The story seems to be inspired by the blasts that have taken place across the country in the last few months.
The horrendous attacks on the Taj stirred something within me, though the genesis of the idea took place after the blasts in Delhi and Bangalore. Over those days of the Taj attacks, I, like many other fellow Indians, was glued to the TV set, oscillating between feelings of anger, frustration and utter disgust. It had an impact on me like it did on many others. But the question was: how lasting is the impact? We made promises and pledges but in the end, how many people came out to vote during the elections? Life is returning to normalcy for us, but will it ever be the same for those who were directly affected? The book is a story of common people like you and me, people who have aspirations, fall in love and
who also hate and fight. The
only difference is that they
were not ready to lead their lives in a form dictated by the

whims and fancies of a few wavered minds. They wanted to make a difference. What unfolds thereafter is a fast-paced saga of love, loss, betrayal and terror.

What prompted you to move away from the self-help genre?
The audience for the self-help genre is very limited. There is still a bias against Indian authors when it comes to this genre. Fiction is something that I always wanted to dabble in and the book comes as a result of that.

What kind of a change are you expecting through your book?
You can’t expect a change to take place overnight. Initially, if people who pick up this book, start making even simple
amendments in their daily lives, like exercising their right to vote and taking a note of their duties along with their rights, then
the purpose would be served.

Most journalists, more so a white woman, would not like to travel to the
most dangerous places in the world to bring us the story of a river (the book’s
subtitle), but Alice is of a different mettle as she travels from the Indus Delta in
Pakistan to the source of the river in Tibet. She explores remote areas, visiting
the 18th century tombs with frescoes of folk heroine Sohni in Sindh, the prehistoric rock art in Ladakh, Kashgar and Gilgit, the sites of the Mohenjodaro civilization, follows Alexander the Great's footsteps across the mountains from Afghanistan to chronicle the history of Indus and its people. She tracks the sheedis of the African origin who were bought as slaves in the 18th century by the Sindh rulers. Alice feels that the compulsions of the subcontinent’s geopolitics, economic expansion and resultant damming of Indus at several places have been eating away the river’s rich ecology and in the long run are likely to damn those who have lived on its shores for generations and contributed to the river’s story.

Hiren Kumar Bose

At World’s end

The Hotel at
the End of the
World
Parismita Singh,
Penguin, Rs 350

If you thought graphic novels were comic books for adults with attention deficit disorder, think again. Here is a deliciously complex tale drawing upon
little known folklore traditions of the North-East, interwoven with World War II history, war comics, Buddhist art and more. In this magical real world, anything can happen over a plate of steaming rice and chilli, lai saak and half a small pig. High up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere, the hotel at the end of the world has few customers. Strangers Kona and Kuja arrive to exchange stories with the hotel’s regulars. Legless Kuja, carried around by Kona, who can see only the distance, chance upon clues to the magical Floating Island. Pema, the mistress of the hotel, tells a tale of terrifying night walkers and lost love, while her husband speaks of stranded Japanese soldiers dying in a snowstorm with memories of home. The blind Prophet returns to the quest for the Floating Island, the promised land of plenty. The boundary between the real and imagined merges to reveal endless possibilities.

Monideepa Sahu