With the help of his friend and cousin Sukhdeo, Parsad had built a boat which the two of them went fishing in, the fish caught, either providing for the two families or bartered or sold to the villagers. Now even the fish was gone as the water level had receded. First the clear water had turned into mud and finally the mud had caked up into dry rock hard bricks.
Image credit: CC-BY-NC-SA Alex Wu
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Book 1
Chapter 1: The Ancestors
(Allapur, Bihar, Late 18th century)
Allapur, the most charming little gaon in the Gaya district of Bihar!
Chapter 6
(Sundarbans, Eastern India, 1820s)
Raju's memories of his pre-Sundarban days, was a mixture of half-remembered facts and stories told by elders which had become more real every time he heard t...
Chapter 12
(Sundarbans, Eastern India, 1835)
Unexpectedly, as they were watching the river that morning, they saw a speck on the water in the distance, and she guessed that it was Jayant's boat, and ind...
Chapter 14
(Calcutta, India, 1835)
The road from Sonarkhali across the Pargannas to Calcutta could be fraught with all sorts of danger, none of the oft-repeated assurances to the contrary that...
Chapter 16: The Startled Fawn
(Calcutta, India, 1840s)
Shanti dozed off for she did not know how long, but when she woke up, Jayant had not come back. That Jayant is so unreliable, she thought.
Book 4
Book 4 Chapter 2: Hesperus
(Calcutta, India, 1840s)
With a forced smile Raju had followed the older man. The moment the family was out of earshot, Sukhdeo was all smiles and back-slaps, and he said that the be...