the Dasarajna incident in the Rig Veda, has been bought by new imprint Amaryllis Books in a very good deal. Thanks to Jay and Priya of Jacaranda, and Sanjana Roy Choudhury, Chief Editor of Amaryllis! TEN KINGS will also be my first book published in Hindi and other Indian languages. The book is currently scheduled for mass market publication in January 2011. If you thought my Ramayana Series was good, and if you think my Krishna books are action-packed and fast-paced, then just wait until you read TEN KINGS. It’s by far my best book ever. A great story, a magnificent battle epic, and a historic saga of the founding of the Bharata nation.
THE KALI QUARTET
A BLOOD RED SAREE opens my first contemporary fiction series, The Kali Quartet. This is a global thriller featuring three strong women protagonists who are caught up in a major financial conspiracy involving financial institutions secretly profiting from human trafficking. This is likely to be my next internationally published series as well and currently, my agents are fielding offers from Indian publishers for subcontinental rights. I’ll update when I know more, but look at this as my next major work for the next few years, now that my Ramayana Series, Mba, Krishna Series are all complete and in the publication pipeline. It’s also, in my humble opinion, my best work ever!
More news and updates every month from now on…
TEN KINGS: The historic battle that founded the Bharata nation
The 7th Mandala of the Rig Veda (quoted above) tells us of a great and terrible war called Dasarajna: The Battle of Ten Kings. In that legendary conflict, ten major tribal chiefs (kings) of the ancient world sought to displace and destroy Raja Sudas of the Bharata tribe.
The ten kings were supported by numerous individual champions and smaller forces, and were instigated by the great seer Vishwamitra. Many of them were allies of Raja Sudas and traded with the Bharatas and were friendly with them. But that fateful day, they turned against Sudas and his small but strong tribe of Bharatas, surrounded them with forces so superior that Sudas could have no chance of survival.
Their intention was to destroy Sudas and the Bharatas, take them as dasyas (slaves) and divide the Bharata lands and possessions as spoils of war. One day, out of the blue, their great army assembled on the banks of the Parusni river (present day Ravi in the Punjab region) and challenged Raja Sudas.
Vastly outnumbered, outmatched, and outplanned, Sudas should logically have surrendered. But he knew he had done nothing wrong, and being a righteous king, with the support of his people who loved him and respected his leadership, kindness and generosity, he chose to fight.
He was also supported by the spiritual mentorship of his guru, the legendary Vashishta.
And so, upon a stormy day by the banks of the Ravi, the battle was fought.
Legend tells us that in fact, Sudas might well have been Raja Bharat himself, son of Dushyant and Shakuntala, grandson of Vishwamitra.
The Rig Veda tells us that against all odds, Raja Sudas of the Bharatas (hence Bharata-Raja) fought that day against the Ten Kings…and won. The battle was impossible, the victory a miracle. The Rig Veda also tells us that the devas themselves watched from above as the battle progressed, and due to the moral superiority of Raja Sudas, Lord Indra chose to support the Bharatas.
Not only did Sudas and the Bharatas win, they routed the enemy in a massacre that was aided by nature itself, when the river and weather came to their aid. Was it Indra himself or merely a brilliant battle strategy by Raja Sudas? Either way, the Bharatas won the day. And as a result they became the dominant tribe of the Indian sub-continent.
Later, Raja Sudas’s descendants split into the Puru and Kuru lines, and waged another great war for Arya supremacy: the Mahabharata yuddh.
In a way, DASARAJNA (Battle of Ten Kings) was the turning point in the itihasa of the sub-continent.
Because it was by winning that war that King Sudas Bharata established his tribe as the ruling tribe of this part of the world.
And it is in his honour that all people of the sub-continent came to be known in time as Bharatas.
That story has never been before been told in all its glorious detail. Indeed, while the Rig Veda tells us some details of the war and its aftermath, very little is known about why the war began, how it became inevitable, and so on.
It’s a rousing tale filled with intrigues, conspiracies, back-stabbing, fierce erotic encounters, brutal court politics, family conflicts, and race against time in the hours before the battle. All the enemies and allies who will face one another on the battlefield are seen in the first half of the novel, playing their shrewd politics and pretenses in the court of Raja Sudas, pretending to be his allies, his friends, his neighbours, well-wishers, advisers, while secretly plotting and preparing to go to war against him. The reason they do this is because they intend to destroy his kingdom from within first – and if that fails, their armies are already assembled and waiting at the boundary of his kingdom, ready to invade. And as the story progresses and Sudas stands firm to his principles – his dharma – they all desert him, one by one, and go to join the other side, until finally Ten Kings stand against him, outnumbering his force more than ten times.
Leading and instigating them is Anu, the longtime arch-enemy of Sudas and the Bharatas, and Anu’s spiritual adviser, none other than the legendary brahmarishi Vishwamitra (of Ramayana fame). Vishwamitra has an old history of enmity with Sudas’ own adviser, Vashishta, and has an axe to grind by instigating this attack on Sudas and the Bharatas.
DASARAJNA is based on events described in the Rig Veda and confirmed by historians and archaelogists as being a true story. It is the seminal tale of the great battle that established the Bharata nation in the sub-continent which is present day India.
TEN KINGS will be published in English and Indian languages by Amaryllis Books, an imprint of Manjul Publishing, in early 2011.
Request A Book
Hi. As requested by several of you, I’ve created a Request A Book page where you can fill in your details and book a copy of any of the forthcoming AKB BOOKS Limited Editions.
The best thing about it is that you don’t need to pay in advance to place a request. That’s why it’s called a Request and not an Order. Even if you already have my bank details, please DO NOT pay or transfer money for any book. That’s why I haven’t mentioned any prices either.
Once each book is printed and copies are ready to despatch, you will be contacted and informed of all necessary details such as price, etc. At that point, you can choose whether to buy it or not, change your delivery details, ask for more than one copy, etc.
Unlike previous AKB BOOKS, these titles will NOT be personalized. That means that when I sign each copy, I will not be able to address it to you or anyone else by name. It will only be signed by me.
Right now, all you need to do is fill up the Request Form, providing all the details correctly as of this point in time, and selecting the titles you are interested in getting – you can always change your mind and details later. This form is just a way to Book your copy of each of these AKB BOOKS Limited Editions so I know roughly how many copies of each one to order from the printer.
And you don’t actually have to pay even a rupee in advance!
Isn’t that cool? Well, what are you waiting for then? Go for it!
Mba: The Limited Edition – okay, let’s do it!
Thanks to one of those extraordinary events that nobody can predict, the situation with my Mba has changed. I’m not going to explain what happened and go into details here, but let’s just say it’s completely unexpected and out of the blue. In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have guessed this would happen and the fact that it did is probably the exception rather than the rule.
First the not-so-good news. This doesn’t change the situation completely. I still don’t know if or when the series will be published in the mass market. Probably never. So those of you who have been voting to buy copies after they’re available in bookstores – or even to buy the full series once it’s in bookstores – you’re not likely to get that chance.
But for those of you who have voted (and are still voting) to pre-order a copy or buy it once it’s available here from AKB Books, well, this news is meant for you all! In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that all those who voted for Option 1 in the poll – you are the ones who gave me the motivation to do this. If you’re so eager and willing to pay to get the AKB Mba in hand, then I’m willing to bring it out in a limited AKB Books edition. It won’t find the much larger audience that it probably deserves (in my humble opinion) but at least it will reach those who want it the most.
In fact, you guys are willing to pay in advance and pre-order it, but I’m not going to ask you to do that. It’s enough that you’re willing to order it online and that there are enough of you who do for me to issue it in this limited edition for you. There will be no pre-orders or advance bookings as I’ve experienced too many delays and put you through too many postponed deadlines already. This time, I’ll wait until I have the printed copies in hand, and then offer it for sale via this website.
The good news is that I will be accepting all major credit cards as well as direct bank transfers and payment via cash deposit. There will be only a limited number of copies and each volume of the series will be available for a limited time only. But at least it will be available in this way. The limited number of copies means that you will need to place your order at the right time and make the payment promptly.
I don’t have a definite date for the release of volume one yet. But I’m hoping to be able to offer it by November or December this year. That means that copies will be ready to order in November of December 2010 and are likely to sell out within a few days of opening orders. It could even be sooner, it’s possible.
Due to the limited number of copies I’m able to offer this way, and the presumably large number of readers who would be interested, I’ll be giving first priority to those who have ordered books issued under my AKB Books imprint already. I already have your email addresses and will be emailing you closer to the release date. But mainly I’ll be using this website to post the information and so I’d request you to kindly keep in touch and visit here as often as possible.
This is official and confirmed by me – the first book of Mba will be printed sometime before the end of 2010 and will be available in a limited edition exclusively via this website. It will not be available in bookstores anywhere. I can’t confirm about overseas orders just yet but they’re highly unlikely. If I’m able to offer them, they will be at a high price, I’m afraid, as the bookstore had serious issues despatching boooks via postal service earlier. The only option would be courier and that would cost far more than the cost of the book itself.
I’m also able to confirm that the Krishna Coriolis will be published in full – all 8 volumes, not just the first two. And that, as planned, it will run in parallel to the Mba series. Ideally, both should be read together since the Krishna Coriolis is actually the Harivamsha section of the Mahabharata, split into a separate series by me because the main Mba was getting too massive already.
And finally, the Mba books offered via AKB Books will be more expensive than regular mass market books that you find in your local bookstore. That’s the price of a limited edition.
So to sum up:
1. AKB Mba will be published after all – but only in a limited edition available directly via this website.
2. There will be no pre-orders or advance bookings and payment. Payment will be accepted only once the book is ready for immediate despatch.
3. The first volume should be printed by November or December 2010.
4. Keep in touch regularly with this website – it’s the only way to be sure you know when the first book of the Mba is out, and the only way you can order a copy.
5. Due to the limited print run, only one copy per order will be despatched and once the print run is sold out, it will not be reprinted – that will be the first and last edition issued by AKB Books, truly Limited Collector’s editions.
I guess you should know that by doing this, I will lose money. A lot of it. The higher price per copy won’t make a great difference – the reason for the higher price is because publishing is economical only when printed in large quantities on offset. This limited AKB Books edition of the Mba will be for you loyal readers, and you alone. Why did I change my mind and decide to do it this way after all? Well, that’s just it. I didn’t change my mind. Something happened that nobody could have expected, and it changed the situation dramatically.
Better an epic read by a few than by none. Keep in touch! Don’t be a stranger, wokay!
News & Updates: The Latest from the Bankerverse
Those of you who’ve been keeping tabs on the right-hand News & Updates column may not find many surprises here. But I thought it was time to round up the most recent happenings and developments in the Bankerverse for those who haven’t.
THE VALMIKI SYNDROME
Next in line for publication is THE VALMIKI SYNDROME, my first major non-fiction book being published by Random House India in a few months. As mentioned earlier, I have chosen not to offer any sneak peeks, previews or sample chapters from this book, unlike all my earlier titles. In fact, I’m not saying a word about this book until it’s released! You’ll just have to wait and see what it’s about.
SLAYER OF KAMSA
Close on its heels comes Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis, SLAYER OF KAMSA, published by HarperCollins India. The series is an action-packed retelling of the life and adventures of Lord Krishna from before his birth until after his death on the mortal plane, written in a narrative style suitable for Young Adult readers. The Krishna books will be much shorter than the Ramayana Series books and written in a far more compact and thrilling narrative style. SLAYER OF KAMSA will be followed soon after by DANCE OF GOVINDA. These first two books in the series will follow Krishna’s story from before his birth until the day he confronts and kills Kamsa. I’ll post excerpts as well as the cover design here sometime in August. So don’t forget to check back!
SONS OF SITA
Delayed but not forgotten! My seemingly interminable revisions are finally approaching an end. As I’ve mentioned earlier, after considerable thought, I decided to cancel mass market publication of Vengeance of Ravana, extract a substantial portion of that book (VoR) and add it to the manuscript of SoS. That required a fair amount of revision and rewriting, hence the delay. Many of you have pre-ordered copies of SoS and have been waiting eagerly for them. Once again, apologies for the delay and thanks for your patience. I can now confirm that SONS OF SITA, the 7th (not 8th, since VoR now stands cancelled) and final Book in the Ramayana Series, will be available in its signed limited AKB Books Edition in August.
PRINCE OF AYODHYA, the Graphic Novel
The first volume of my long-awaited graphic novel adaptation of my Ramayana Series, written by me and illustrated by Argentinian artist Enrique (Quique) Alcatena is ready to enter the publication pipeline. Those of you who have seen sample artwork from this comic or have been following its development for the past several years will be aware how much work and patience has gone into its creation. I will confirm publication dates in a month or two, once I know for sure.
TEN KINGS
My first historical battle epic, TEN KINGS based on the Dasarajna incident in the Rig Veda, has been bought by new imprint Amaryllis Books in a very good deal. Thanks to Jay and Priya of Jacaranda, and Sanjana Roy Choudhury, Chief Editor of Amaryllis! TEN KINGS will also be my first book published in Hindi and other Indian languages. The book is currently scheduled for mass market publication in January 2011. If you thought my Ramayana Series was good, and if you think my Krishna books are action-packed and fast-paced, then just wait until you read TEN KINGS. It’s by far my best book ever. A great story, a magnificent battle epic, and a historic saga of the founding of the Bharata nation.
More news and updates every month from now on…
Want to read the AKB Mba? Vote for it now!
UPDATE: 16 JUNE – The poll remains active but I’ve now decided to go ahead and print my own limited AKB BOOKS edition of the Mba Series on a not-for-profit basis. Details will be posted on this blog in time. Meanwhile, you can still continue voting and showing your support for the series, as well as visit the Request A Book Page and place a request without having to pay a rupee in advance!
My long-awaited Mahabharata retelling is facing cancellation. Support it by voting in this online poll! Please be honest. There is no ‘right’ answer! To know what voting for these four options would achieve, read the explanation below…
UPDATED: I shall be printing the Mba regardless of the votes now. However, this means that there will be NO bookstore edition as yet of the series, and perhaps no such edition in future as well. The only way to get a copy of my Mahabharata retelling (Mba) is to visit the Request A Book Page and place a request without having to pay a rupee in advance!
NOTE: Since some of you have asked, I’ll explain briefly what these options mean:
Option#1: If I get 1,000 readers willing to pre-order (and pay) in advance, I can print and sell the whole series myself.
Option#2: If I get 2,500 readers interested in buying it, I can offer copies of the first book via this website – but if much less than 2,500 actually buy, there will be no further books in the series.
Option#3: If 25,000 readers are willing to buy the first book soon after it reaches bookstores, it will be possible to release a mass market edition.
Option#4: The series stays cancelled. No publisher can issue such large print runs of ten massive volumes and keep them in stock nor will bookstores keep the books on shelves for years (until the full series is published) in hopes of readers coming in someday and buying copies.
7 not 8: Vor+SoS = Sons of Sita: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series
As those of you who have been in touch with me over the years know, I always share my works in progress online with readers and take into account their views and suggestions.
After considering reader feedback to the limited signed AKB BOOKS edition of Vengeance of Ravana I felt it was best to cancel mass market publication of the book and have requested my editors at Penguin accordingly. They have been supportive as always, and I’m very grateful for that.
I’ve taken a part of the text of Vengeance of Ravana and added it to the text of Sons of Sita, merging them into one final book, which I plan to submit to Penguin for publication.
This will be the 7th and final book of the Ramayana Series (R), and will most likely be called Sons of Sita: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series.
PS: Those of you who have ordered the AKB Books Limited Signed edition of Sons of Sita will receive this version, and this is the reason for its long delay. In my opinion, the book now rocks big-time and is a truly fitting end to the series…thanks to your input!
This is just to let you know what’s happening. I’ll post a longer explanation here once I’m done with the revisions, which, let me add, will not be for another month.
This also means that those of you who bought the AKB BOOKS limited signed editions, hardcover as well as paperback, of Vengeance of Ravana, now have the only copies of that version of the text in existence. That version will never be published and distributed in stores now, so hold on to your copies and who knows, they might actually be worth something someday!
Mother’s Day – short story
Mother’s Day
An Anita B Story
Early on a Friday morning in December, Shubra Basu, 37, mother of Rabin, 14, and Shanti, 10, opened the front door of her flat in Andheri, Bombay, and slipped out.
She shut the door behind her, using her key to turn the latch so that the sound of the door shutting would be virtually inaudible. Then she took one last look at the door of the brand new flat she and her family had shifted into barely two months earlier, the flat her husband Avijit Basu and she had scrounged and saved up to buy over 16 years of marriage.
Finally, she turned away from the door, a tiny sob escaping her, hefting the VIP suitcase from her left hand to her right. She went down the stairs, walked quickly out the compound of the co-operative housing society. A row of yellow-and-black taxicabs were parked at the corner taxi stand. She got into the first one and told him her destination. As the seafacing seven-story building fell away behind her, she felt a great weight lifting off her chest. She was really doing it. She was leaving her family for good. It was a terrible moment. It was a wonderful moment. It was the worst moment and best moment of her life.
She was never seen again after that morning.
The yellow-and-black Mumbai taxi, license number MH-31904, picked her up outside the building, and took her to Dadar Khodadad Circle. From there, nobody has a clue where she went. That was seven years and eight months ago, plus a few days. She’s never been seen since then by anybody who knew her.
Seven years and eight months. That’s a hell of a long time to go missing. It’s also a hell of a long time to wait before you start looking for someone. Especially if that someone happens to be your wife, and the mother of your children. Which is why, when I met Avijit Basu at a fast food restaurant not too far from where I live, the first question I asked was: “Why did you wait you so long?”
Before I tell you what he said, a couple of words about me. I’m Anita B. I’m 30-something, I drink too much, have never been married. I’ve learned that pumping iron is no replacement for dealing directly with life’s problems, but it helps get me through the night. I’m colour-challenged, which, in case you’re not up to speed on politically correct talk, means I’m dark-skinned. Like a Keralite, which I also am.
I don’t have a private-detective’s license and don’t consider myself one. I do favours for people, and I charge them whatever I think it’s worth by way of my time and effort. I haven’t been working at this long—just a couple of years—but I’ve had a couple of good cases, and even got my name and picture in Mid-day. It was right next to the picture of the Mid-day Mate on Page 5, which should tell you something. I’m medium height, medium looking (except for the taut muscle tone, I guess), I keep my hair short, never touch make-up, love jewellery although in my line of work it’s not a good idea to wear too much, and I guess the closest celeb I compare to physically is the singer Toni Braxton, or maybe Rahul Bose without a dick.
I live in a tiny one-room place at Nepean Sea Road, Bombay. The address on the visiting card looks real fancy, but it’s basically a store room-cum-servant’s quarters. The owner rented it out because she’s a widow with virtually no income except for a piddly monthly cheque from Unit Trust, and in any case she can’t afford a servant, so the room was lying vacant anyway. The rent is low, the address is impressive, and as long I ignore the ratcheting-gnashing noises from the lift shaft, I can pretend I’m comfortable. I have a phone line which I share with my landlady and I used to have an answering service until I failed to pay their bill three months in a row. Now, the old hag answers the phone for me, and though she always grumbles about doing it, I think she enjoys being a part of my sleazy crime-infested lifestyle. And just for the record, the B in Anita B stands for Bitch. Or whatever you find most offensive, and it’s none of your business anyway, buster.
“I was scared,” he said.
“You were scared you wouldn’t be able to find her?”
“No, no,” he said, shaking his head like one of those little dolls with a spring-neck that goes on bobbing for hours if you even brush it accidentally. “I was scared I would find her.”
I blinked at him. “Let me get this straight, Mr Basu. You waited almost eight years to start searching for your wife because you were scared you would find her? Excuse me, but in that case, why are you doing so now?”
I took a sip of my coffee. It was too hot, too sweet and too thin.
He looked down at his own untouched cup of coffee. “I blame myself.”
I didn’t say anything to that. After a moment, he went on: “Shubra wasn’t happy. She hadn’t been happy for a long time before she left. When she disappeared, it was as if some part of me had expected it….Do you know that feeling of deja vu…Not deja vu exactly, but that sense
that you knew this was going to happen…had dreamed about it, maybe…dreaded it? Am I making any sense?”
I nodded briefly.
“And there were these signs. She’d been telling me she was leaving for a long time before she actually flew the coop. I just didn’t see it until it was too late.”
A bunch of teenagers came clattering up the stairs and went past us in a flurry of short skirts, tight jeans and loud, raucous chatter. A second later, an explosion of laughter behind me. I didn’t need to turn around: I’d seen the teenage birthday party decorations at the far end of the fast-food place when I’d entered. Above the noise, I said, “What signs?”
He paused, looking down at his still-wrapped fish burger and large fries. “Does it matter?” He glanced up at me, and I could see the embarrassment in his eyes. They were nice brown eyes. “I mean, what difference could it possibly make after all these years? The thing is, I think she was unhappy for a long time before she went. And then she left.”
“Mr Basu. I don’t know what’s important and not important unless you tell me. Besides, if it sheds light on her motive for leaving in the first place, I think it damn well matters.”
He considered that. Then still without looking up, said: “She wouldn’t let me into her bed.” So softly I had to lean forward to hear it over the sounds of teenage party-in-progress mayhem and Backstreet Boys music.
“You had separate beds?” I’d seen only one large bed in their bedroom, and two bunk beds in the kids room.
“No, no. What I mean is, she stopped letting me…you know…”
“Have sex with her?” I volunteered.
He glanced up again, those brown eyes fluttering nervously. “We stopped making love.”
“Whatever.” I slurped my coffee. “So she was never in the mood during those last days? Weeks? Months?”
“About a year, actually. And it wasn’t just a question of not being in the mood. It was as if I…repelled her. She would shove me away, say ‘No! No!’ And there was real disgust in her voice. I couldn’t understand it. One time…” He paused, running a hand through his hair and looking around sheepishly. “One time, I touched her while she was sleeping…you know, put my hand on her—” he brushed a hand against the general vicinity of his chest. “And she screamed. She went berserk, getting up, punching me, abusing, hitting. I’d never seen her like that before. And then—.”
“Yes?”
He licked his lips. Looked down at his untouched burger. Toyed with a french fry, dipped it in ketchup, half-heartedly raised it to his mouth but didn’t actually eat it.
“Mr Basu, I can understand that you’re uncomfortable talking about things like this. But like I said before—”
He wiped his mouth with the napkin. Though he hadn’t eaten a morsel.
“She hurt me,” he said.
I leaned forward. “Are you telling me she raped you?”
He looked away. He was a good-looking man, I saw that now for the first time. Not in a macho, mannequin way, but plain good-looking. “Yes. And sodomized.”
I blinked at that. But wasn’t sure how to ask the obvious question.
He saved me the trouble. “With a candle.”
I looked at him dead straight. I wanted to know this was for real, he wasn’t just jerking my flush-chain, putting me on. He looked sincere, those brown eyes filled with real pain, real shame. And this was Mcdonald’s. Who takes an investigator you’ve hired to find your wife to Mcdonald’s, then lies to her about, of all the possible things on earth, how your wife raped and sodomized you before she ran out on you? With a candle?
A pair of young girls passed us, heading for the stairs. They were in a hurry, calling out something about being late for the movie. The first one was dressed in jeans so tight, I wondered how she could breathe. The second one was in a miniskirt that I could easily have mistaken for a short blouse. She had large breasts and in her hurry to get past, she lurched and almost fell on Avijit. Her breasts brushed his cheek, and her rear end grazed the back of his left hand.
She passed by without even excusing herself and was gone. He didn’t react, didn’t even give her a second glance. He hardly seemed aware that she had touched him.
Without taking my eyes off him, I raised my Styrofoam cup to my lips.
Nothing came. The coffee was over. And so was this conversation.
“What did I tell you about thinking too much, sweetie?” said Mrs Matondkar, my landlady. She was sitting in her rocking chair as usual, eating channa. “Thinking too much is bad for you. It keeps you from doing. And in your line of work, all you have to do is do, not think.”
After that impressive speech, she picked up another handful of channa from the steel katori beside her, rubbed it between her palms to separate the shells from the channa nuts, then proceeded to pop the channa one by one into her mouth. How she managed to chew them without teeth—she was 73 and almost totally toothless—was beyond my understanding. But she seemed to relish them, rocking back and forth on that chair in rhythm to her methodical mastication.
“Shut up,” I said, although she wasn’t saying anything just then. I had a headache that morning. I usually had a headache most mornings. Maybe drinking and watching too much television the night before had something to do with it. But what good is urban life if you can’t belt down a few big ones and burn your eyes out watching late-night cable movies?
I swallowed an analgesic pill and tried to wash it down with a sip of Mrs Matondkar’s oversweetened tea. The tea was scalding and I coughed, spraying the room, and was forced to chew the tablet down quickly. It tasted horrible.
She clicked her tongue sympathetically from across the room. That tongue-clicking enfuriated me even more than the rhythmic squeaking of her rocking chair.
“Shut up,” I mumbled again, slurping the tea greedily from the saucer.
Most of it had slipped into the saucer anyway. When I finished it all, I felt a little better.
“What you should do,” she said slowly, like a schoolteacher instructing a kindergarten class in the alphabet for the first time, “is spend as many days trying to find her as possible. When he says ‘achcha, bas, that’s enough’, then you stop, settle your bill, and forget about it. As long as you do your job and get paid, what more you want? Why? Am I telling sense or not, girl?”
She was telling too much sense. That was what irritated me.
“You don’t understand,” I told her. “It isn’t as simple as that.”
“But it is, girl,” she went on in that irritating, explanatory way. “It is very extremely simple. He wants to hire your services, you are in need of the money. Do your best, and whatever happens, happens.”
“There’s a question of individual rights involved here. His wife obviously left because she wasn’t happy. It wouldn’t be fair of me to lead him to her after all these years. If she wanted to be found, she would have contacted him years ago. Or she would have contacted someone or the other, her mother, sister, anyone. The fact that she didn’t means that she wants to be left alone. Who the hell am I to intrude on her life now?”
“Achcha, okay, baba.” She took another handful of channa and rubbed it. The flakes fell like black snow into the katori. “So you do one thing. You try to find her. If you succeed, you speak to her personally. Tell her the situation. If she is willing to meet her husband, fine. You direct him to her and your job is done. If she says No, Please, I don’t want to see that man ever again, he was such a bad man to me I cannot bear to live with him again and suchlike, then fine. You go back to him and tell him you were not able to find her, so what can you do? Take your money and go home.”
I thought about that. It had a certain charm to it, especially the part about taking the money and going home without leading Basu to his estranged wife. But what really made me think was something else she had said in the course of that dissertation.
“What was that you said? About not wanting to see that man again? Because he was such a bad man to her? What did you mean by that?”
She munched channa thoughtfully. “You only said it, no? Why would she leave if she was happy? Must be something in the marriage that made her go away like that. Something very bad.”
I stood up, still holding the empty saucer. I put it down on the table, my fingers sticking to it. “Thank you for the tea, Mrs Matondkar. If anyone calls, I’ll be back late tonight.”
“Arre, at least tell me what you’re going to do? What you have decided finally?”
I walked over to her rocking chair, over by the window she sat by and looked out of all day to pass her time. I picked up a couple of shelled channa from her open palm. They tasted like besin-ka-atta in my mouth.
“I’m not going to try to find her at all,” I said.
She sighed, shaking her head disapprovingly.
“I’m going to find out why she left in the first place.” I turned to go. “If I can find that out, I think I’ll find out everything that matters. Wish me luck.”
Instead of doing that, she raised one thigh and issued a slow, musical fart. I grinned at her and left. It was as close as she ever came to giving me her blessing.
P.K. Sunil was one of those completely self-centred, work-involved men who either don’t have the mental capacity to concern themselves with anything apart from their own careers or don’t want to make the effort.
Smugly contented, slightly over-weight, and giving off a pulsating aura that beeped “look at me, ain’t I cool?” at regular intervals, he sat before a console of some kind of computer-aided-design set-up and made me watch him for almost twenty minutes. He had a swivel chair with wheels that he used to slide deftly from one end of the console to the other. Typing on a keyboard with machine gun speed, then sliding over to roll a designer’s mouse-ball carefully, then working a lever on a Betacam Player to rewind the film a frame at a time, he took obvious pleasure in his efficiency and speed. So, when he finally completed doing whatever it was he was doing for those twenty minutes and froze the image on the multiple monitor screens, he clapped his hands together once sharply, nodded brusquely and swivelled around to face me. It was about time; I was sick of staring at his ponytail.
“Not in here,” he said.
His eyes pointed threateningly at the pack of cigarettes I was holding in my left hand. I had been toying with them for a while, afraid he had forgotten I was waiting behind him and was going to go on all afternoon.
“Oh, these,” I said casually. “Actually, I quit a couple of months ago, but once in a while…you know.”
He didn’t respond, didn’t blink, didn’t even nod. Friendly bastard.
I put the pack away and pulled out a picture of Shubra Basu, taken a few months before she had disappeared.
“Her hair was shorter when she was with me,” he said. “It suited her better. She had a fleshy…” he touched his cheeks. “But then she started to grow her hair long, and we dropped out of touch completely.”
He made it sound as if one thing was directly related to the other.
“How closely did you know her, Mr Sunil?”
“She wasn’t happy with him,” he said unexpectedly. He looked at me as if for confirmation. “She used to tell me she was thinking of getting a divorce.”
“Did she say why?”
He rolled his chair over to the A/c, took hold of the remote control that hung suspended, and made some adjustments. The room seemed to grow even more frigid than before. My lungs screamed for a cigarette. “He was not right for her,” he said. “I told her before they got married only. But…” he shrugged.
“You and Shubra started this business together, didn’t you? You met in college and found you had a common interest in electronics. Started tinkering around with technology together, won some prizes. Then, when you passed out, you set up this business as partners, right?”
He didn’t nod, agree or disagree. Inscrutable as an American in a bad Indian English novel.
“We wanted to go to California together,” he said. “Start our own company. Like the two Steves started Apple. A free, non-conformist culture. Like a computer commune. Shubra was from a very conservative Bengali family. Her grandfather was a founding member of the Communist Party of India (undivided). She had grown up very repressed and controlled. In college, she blossomed, found herself. She became a different person. Technology was her way of escaping their feudal tyranny. Asserting her own identity.”
This was getting a little too idealogical for me.
“So you’re saying that she found her salvation through microchips and keyboards? And became a kind of, what, techno-hippie?”
He looked at me coldly.
“Metaphorically speaking,” I added, controlling an irrepressible urge to wink. He was so stiff I wanted to tell him to bend over and touch his toes so I could extract the long pole he obviously had up his ass.
“She married Avijit because she couldn’t resolve her feelings for me,” he said abruptly.
“What feelings did she have for you?”
He looked at me as if I was a computer glitch he wanted to remove from a program.
“She was in love with me. We were both in love with each other. We were going to be together, setting up the company, building our future together. But she began to get scared of the commitment. Shubra couldn’t commit, that was her problem.”
“So you think she married Avijit just to avoid making a commitment to you? Isn’t that self-contradictory?”
He glowered at me. I could almost feel the temperature fall further—15. 14. 13.
“We were soul-mates, sex was only one part of the whole template. Shubra and I were more perfectly matched than any other couple I’ve ever met.”
“Yet she ditched you for a Bengali brahmin as conservative as her own parents, didn’t she? How do you explain that, Mr Sunil?”
He was silent. The airconditioning hummed subvocally behind us. The soundproofing was effective enough to make the singing of blood in my veins audible. It sounded like a sad, old ghazal.
I figured the answer to that last question wasn’t coming. Not from him at least. And I needed a cigarette the way a Kamatipura prostitute needs an AIDS check-up.
Nishi Saigal lived in the kind of Pali Hill bungalow that you usually see only in a scene from a big-budget Hindi film: a long winding driveway rising higher and higher until you turn the last curve and come upon a breathtakingly beautiful log-and-stone cabin that seems to belong to a Swiss mountain retreat rather than a Bombay residence. The lawn before the bungalow was immaculately manicured, gleaming crewcut green in the late afternoon sunlight. An underground garage housed more expensive cars than I could count at a glance, let alone name. I felt like a character in a displaced Barbara Taylor Bradford novel, a mistress arriving home after a much-needed summer break.
“Have you had lunch?” she asked as I was shown into a living room that looked like a photograph out of those interior decor magazines. She was dressed in something long, flowing, off-white and designer-looking, and looked anxious and distracted. “You must excuse the mess, I’ve been so busy with the elections.”
I didn’t know what mess she was talking about, unless it was my hairstyle. But the bit about the elections I deduced was a reference to her husband, the ex-filmstar-turned-MP who was apparently standing again for election.
“Well, I had some breakfast,” I said, remembering Mrs Matondkar’s channa and chai. “But I haven’t got around to lunch yet. I’m running a bit late.” That also took care of my apology for arriving an hour and ten minutes late, I hoped.
She gave instructions to a very healthy-looking albino maid who reappeared barely five minutes later with a platter of salads, sandwiches and assorted cold cuts that looked like an entire section of a five-star hotel Sunday buffet.
“Please,” she said, indicating the food as we sat down at the ornate marble-topped table. “I know it’s not much, but help yourself.”
I munched on what looked like a roast-beef sandwich and tasted like one too. “I believe you and Shubra were good friends.”
She gestured vaguely. “Our children studied together from playschool onwards. Do you have children, Miss Anita? Well, then you wouldn’t understand. But yes, of course, we were friends too. We became friends over time. Although I have to say, our natures were quite different.”
She managed a short, choked laugh. “Quite different.” She added cryptically: “No. 4 and No. 7 usually don’t mix.”
“Excuse me?”
“Numerology. My hobby. Do you read the Tarot? I do. It’s fascinating.”
I put down the sandwich and took a sip of the iced tea. I could get used to this kind of life.
“Tell me, how intimate was your friendship?”
She glanced out at the lawn, visible through the large floor-to-ceiling french windows which dominated one entire wall of the living room. A servant was exercising the three pedigreed Alsatians, who were dancing in and out of the arcs of the lawn sprinklers. Sunlight gleamed on the wet grass. One of the dogs shook the water off himself, sending up a shower of glittering drops. I could smell the scent of grass, wet earth and wet dog even though the house was centrally airconditioned and the french windows were shut.
“We didn’t discuss politics,” she replied, frowning. “And she didn’t like to talk much about her husband either.”
“No, I meant other matters.” I dabbed at my mouth with the monogrammed napkin and looked at her in what I hoped was a secretive feminine way. “You know what I mean, women’s talk. Bedroom matters. That kind of thing.”
She stared at me so intently and for so long, it started to get uncomfortable. I was about to take another bite of the sandwich, and maybe try some of the cold cuts with a little salad on the side, but she suddenly snapped her head around, barked: “Anjali, clear the table.”
I watched as the food, including the plate with my half-eaten sandwich was carried away by the albino maid and a young dark-skinned boy with wall eyes and an infectious grin. I shot him a wink and he blushed, almost dropping the salad bowl.
After this little display of Pavlovian conditioning—obviously intended to show me her displeasure at being asked such an impertinent question—Nishi Saigal made a show of looking at her watch several times and said, “You really must excuse me, I have so much election work to take care of. In fact, I would have left in the morning and not come back till night, but somehow today—.”
Mrs Nishi Saigal then proceeded to call in a dozen-odd local Maharashtrian boys and began to interview each of them in turn as possible candidates to go on a door-to-door search of the constituency to check voter’s lists. She even told Anjali, the albino maid, to organize water and tea for them in the kitchen before they were sent out, conspicuously not asking me.
I tolerated about ten minutes more of this bullshit, then I moved in.
I raised my voice and asked with deliberate clarity, speaking in Hindi to make sure all and sundry heard and understood:
“So Mrs Saigal, you do admit you were having an affair with Avijit Basu?”
Pin drop silence. You could hear the depreciation mounting on all the valuables in the bungalow. The volunteers looked at me, then at Nishi Saigal, then back at me, back at her, en masse, like a bunch of extras in a bad Hindi film—or in any Hindi film, let’s face it, they’re all bad.
“Please, if you don’t mind, you will leave at once,” said Nishi Saigal.
I looked at her face and had the satisfaction of seeing her attractive, milk-white Punjabi complexion turn scarlet. She was standing and pointing in the direction of the doorway, just in case I didn’t understand English.
I ignored both the verbal and the visual message and continued in Hindi: “Because that’s what the whole neighbourhood says, including another close friend. And your reaction a few minutes ago when I asked you a question confirmed it. You and Avijit Basu were having a sexual affair for over a year. Right until the time his wife disappeared, wasn’t it?”
She was going from scarlet to purple now. She snatched up an object, and I thought it was a piece of statuary she was about to fling at me. But it turned out to be an extravagantly designed telephone which she used to call the security. Then she folded her arms on her not-so-ample chest and struggled to keep her emotions under control.
I went on. My audience was relishing every word.
“But after his wife left, Avijit suddenly stopped the affair, didn’t he? He wouldn’t take your calls, changed his phone numbers, and when you sent your driver or your maid to his house with a personal message, he would reply with a cold, computer-printed message that the affair was over and you should leave him alone. When you persisted, unable to get over your obsession with him, he sent you a letter threatening to go to the police—or the press. I think that last one was what really did it for you, wasn’t it? And that’s when you began your campaign of hate-gossip against Avijit Basu. You began spreading rumours that his wife left him because he was impotent, alcoholic, neurotic, a wife-abuser, and God knows what else.”
The security arrived. Two well-built Punjabi guards in such smart, crackling uniforms, I almost felt obliged to salute them. Nishi Saigal pointed at me, her finger trembling with rage. I raised my hands and smiled to show them I wasn’t going to be any trouble. I walked up the short stairs to the upper lever of the duplex.
“Now that,” I told the impassive security guards as we emerged into the brilliant afternoon sunshine, “was what I call a one-sided conversation.”
But it didn’t matter. Because I had already gathered my facts before visiting Nishi Saigal. And because her reactions alone had been enough to confirm all my suspicions.
Mrs Matondkar chewed sugarcane strips as she mulled over the events of the day. “So this woman, she gave up her full career, even though she was so talented. And she became an ordinary housewife, while her husband pursued his career. And what happens? He goes and has an affair with some other man’s wife. How will she feel after a thing like that? Men, always such cheaters.”
I sipped my cola. I would have preferred it spiked with some rum, but Mrs Matondkar didn’t favour my drinking or smoking in her presence. She probably wouldn’t have been able to tell if I slipped out to my room and added a dollop to the cola, but it had never even occurred to me to trick her that way. One of my many flaws: Honesty.
“Actually,” I corrected her, “it was worse than that. She had enjoyed a great sexual awakening in her college years. A kind of hippie sexual liberation. And as you said, she was talented. Probably brilliantly suited for technological work. So when she married Avijit Basu, she probably expected a husband who would share some things in common with her—Bengali language, culture, history—but allow her the freedom she wanted. To follow the career she wanted. To explore her sexuality and invidivuality further. And to raise a family.” I took another sip. “But as things turned out, she only got one out of three.”
“So I told you first only. She was unhappy, that was why she went away.”
“I agree. She was unhappy. My interviews with relatives, friends, neighbours all suggest that after he began to find success, Avijit began drinking harder, behaving more arrogant and chauvinistic, and began taking her role as a mother and house-wife more and more for granted. She must have felt stifled.”
“So now you know the full story. End of case.”
I smiled. “Not at all. In fact, it’s only the beginning. I already started with the premise that Shubra was unhappy. All I’ve learned in the past few days is why. But I still don’t know what actually happened to her.”
“She went away. You told me. She left her purse also in the taxi, that’s why the Union still had the record, no?”
“Yes. And I found that strange. The last thing you’d expect a woman to leave in a cab when running away from home and family is her handbag.”
“She was upset, confused, it happens. Now she must be in some far away place, living a new life, on her terms. Not being a servant to that man.”
I nodded. Everything Mrs Matondkar said was undeniably true. It leaped out at me from every interview I conducted, every little fact I added to the growing pile. Even eight years later, everybody who knew Shubra Basu agreed on one thing: She was trapped in an unhappy marriage. And she was not the kind of woman to sit and take it indefinitely. So she had left. There was only one problem with that whole line of argument.
“The children,” I said to Mrs Matondkar. “How do you explain the children then? All right, so she was frustrated at not being able to explore her career, so she was sexually frustrated as well. Her husband had changed from the likeable, apparently liberal man she had married into a chauvinistic, self-centred, philandering bastard. Her friends knew about his affair with a beautiful ex-film star, and that must have been humiliating. But she loved her children madly. Why would she leave them behind?”
Mrs Matondkar chewed thoughtfully on a small strip of ganna, then removed the chewed-up residue from her mouth. She dropped into her lap, where a small pile had collected. “She could take them with her, no?”
“She could have filed for divorce and custody.”
“And she would have won this divorce?”
“Probably not. He was the only earning member, she had no income. But if she had made the effort, in a few years, she could have succeeded. It’s not impossible today.”
“Yes, but this was not today. This was eight years ago. You know the divorce laws. The court always favours the husband, the man. Is that right?”
That was right.
“But it still doesn’t explain why she would have abandoned her kids and left. That kind of selfishness I can understand in a man, but not in a woman. I don’t think Shubra Basu would have deserted her children for her own sake. They were already 14 and 10 years old. All she had to do was wait a few more years, and they would have been out of the house and on their own. Then she could have done what she wanted with the rest of her life.”
Mrs Matondkar nodded, rocking steadily to and fro. The evening light from the window behind her made her look like a painting of an artist’s mother. Whistler, was it? Except that Whistler’s mother was never so over-weight.
“But still she went, no?” she said said at last. “So probably she could not bear to wait even so long.”
“Just tell me this, Mrs Matondkar. Do you agree with what I just said or not? If you were in Shubra Basu’s place eight years ago, wouldn’t you have waited a few more years rather than walk out there and then? After all, he was unfaithful and a dominating husband, but he wasn’t beating her up or abusing her. What would you have done? Abandoned your children to pursue your own dreams or wait a few more years?”
She chewed the last piece of sugar cane. When she took it out at last, it was as dried out as straw. She spat little flecks of cane into her left hand, then licked the stickiness of her lips.
Finally, she looked up at me and nodded: “I would have waited.”
My thought exactly.
Taxi driver Aftab Husain was a thin, elderly man with a patient look. Clean-shaven and balding, he faintly resembled the Hindi film character actor A K Hangal. His right hand shook visibly, probably the result of a silent stroke he wasn’t even aware of having had. I didn’t enlighten him on the symptoms of strokes and their consequences on the nervous system.
Instead I showed him a picture of Shubra Basu that Avijit had given me, and asked:
“Eight years ago, you drove this woman from Carter Road, Bandra, and took her to Dadar TT. She left her purse in the back seat, and afterwards, you took the purse to the Union. Do you remember?”
He frowned, scratching his high, balding forehead. “Pata nahin, memsaab. Bahut log bahut kuch chhod jaate hai. Sabki pata kaun rakhta.”
“Not like this one, Husainbhai. This lady left her purse in the back seat. The Taxi Union said when you handed in the purse, it had a lot of cash and credit cards in it. You very honestly turned it all over to the Union.”
A light dawned in his eyes. He replied in Hindi: “Achha. That one. Yes, yes, I remember that now. She was carrying a very heavy suitcase, I think,” he said at last. “I remember because I helped take it out of the dicky, and it was very heavy.” He shook his head. “That’s all, memsaab.
That and the wallet.”
“Yes, yes,” I said. “You mean, purse. Ladies purse.”
“No, memsaab,” he said, his hand trembling as he let it rest on the top of his meter. “It was a wallet, a man’s wallet.”
I looked at him. “What do you mean, a man’s wallet? How could it be a man’s wallet?”
He shrugged. “That’s why I first thought that maybe it was left by someone else. But she was my first bhada of the day, my bonee. I clean my taxi every morning before I start work, so I knew it must have been her’s only. It was a big leather wallet.”
With a sudden burst of excitement, I kissed Aftab Husain on his bald forehead.
“Thank you!” I said happily. “Thank you so much!”
Avijit smiled politely when I arrived and asked me if I’d like some iced tea.
I looked at him silently for a moment, examining his face closely, the cut of his hair, the nape of his neck, the shape of his body in the oversized black cotton shirt and faded blue jeans. He began to blink in embarrassment, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.
“Take off your clothes,” I said.
He froze.
“I want to have sex with you,” I told him casually. “I’ve wanted you since the first day we met, Avijit. I can’t resist you any longer.” I sounded like a Silhouette Romance, even though I’ve probably only read two in my entire life. I’m usually more the horror-and-crime novel type, but in the situation the purple prose sounded appropriate.
“Don’t tease me any longer,” I went on. “Please. Just take me. Ravish me. Make me your’s right now. I can’t wait another minute!”
I began unbuttoning my own shirt. “All right,” I said. “I’ll start first.” I worked open all the buttons, reached behind and snapped open my bra strap. I bared my bosom to him, as Victoria Holt would have said.
“It’s all your’s, Avi. Take me now!”
He stood up, face burning red with embarrassment and anger. “Put your clothes on,” he said. “Are you mad? What’s wrong with you, Anita?”
I went over to him, caught him by the wrists and pinned both hands behind him, slamming him against the wall. A cluster of cartoon characters jumped off the magnetized writing board. Keeping his wrists behind his back with one hand, I used the other hand to unbutton his black shirt quickly. Weight-lifting does give me a certain amount of muscular strength. Avijit struggled ineffectively to break out of my grasp.
“Stop it!” he said, genuinely alarmed now.
“Please, my love! Don’t resist me! I must have you now or die!” I was beginning to enjoy my performance now. Perhaps I had a future in acting?
I had most of his buttons open now. I tore the rest off, yanking the shirt aside to the left and to the right, exposing his chest completely.
And then I stopped abruptly.
And stared down at his exposed torso.
Avijit Basu’s breasts were small, almost flat. The nipples were large and full, engorged with the physical stimulation of our struggle, but if you wore a thick double-pocketed cotton shirt like he was wearing now, you wouldn’t be able to see them. And if he wound a strip of thick cloth around his breasts when he went out, they would be effectively invisible.
But damn it, why am I still calling him Avijit? For that matter, why am I still calling him “him”?
“Sit down, Shubra,” I said gently to her. “We have a lot to talk about.”
“How did you find out?” she asked.
“A mean, selfish bastard of a man doesn’t turn into the best father in the world overnight, Shubra. Avijit changed too much. You could take on his outward persona, the two of you almost looked similar, and being Bengali and having just moved into this new flat, your neighbours hadn’t had time to look at either of you closely. Except for the weight, of course. A couple of them commented on that. But they assumed it was because of the grief at the wife abandoning him. Other than those things, you did a pretty marvellous job of posing as your husband for the last eight years. I have to congratulate you, it was the perfect crime.”
“What do you mean, crime? What crime did I commit? Avijit may have been a good man when I first met him, but he changed so much in those sixteen years we were married. He couldn’t make the business work, couldn’t cope with his sexual urges, his eating and drinking, couldn’t be patient enough with the children. He was a complete mess. And instead of trying to make it better, he kept making it worse and worse. By drinking even more. By sleeping around. By boasting about it in front of the children—can you imagine that? He used to boast at parties right before the children that he had slept with X, Y, and Z.”
“Even then, Shubra, you had no right to murder him. You could have got a divorce, custody—.”
“What are you talking about?” The puzzlement in her eyes was genuine.
She had no idea what I was referring to. “What do you mean, murder? Who said I murdered him?”
I caught my breath. “You didn’t? But then…I mean…why else would you…why this whole charade then? Wasn’t that his body you carried away in the big suitcase? The one you took to Dadar TT?”
She nodded. “Yes. I put it on a bus to Valsad, Gujarat. I waited till they put it on top of the bus, tied down all the luggage, and watched till the bus left to make sure they didn’t suspect anything. I don’t know what happened after that, but I suppose they didn’t discover the body until they reached Valsad, found nobody claiming the suitcase and finally turned it over to the State Bus Authorities, who must have kept it until it began to stink.”
“But if you didn’t kill him, then how did he die?”
She sipped some tea. “He had a massive heart attack in the middle of the night. Died instantly. I sat up for two hours, trying to decide what to do. Finally, I thought of putting him in a suitcase and dumping it on a state bus.”
She was leaving something out, I could tell. “But what brought on the heart attack, Shubra? Come on, you might as well tell me the whole thing.”
She paused, looking around at the house, the life she had built for herself. A very good life. Definitely not the kind of life she would have had if Avijit Basu had continued living, and if she had stayed on as his wife.
“He tried to hit me,” she said slowly. “He had become brutal lately. Wanting sex even when I wasn’t inclined. Trying to do all kinds of things, sadistic things. He was so shameless, he would even try to lift my dress up in front of the children. And once, I caught him watching Shanti bathe, and he had an erection.”
I nodded. I had some idea of the depths to which human beings can sink once they allow themselves.
“That night, he tried to force himself on me. I resisted. He hit me. I hit him back. It became a fight. Then he picked up something to hit me with, and I knew he was drunk and crazy enough to kill me right there and then. So I…I threatened him.”
“With what?” I asked, gently, touching her arm.
“There was a pair of scissors on my bedside table. I only meant to scare him away, but he was out of control. He grew even more angry when I threatened him with the scissors. He tried to hit me again, but I slashed him a few times with the scissors and that’s when he began to have the heart attack. He collapsed on the bed and began to have convulsions. I realized what was happening, his doctor had told him some months ago to lose weight and stop drinking. The number of the doctor was right there by the phone. I knew I should have given a heart patient an analgesic immediately to help reduce the clotting. But I didn’t do anything. I just stood there and watched him die. It took half an hour.”
She was silent for a few moments. I put the glass of tea down. I wasn’t very thirsty any more.
“So, you were scared that you would be arrested for attempted murder? And that you would lose the children?”
“Everything,” she said, tears in her eyes now. “I would lose everything, don’t you see? Because no matter what they say, it’s still a fucking man’s world, let’s face it, Anita. That’s why, to stay with my children, I had to become a man. Literally. That’s why I did it all.”
I nodded. I coudn’t argue with that one.
She wiped her eyes, got over her emotional outburst and looked at me intently.
“So what will you do now?” she asked. “Go to the police?”
“What’s the point?” I replied. “He’s dead. He was a mean, selfish bastard, everybody agrees on that. You, on the other hand, are a really fine mother to your children. Mother and father, both rolled into one. You’ve done a great job bringing them up. You’ve built a career, a man’s career in a man’s world. I don’t hate you, Shubra, if that’s what you’re thinking, I admire you. The answer is no, I’m not going to go to the police or anyone else. I’d never forgive myself if I were to do anything to hurt you after all you’ve gone through already.”
She hugged me then. Took me to herself and held me so tight, I could feel her heart beating against mine. Then she kissed me on the cheek, as only a woman can kiss another woman.
(c) 1990-2010 Ashok Banker. All rights reserved.
Mumbai Noir: ‘The first (three) crime novels in English by an Indian author, or so the media called them at the time
This is the final cover for my ‘Mumbai Noir’ collection. The next title from AKB Books. Again, as with the previous AKB Books titles, this will also be a limited signed edition available only through online orders via this website. It contains the complete original text of my first three crime novels (also my only three crime novels published in print editions, since Bad Karma was published only as an online novel). They’re short novels, almost novellas, so the omnibus is less than 500 pages, but as a bonus I’ve written a long essay on Indian Crime Fiction as well as notes on the writing and publication of the books.
Click on the image to read the back cover blurb. As the title of this blog post says, these three slim novels were hailed at the time (1993) as ‘the first crime novels in English by an Indian author’. Were they really? To know that and much else, you’ll have to wait and read the introductory essay. 
Meanwhile, feast your eyes on that beautiful cover design by the very talented Chandan Crasta, who also takes credit for that very evocative graveyard photograph and many other equally mesmerizing pics.
TRRFIC 2SUM: Buy a signed VoR Hardcover and get a signed vortal:shockwave FREE!
OFFER OVER! THANKS, FOLKS! That’s it in one line: Buy a hardcover copy of VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series and get a FREE copy of vortal:shockwave, my most fun, action-packed, fast-paced fantasy thriller! How’s that for a great twosome! Visit the AKB BOOKS ORDER PAGE.
Sons of Sita will be out in June
SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series, the long-awaited final volume, has been postponed again. The AKB Books edition will now be available in mid-June. If you’re one of those who were able to book a copy and have paid for it as well, thank you for your support and I hope you’ll be patient another two months. Because this is the phinal-phinal book in this long series, I really want it to be as perfect as I can make it, and perfection takes a little longer.
VoR Hardcovers (finally) despatched – did you get your’s? (SoS delayed, sigh.)
VoR (Vengeance of Ravana) Hardcovers have finally been despatched this past week. If you had ordered a hardcover limited edition or won the auction for the #1 Collector’s Hardcover Edition, you should have received it by now. If you have not received it, please visit the How To Pay Page and post a message there alongwith your full postal address with pincode+tel.no. (the address will be edited out before approving the comment) to save time.
Thanks for your patience waiting for these hardcovers – it’s been a very long wait for me as well, with the printer repeatedly messing up the printing, binding, etc, and endless delays. Thankfully, the wait is over now…
…and another wait begins, for SoS (Sons of Sita)! But don’t worry, it won’t be as long as the VoR Hardcover delay. The AKB Books Signed Limited Edition of SoS (hardcover as well as paperback) is now scheduled to be released by end-April. Updates will be sent to you closer to the date.
As always, I welcome reader correspondence and always replies to every message. You are most welcome to post a message to me at the Readerswrite Page
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Ten years have passed since Rama did the unthinkable and banished Sita. Now, she spends her days in quiet tapasya in the remote forest ashram of Maharishi Valmiki, even as her sons Luv and Kush grow ever more proficient at the arts of war. To the sorrow of many, they seem unlikely to ever cross paths with their estranged father. Yet destiny works in unexpected ways. Rama’s growing ambitions and his war-mongering advisors motivate him to launch the Ashwamedha yojana. The mightiest Ayodhyan army ever assembled follows the sacred stallion in a campaign of conquest that seems unstoppable…until a pair of improbable obstacles arise. Defying the military might of Ayodhya and the emperorship of Rama himself, two young striplings capture the Ashwamedha horse and challenge the great army in an extraordinary battle. To Rama’s chagrin the challengers turn out to be none other than his own estranged offspring: the sons of Sita! Don’t miss the epic conclusion to the internationally acclaimed and bestselling Ramayana Series!
SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series
300 Pages/Limited Signed Hardback Edition/Rs 500 SOLD OUT!
300 Pages/2nd Limited Signed Trade Paperback Edition/Rs 400 SOLD OUT!
Click here to read excerpts from Sons of Sita.
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How to Pay
IMPORTANT: AKB BOOKS are currently sold out. If you have Ashok’s bank account details, please DO NOT deposit any payment towards future orders. The payment system is being revised and new details on How to Pay will be posted here on this page by mid-August, when the new AKB Books are ready for order.
IMPORTANT: Those who pre-ordered Sons of Sita in January-February 2010, please note that due to continued delays, your copies are now scheduled for delivery in the first week of September. If you do not wish to wait and desire a refund, please leave a comment below asking for the refund and it shall be sent to you within a week. Those who have ordered and received AKB Books without paying for them, please don’t worry: once the new payment system is in place, you can make the payment at your leisure. As always, this service is to offer you, my most loyal and supportive readers, a chance to get exclusive limited signed editions – it’s not about me making money!
SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series – Excerpt#5
FOUR
When Luv came sprinting around the outcrop, two pairs of eyes instantly snapped around to stare at him. The two men on the second wagon looked startled to see him. I know that look. They think I’m Kush and can’t figure out how he could have run off in that direction and then appeared again from this direction. He was used to that response. He yelled at them as he sprinted past: “Stay where you are!” They looked too startled to try anything anyway.
Barely had he run past the wagon when he heard the sound of pounding hooves from ahead, around the next spur of rock. A few broken boulders lay on the path, their insides gleaming rusty red where they had broken open after falling in a minor landslide during the last monsoon. Others had been pushed over deliberately to block the path, for this was a popular ambush point on the raj-marg. The sound of hooves and rattling of wagon wheels was very loud by then and he knew better than to run around a blind turn. Instead he swerved and leaped up onto the largest broken boulder. He could smell the iron in the air here, so rich was the vein in the lohit stone. These hills were rife with minerals, good pure ore for making steel.
He stood in the relaxed archer position that Bearface had taught them, waiting.
Don’t call your guru that name, Maatr’s voice said in his mind’s ear, He is Gurudev to you, remember!
Yes, Maa.
The position that Bearface had taught them, the lazy cobra, their guru had called it, was now second nature. He waits, seemingly indolent, swaying lazily, but the instant threat appears, he strikes with lightning-speed.
Luv didn’t know if he moved at lightning-speed, but the instant the wagon came into sight, he let fly. The first arrow hit its mark and the second was flying even before the wagon had rolled fully into view. A man shouted out with pain and tumbled off the wagon, with two arrows sprouting, one from each shoulder – the first had clearly been Kush’s work. The driver screamed like a wounded horse and clutched at the arrow quivering in the meat of his thigh – the head must have struck the thighbone, hence the vibration and the extreme pain. Then the wagon rolled past and the next came into view, and still no sight of Kush.
Damnit, Luv thought, feeling the heat rise in his face, cheeks burning. Where are you?
The men on this wagon were better prepared and better shots. Three well aimed arrows came blurring at Luv and he had to somersault sideways to dodge both. Landing on his bare feet on the rubble of the lohitstone, he felt warmth on his waist where one had nicked the skin just enough to draw a bead or two. He loosed off two quick ones before the men could shoot the second volley, and both hit their marks. Both men dropped their own bows, one grunting, the other choosing the strong silent response.
Then the rest of the grama came into view, riding fast, faster than any grama ought to have been especially on this twisting treacherous neck of the raj-marg, and everything began to move very quickly, so quickly that Luv felt his senses slowing to a crawl as they always did in a fight, the world popping into brilliant crystalline clarity and colour: the veins on every leaf visible, every knothole on the wooden slats of a wagon’s side in view, hearing every grinding creak in a wheel, smelling the raw red odors of freshly spilled human blood mixed in with the pungent smell of horse sweat, man-sweat and the rusty tang of the lohitstone.
The flaps of the following wagons opened and revealed armed men. Burly, hirsute, armoured men in the familiar purple and black of Ayodhya’s inner guard. PFs, or some new extension of the PF regiment – for PFs were meant to guard the inner city, not ride with trading gramas as hired escorts. Whatever they were, whomever they were, there were a lot of them, too many for Luv to simply disarm. He would have to fight them seriously to survive, kill some quite likely. And even then it would be touch and go.
The good warrior knows when to retreat, said his guru’s gruff voice in his ear. The code of the kshatriya means nothing if there is no kshatriya left to fight!
Agreeing with Bearface – sorry, Gurudev – was his mother’s voice in his other ear. Run, Luv, run! You can’t fight them all!
Ji, Maatr, jaisi aagya, he said in his mind as he began the heavy task of fitting arrows to bow and aiming not to maim or disarm but to disable, possibly kill. I would love to run. But not without my brother.
“Damnit Kush, where the hell are you?” he said aloud as he began shooting.
Kush emerged from the wagon to see his twin brother standing on a pile of lohistone landslide, the edges of the outcrop at his back, loosing arrows with concentrated ease. He appeared to be single-handedly battling what looked like at least five quads of armed PFs, even though PFs never ventured armed and uniformed outside the Ayodhya city limits. Clearly this grama was a notable exception to the usual rules.
Which makes sense, considering the cargo they’re carrying, he thought as he sprinted away from Luv and to the other side of the raj-marg, unnoticed by either his brother or the men busy trying to kill him. In three deft leaps and grabs he had climbed a tree and was standing on a near-horizontal branch twice as thick as his own thigh. It would have bent and drooped under a grown man’s weight but it took his own lithe form easily, and he steadied his left shoulder against the trunk, took aim at his first target and loosed. The man took the arrow in the meaty muscle joining shoulder to neck, and it popped out through his collarbone with a small explosion of blood. The man yelped like a pup and dropped the javelin he had been about to fling at Luv.
Without turning to look directly at Kush, Luv cried out with joy. “Kush!” Then added in a disgruntled tone even as he continued loosing and dodging: “Took your time, didn’t you!”
“Had to make a short visit to the royal treasury,” Kush called back, grinning. He continued loosing, and saw his third target drop, roaring with frustration and fury as he tried to clutch at the arrow sprouting from his shoulderblade. Hit the bone, hurts like blazes. That voice was old Nakhudi’s, who always seemed to know how to inflict maximum pain on the enemy without actually killing them. Only male enemies, as she liked to remind them, grinning to reveal her astonishingly white gleaming teeth in her buffalo-dark face.
The fight continued for another few moments, the PFs on and around the halted wagons trying with admirable skill to face an attack on two diagonally opposed fronts with diminishing success. Their leader, an efficient and intelligent-seeming fellow, tried to rally his men to use the wagons as shielding, while attempting to send a pair of quads around to outflank Kush – Luv was bolstered by the outcrop which would have taken hours to cut over and around – but the brothers had them at the deadliest cross-angle two bowmen could take, and the broken stones shielded Luv while the tree and foliage shielded Kush, and while many arrows and javelins were aimed at them, none came closer than a single wayward arrow that thunked into the tree branch between Kush’s big toe and its neighbour.
Then, as fierce fights usually did, this one dissipated like a puddle evaporating under a mid-day sun, and suddenly the captain of the PFs was waving his arms in surrender.
Kush grinned and dropped down from his perch, making his way cautiously towards the halted wagons. He had his eye on some men at the back who might, if still feisty enough, try to fling a javelin or two as he approached. But every one of them and all the others as well had at least one arrow in their arm, leg or back, and one massively built chap who had refused to settle down with just two or even three arrows had four bristling from his extremities, lying on his back and cursing the sky roundly with a raised fist, turning the air blue with his choice of profanities. Kush grinned even wider, making a note of several for future reference. Living in an ashram community as they did, good curses were hard to come by!
Luv had leaped up to the tall broken lohitstone boulder, keeping his weapon trained on the PFs as his brother approached. Kush winked at him as he came and saw Luv shake his head in mock-disgust – complaining about the moments when Kush had disappeared from sight earlier. The PFs quietened as he reached them, holding down their moaning and grunting and cursing as they saw the ‘men’ who had bested them up close for the first time.
Thank you for reading these exclusive excerpts from SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series! Do take a moment to leave a comment below.
Click here to request a copy of the AKB BOOKS Limited Signed Edition of SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series
(No Advance Payment Required!)
Ten years have passed since Rama did the unthinkable and banished Sita. Now, she spends her days in quiet tapasya in the remote forest ashram of Maharishi Valmiki, even as her sons Luv and Kush grow ever more proficient at the arts of war. To the sorrow of many, they seem unlikely to ever cross paths with their estranged father. Yet destiny works in unexpected ways. Rama’s growing ambitions and his war-mongering advisors motivate him to launch the Ashwamedha yojana. The mightiest Ayodhyan army ever assembled follows the sacred stallion in a campaign of conquest that seems unstoppable…until a pair of improbable obstacles arise. Defying the military might of Ayodhya and the emperorship of Rama himself, two young striplings capture the Ashwamedha horse and challenge the great army. To Rama’s chagrin the challengers turn out to be none other than his own estranged offspring: the sons of Sita! Don’t miss the epic conclusion to the internationally acclaimed and bestselling Ramayana Series!
SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series
300 Pages/Limited Signed Trade Paperback Edition/Rs 400
Click here to request a copy of the AKB BOOKS Limited Signed Edition of VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series
(No Advance Payment Required!)
The Penguin Books mass market edition is expected to be in bookstores in early 2011.
SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series – Excerpt#4
THREE
Luv knew Kush was in trouble even before he heard the whinnying of horses and shouting of hoarse voices from beyond the outcrop. He wasn’t startled in the least but the old PF with the scar probably assumed he would be and made his move. He leaped off the wagon with surprising speed and ought to have rolled to the right, behind the cover of the wagon; instead he rolled left, grabbing the team’s rig, using the horses as a shield. Luv’s first arrow whizzed harmlessly through the gap where he had expected the man to be and his second remained notched and ready but unloosed. Firing under the team’s bellies would certainly startle them and with that lead roan stallion already impatient and restless to be on his way again, that would only result in a runaway wagon. Not part of the plan. He didn’t bother to call out to the man either: the fellow knew what he was doing and obviously still had a few tricks up his sleeve. Instead, Luv aimed at a new target, a slender leathery one, and fired off three quick arrows in succession. Then he grinned, pleased at the result, and loosed a fourth one directly behind the lead roan’s rump, close enough that were he to go collect that arrow it would probably smell of horse’s droppings!
The roan stallion snorted in response, kicked out once, then suddenly realized what had just happened. Somehow, by some miracle, he and his equestrian companions had been set free of their burdensome load. Without further ado, he lowered his head like a charging bull and started down the path. Startled, the rest of the team had no choice but to follow, and with the burden of the wagon gone, they broke instantly into a canter that turned quickly into a cheerful gallop as they went around the last abutment and disappeared from sight.
In the trail of dust left by their passing, the aging wagon driver lay sprawled on the ground, staring in dazed surprise after the fleeing horses. Before he could get back to his feet, Luv had leaped off the boulder, using a series of lesser stones to hop, skip, jump to the path. He aimed the bow at the man again, who started, convinced he was about to be killed.
“Easy,” Luv said. “We never hurt anyone unless he tries to hurt us first.”
The man showed Luv his open palms. “I’m not looking for a fight, yuvraj. Just an old wagon driver. I leave the fighting to the grama-rakshaks.” He jerked his head backwards, indicating the path behind the stranded wagon.
Almost on cue, a fresh burst of yells and horse sounds came to them from beyond the outcrop. Judging by the sounds, Luv estimated that it wasn’t the second wagon Kush was having trouble with but the rest of the grama. I should go to him, there might be too many for him to handle.
He saw the old driver watching him closely during the few moments it took him to think this and consider the options. Old man may not want to fight, but he’s still a shrewd one.
“What’s your name, oldun?” he asked.
The old driver frowned, his forehead wrinkling in a way that reminded Luv of the bed of the Sona river when it had dried up in last year’s drought. “Why do you need to know that?” he asked.
Luv raised the arrow a fraction.
The man shrugged. “All right. It’s Bejoo. Used to be Captain Bejoo of the Vajra—”
Luv cut him off. “Bejoo. I don’t need your atmakatha. Listen carefully. I’m leaving you alone here for a moment. I could tell you that I have companions watching you from the woods but I won’t do that because you seem like a sharp man. So I’m just going to ask you to stay here till I get back, and not run away. You do that and I’ll let you walk away unharmed. Run and I won’t. Clear?”
The man looked at him suddenly with a peculiar expression.
Luv raised the arrow another fraction. “Clear?” He couldn’t keep the tone of impatience out of his voice. Kush was definitely in trouble by now, or he would have been back.
The man swallowed, then nodded. “Aye. Ayuh, youngun. Clear as the Sarayu in spring.”
Luv looked at him sharply. “Remember. I know these woods like the back of my hand. Run and you die.”
The man nodded again. Again that same peculiar look. He looks like he’s just recognized me and we were long-lost friends. But Luv had never seen the man before in his life.
Luv turned and sprinted up the path.
“Kush!” he yelled as he went. “I’m coming!”
Kush heard the men laughing even over the thundering of the horse’s hooves and the racket of the wagon. They meant to run me down! By kshatriya code, that meant he was free to use mortal violence against them. When someone openly attempted to kill a warrior, he in turn was justified in killing the aggressors to defend his life. Even so, Kush scornfully discarded the idea: men who used a wagon to run down a solitary boy were not worthy adversaries. What was the phrase Maatr used? ‘Don’t soil your arrowheads with cowardly blood!’ He grinned. Maatr was always saying things like that, Vishnu bless her.
He whispered affectionately to both the horses whose rigging he was clinging to, their warm breath on his neck and face tickling him and making him giggle involuntarily. He had been ridden over before and had learned at an early age how to let the horse take you rather than resist and fight the onward-rushing force. Flesh, sinew and bone could be destroyed by that onrushing weight as easily as a footfall would snap a twig. But if a kshatriya was trained and prepared, it was like a wayward puddle being collected by an onflowing stream of water and just as effortless. He had simply let the pounding horses bear down on him, crouched down at just the right angle, and grabbed hold of the rigging between the two lead horses at precisely the right moment: the warrior’s moment, as he and Luv liked to call it. On the raj-marg, one either moved aside – often at breakneck speed to avoid some of those hot-riding royal contingents – or got crushed under pounding hooves and chariot or wagon wheels. Ever since they could remember, they had seen people killed thusly, often old folk too weak or slow to move aside in time, poor unfortunate carrying too heavy a load to toss aside in time and most heartrending of all, children as small as themselves, tiny bodies mangled from the hooves into a shapeless heap of shattered bones and oozing flesh. After viewing one particularly nasty aftermath of a visiting royal procession with an armed escort, Luv and he had begun to teach themselves how to survive such encounters without ending up as battered blood-mash. By the age of 5, when they were old enough to reach the rigging of the tall horses that thundered down the king’s road, they had mastered the art of letting the horse take them. Now, it was easy as clinging to Maatr’s breast.
He had began working his way down the length of the rigging almost immediately after being picked up. Now he looked up between a crack in the floorboards of the driver’s seat at the two men riding there. The one with the arrow in his shoulder was still cursing, but his indignation at his own pain was outweighed by his amusement at having run over the ‘brigand’. They were tough grizzled old veterans, probably ex-PFs like the one in the lead wagon. Luv didn’t waste more time on them. He was more interested in finding out what cargo they carried that had made them too nervous to halt. It was the work of only another moment to haul himself under the wagon itself, then up the side where he found enough space under the flap covering to slip into the vehicle itself without those in the following wagon seeing him.
Inside the wagon, the noise of the grama oddly muted by the heavy canvas covering, he stared around at the consignment for a long silent moment, stunned.
Of all the possible cargoes he had expected, this was not on the list.
Just then he heard the men shouting and the wagon slowing and knew that could only mean one thing: They had reached the stranded second wagon. And most likely, Luv as well.
Now, the fun would begin.
Click here to read Excerpt#5 from SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series
Ten years have passed since Rama did the unthinkable and banished Sita. Now, she spends her days in quiet tapasya in the remote forest ashram of Maharishi Valmiki, even as her sons Luv and Kush grow ever more proficient at the arts of war. To the sorrow of many, they seem unlikely to ever cross paths with their estranged father. Yet destiny works in unexpected ways. Rama’s growing ambitions and his war-mongering advisors motivate him to launch the Ashwamedha yojana. The mightiest Ayodhyan army ever assembled follows the sacred stallion in a campaign of conquest that seems unstoppable…until a pair of improbable obstacles arise. Defying the military might of Ayodhya and the emperorship of Rama himself, two young striplings capture the Ashwamedha horse and challenge the great army. To Rama’s chagrin the challengers turn out to be none other than his own estranged offspring: the sons of Sita! Don’t miss the epic conclusion to the internationally acclaimed and bestselling Ramayana Series!
SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series
300 Pages/Limited Signed Trade Paperback Edition/Rs 400
Click here to request a copy of the AKB BOOKS Limited Signed Edition of SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series
The Penguin Books mass market edition is expected to be in bookstores in early 2011.
SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series – Excerpt#2
KAAND 1
ONE
The heavily laden wagon train trundled noisily through the woods. Sunlight fell in beams through the high leafy branches of the sala trees, some towering twenty yards or higher, illuminating the dust motes thrown up in the wake of the rattling wheels. The forest was rife with the colours of spring, bright bursts of saffron, vermillion, scarlet, russet, mustard decorating the sloping hillsides across which the old trading path wound its way. Smaller animals paused in their foraging and raised slender necks or cocked furry heads to listen as the wagons rumbled past then continued their nibbling unabated, accustomed to the passing of mortals through this neck of the woods. A leopard stretched out upon a high tree branch snarled and bared her fangs silently as she paused in the act of sharpening her claws; long furrows of stripped bark and gouged slashes marked her chosen spot. After she had satisfied herself the mortal noisemakers were only passing through, not stopping, she resumed her energetic grooming, purring with pleasure as the soft crumbly bark yielded to her razor-sharp tips. Below and only a few dozen yards to the side, a mongoose ignored the sound and continued to burrow into a hollow trunk rich with the scent of cobra, disappointed to find only cracked egg shells and old sheaths discarded at the turn of the season. Suspended on the trunk of another tree, a wasp stuck in a drip of oozing sap struggled hopelessly one last time before succumbing to the treacly golden glue that sealed in its life. Cicadas kept rhythm as the forest went about its daily business of killing, eating, defecating, urinating, dying and living. Higher up the sloping hillside, a tribe of langurs dozed in the shade, dopey in the late afternoon heat; from time to time, a squabble or mating duel provoked a babble which then quickly subsided. It was too hot to fight, mate, or do much except wait for the coolness of dusk and the night when the forest truly came alive.
The wagon wheel rims deepened the ruts in the oft used path as they rolled along. Most of the occupants appeared to be coddled within the covered carts, sleeping or dozing. Even the drivers were still and silent, moving only the minimum they had to in order to keep the teams of horses in line. There were almost no arms in view, and those that were visible were tucked away in rust-rimmed sheaths and carelessly kept swaddles. At first glance, it appeared to be a traditional grama – literally, a travelling tribe, for a wagon-train was the traditional collective in which the Arya hunter-gatherer tribes of yore had moved from place to place before the relatively recent era of fixed townships and city-states. But the absence of any women, the complete lack of children, and the heavily laden carts, as evidenced from the exertion expdended by the horses drawing the wagons, as well as the covered wagons and oddly quiet procession, suggested something else altogether. There were none of the usual entourage of brahmins trudging doggedly behind the wagons chanting their shlokas either, which ruled out a religious procession. Vaisya traders returning from Videha to Ayodhya, laden with the spoils of a good season of barter? Perhaps.
At one point the path curved sharply, almost doubling upon itself as it skirted a jagged outcrop of rock protruding from the hillside. At the same time, the trees at the bottom of this little outcrop drew back, providing a roughly semicircular clearing. At some time in the not-too-distant past, two old trees had somehow been uprooted and fallen, cutting this clearing in half in a pattern that roughly resembled an arrow fitted to a curved bow. The trees were rotting and overgrown and intersected the original path in a manner which compelled all travellers to slow and maneuver their way in a zigzag fashion for a few dozen yards. Each wagon and horse rider had to slow down and turn left then right then left again, go around the edge of the outcrop where a particularly enormous boulder jutted out like the fist of the bowman preparing to loose the arrow that was the fallen trees, and then turn inwards one last time, riding in the shade of a brief valley-like enclosure between the sharp rise of the hillside here to the left and the tree line to the right, before coming back upon the original path and settling back into familiar ruts. This slowed the entire train and necessitated some concentration of driverly resources, apart from separating each wagon from the one before and after for a moment or two at each turning point.
When the first wagon completed this minor obstacle course and turned the sharp final left, the driver’s attention was immediately diverted to two figures standing upon the large boulder. The angle of the sun and the high positions taken by the two men made it impossible to look directly at them. They were little more than silhouetted male figures clad in simple dhotis, that much he could see. Both held bows loosely by their sides and bore quivers on their backs, each bristling with a goodly supply of fletched arrows. They wore no swords or other weapons that the wagon driver could make out, nor did they appear to have any other companions anywhere in sight. They stood together, facing outwards in an insolent casual posture that suggested they simply happened to be there on this fine spring day, enjoying the late afternoon sunshine, and the arrows fitted loosely to the bows held in the lowered arms were simply things they happened to be carrying.
The driver raised his brows, but neither slowed nor sought to stop the wagon. For one thing, it was very heavily laden, overburdened in fact, and stopping and starting required far too much effort and energy, both on the part of the weary team as well as himself. He did not see anything that occasioned risking that much effort here. The two figures standing upon the outcropping boulder appeared to be simply…standing. If not for their oddly intense faces, he would have raised a gnarled hand and hailed them pleasantly. But there was something in their curiously identical features and stillness that reminded him of a duo of young lionesses he had seen once in the Gir woods, in the moment before they had both pounced from diagonal points, converging upon a magnificent but age-bowed stag. This pair put him in mind of that same relaxed yet powerfully gathered predatory stance. He was an old PF whose ancient war injuries had proved too restrictive for him to continue active service. He had retired on the king’s pension and now hired himself out to lead wagon trains like this one to help earn a little extra from time to time. Like all old soldiers who had seen violence explode, he knew how even the most innocuous gesture could sometimes seem provocative or hostile to a person of another culture. He lowered his half-raised hand and stilled his voice. Better to simply ride past and on. These were strange times and there were strange people afoot.
He clicked his tongue softly and completed the turn with deft ease, the wagon swinging around, rear wheels creaking noisily as it rounded the curve. The stallioni on the fore right of the team, a healthy young brute in his prime who was given to covering every female in sight if given the chance, tossed his head and shortened his steps reluctantly to compensate for the sharpness of the curve, nudged and coerced expertly by the driver. The curve done, he lowered his head and pulled hard, drawing lows of protest from his companions who were in no particular hurry to reach Ayodhya. The young stud moved as if he had an appointment with a female waiting eagerly for him in the capitol, straining at the yoke. The old driver admired his strength and youth without envying him; he had been somewhat of a bull himself in his youth; in retrospect, he preferred the quiet wisdom of age and experience over the brash virility of youth anyday. He was distracted for just a fraction of an instant by the young horses’s antics – long enough for everything to change.
Movement caught his eye on the boulder. He glanced up just in time to see the two figures that had been standing still as statues suddenly stir to action. Both bows were raised, cords taut, and the old wagon rider looked up to see the lethal metal points of two long arrows aimed directly at him. He had a brief instant to think of his great-grandchildren back in Ayodhya and of the toys he had bought for them from the toy mandi in Mithila. He had been looking forward to seeing their faces dance with delight as he drew each new treat out of the jute sack. Those little tykes were his greatest source of pleasure in these last years. But then again, he had seen his share of happy faces. He was not unafraid of dying, nor foolish enough to risk it just to save some rich vaisya trader’s season’s stock.
He clucked the team to a halt, yanking hard twice on the young stud’s reins for emphasis – the fellow was thick-headed enough to ram into the outcrop if not corrected firmly – then dropped his hands, shaking his head to indicate he meant to take no aggressive action.
One of the figures standing upon the boulder spoke. And it was then that the driver had his first real surprise in a very long time. At his age, with his war record and lifetime of experience, he had seen a fair share of unusual situations. But it had been a long time since he had been genuinely surprised as he was now.
Because when the person on the boulder began to speak, he realized what he hadn’t been able to see before due to the angle of the sunlight.
The two bowmen were just boys.
Little more than children.
Click here to read Excerpt#3 from SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series
Ten years have passed since Rama did the unthinkable and banished Sita. Now, she spends her days in quiet tapasya in the remote forest ashram of Maharishi Valmiki, even as her sons Luv and Kush grow ever more proficient at the arts of war. To the sorrow of many, they seem unlikely to ever cross paths with their estranged father. Yet destiny works in unexpected ways. Rama’s growing ambitions and his war-mongering advisors motivate him to launch the Ashwamedha yojana. The mightiest Ayodhyan army ever assembled follows the sacred stallion in a campaign of conquest that seems unstoppable…until a pair of improbable obstacles arise. Defying the military might of Ayodhya and the emperorship of Rama himself, two young striplings capture the Ashwamedha horse and challenge the great army. To Rama’s chagrin the challengers turn out to be none other than his own estranged offspring: the sons of Sita! Don’t miss the epic conclusion to the internationally acclaimed and bestselling Ramayana Series!
SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series
300 Pages/Limited Signed Trade Paperback Edition/Rs 400
Click here to request a copy of the AKB BOOKS Limited Signed Edition of SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series
The Penguin Books mass market edition is expected to be in bookstores in early 2011.
SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series – Except#1
arvaci subhaghe bhava site vandamahe tva |
yatha nah subhaghasasi yatha nah suphalasasi ||
Auspicious Sita, come thou near: we venerate and worship thee |
That thou mayst bless and prosper us and bring us fruits abundantly ||
Rig-Veda, Mandala 4, Sukta 57, rca 6
PRARAMBHA
Sita…
Sweet whisper in her ear, myrtle breath upon her cheek. She started awake with a lurch and a gasp. In the hut’s impenetrable darkness, her hands sought out by instinct the looming mound of her belly. Her palms gently massaged the sweat-slicked pot, soothing both herself as well as her sleeping sons. Slowly, by degrees, the nightmarish visions of ten-headed rakshasas, moon-swords and three-eyed devas faded away reluctantly, retreated hissing and snapping to the far corners of the humble hut. She was too middle-heavy to sit up easily; instead, she leaned upon one elbow, head throbbing, throat hoarse from shouting forgotten prayers to uncaring gods. The darbha grass pallet was dampened by her own exudations. She listened idly, hearing only the absence of human sounds. The ashram was asleep around her. The night was peaceful, the forest quiet – or as quiet as a forest could be at night. The very music of the woods told her that all was well, no menace lurked in the dark recesses of the surrounding wilderness, no rakshasas approached stealthily, no mortal or un-mortal foes threatened. Within the center of her being, the twin lives growing steadily – greedily, it seemed somedays – seemed barely to have stirred. She trusted their instincts more than her own now; for they seemed to sense better than she when true danger loomed. One kicked, the other kicked back instinctively, and she felt them both settling back into deep repose. The rhythmic cricketing of insects, droning of cicadas, and hooting of owls lulled her back to sleep. Darkness embraced her like a lover returned from a long war. She fell into sleep and nothingness caught her and began to tug her insistently down towards oblivion…
Sitey.
Her eyes opened, staring up into darkness. That name. Nobody called her by that name, in that tone. Her name Sita modified to the third-person plural, the tense used for royalty or formal addresses. Simultaneously affectionate as well as excessively formal. A name only a lover would use. Nay, not even a lover. Only a husband.
Janaki.
She swallowed, willing her heart to slow, feeling a fresh bead of sweat coagulating upon her brow – she had always had a tendency to sweat a great deal from the crown of her scalp – and it took great restraint to stifle the urge she felt to speak out. Quiet and serene as the ashram was, its occupants were light sleepers, accustomed to living in woods populated by the fiercest predators. Rousing them would take little more than a raised voice, a tone of alarm, or even a strange sound that did not belong: Maharishi Valmiki would be up and at the ready in a trice, broadstaff in hand, a mantra on his lips. Then the devas help any intruder, human or otherwise. So she kept her voice stilled and emotions under control. There were also the twins to consider. At this advanced stage of her confinement, waking them would make sleep impossible the rest of the night, for they would be kicking and ready for action no less quicker than the maharishi. The very fact that they still slept so soundly told her that whatever presence swirled around her this night, it was not a force of evil that intended harm to her. Just as the Maharishi was sensitive to sound, the twins were sensitive to all else.
And that name and that tone. Janaki. Daughter of Janak. Again, an appellation used by one who cared about her.
Rama, she mouthed silently, her heart turning at the use of his name. Is that you?
Maithili.
This one was less intimate, more generic. Woman of Mithila. Yet coming as it did after the other familiar terms of endearment, it was more touching, not less, for its formal generality. She shuddered and covered her face with the crook of her arm, feeling hot tears spill carelessly down her cheeks. The appellation, uttered in the most affectionate of tones, caused her mind to resonate with a deep ringing that issued outwards in concentric waves, seeming to reach to the very ends of creation.
Vaidehi.
Woman of the Videha nation. This last was so generic, so formal, yet spoken in a tone so familiar, intimate, caressing, sincere, that it broke the last reserves of her endurance. The dam burst and she turned her head and cried into the straw, cut ends digging uncomfortably into her neck and arms and cheek; not caring. She heard her own sobs in the stillness and thought with a sense of wonder: Who is that woman weeping so bitterly? Poor thing. She must have suffered some great loss.
My love, forgive me. I did what I had to for our sakes. For the sake of our sons. For the sake of our future.
No! She cried silently in her mind’s echoing chamber. You did it for dharma. As you do everything. That’s all you really care about. Nothing else matters so long as you fulfill your dharma. It’s the way it’s always been with you!
A moment of silence, as if he did not debate her accusation. Then, gently, soothingly:
Yes. But you serve dharma too. In your own way. Surely you see that?
She raised her face at last and screamed into the darkness with the true voice of her heart, audible only to phantoms and miasmas: I don’t want to serve dharma. I don’t want dharma. I just want you.
She waited. But this time no reply came. Only the silent darkness pressing upon her from all sides like an invisible cage shrinking by degrees every passing moment. She felt a sudden rush of remorse then. Regret at having spoken so harshly to her beloved – or to his phantom presence, or memory, or whatever it was that had come to her in the deep watches of the night.
Rama? She asked anxiously. Are you there?
But only the darkness remained. The darkness and the silence.
She lay awake the remaining hours to dawn, till the ashram stirred and the brahmacharyas rose and the daily round of chores and duties began anew. Within the swollen mound of her belly, the twins slept as peacefully as cubs in a den.
He never came to her again, that night, or any other night.
Click here to read Excerpt#2 from SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series
Ten years have passed since Rama did the unthinkable and banished Sita. Now, she spends her days in quiet tapasya in the remote forest ashram of Maharishi Valmiki, even as her sons Luv and Kush grow ever more proficient at the arts of war. To the sorrow of many, they seem unlikely to ever cross paths with their estranged father. Yet destiny works in unexpected ways. Rama’s growing ambitions and his war-mongering advisors motivate him to launch the Ashwamedha yojana. The mightiest Ayodhyan army ever assembled follows the sacred stallion in a campaign of conquest that seems unstoppable…until a pair of improbable obstacles arise. Defying the military might of Ayodhya and the emperorship of Rama himself, two young striplings capture the Ashwamedha horse and challenge the great army. To Rama’s chagrin the challengers turn out to be none other than his own estranged offspring: the sons of Sita! Don’t miss the epic conclusion to the internationally acclaimed and bestselling Ramayana Series!
SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series
300 Pages/Limited Signed Trade Paperback Edition/Rs 400
Click here to request a copy of the AKB BOOKS Limited Signed Edition of SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series
The Penguin Books mass market edition is expected to be in bookstores in early 2011.
SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series limited paperback edition sold out on pre-orders!
The limited signed AKB Books edition of SONS OF SITA: BOOK 8 OF THE RAMAYANA SERIES, the long-awaited conclusion to my Ramayana Series, was available for pre-order only via this website. (Don’t waste your time looking for the book elsewhere online or in bookstores as the Penguin mass market edition will only be published in 2011.) The pre-orders closed early due to an unprecedented rush – over 7 times more orders were received than the number of copies being printed! Pre-orders are now officially closed. Thanks to all those who ordered. Please pay the money via cash deposit or online transfer to the ICICI A/c (no cheques please). Please note that this is a Pre-Order: SoS will be despatched via courier only after 15th February.
Excerpts and further information about the book will be added soon. International orders and the limited collector’s edition hardcover will go on sale in mid-Feb when the AKB Books edition is officially released.
A few copies of the limited edition of VoR, GoW and V:S are still available but they’re selling out fast. Visit the AKB Books Order Page.
SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis will be out next month (October). Written in a pacier style than my Ramayana Series, this short impactful book details the rise to power of the monstrous Kamsa and his brutal campaign to thwart the birth of the prophesied 8th Child. 