Dhara

Dhara: A Journey of Grief, Continuity and Inheritance looks at the hidden current that allows India to take in every poison and still remain a river. It draws on figures such as Karna with his unspoken wound, Draupadi with her unbound hair, Ashoka with his remorse, and the mothers who carry grief they never voice.

The book is not a history of kings and battles. Its subject is what the author calls the Flow Code, an old and quiet discipline of memory that turns private loss into the continuity of a whole civilisation.

The author lit his father's funeral pyre on the banks of the Uttarvahini Ganga at Sultanganj. He says that between the moment the flame caught and the moment the ashes met the northward-flowing river, the river spoke what became this book. He describes his own part as standing at the edge, listening, and trying not to get in the way.