Slave boy and other stories

by O.N. Shrivastava, Asha Gangoli

A child from the desert lands of Rajputana reaches Calcutta. He remembers nothing of his past and has no inkling of what the future holds. A tree narrates a patch of Delhi’s history. A girl loses her innocence to a tantric. A boy finds himself about to marry a girl he never loved.
A stray dog invades and captures the heart and hearth of an unwilling ‘parent’. Wild mongooses go on a rampage in an army household. A middle aged woman hears Vedic chantings in the croaking of frogs. A crane gives birth to a child.
These and many other stories, long and short, make up the pages of this book – which is really two books. A collection of anecdotes and stories, some approximated from life, others imagined, they are the brain children of two authors: Asha Gangoli, a “retired” army wife and O.N. Shrivastava, a retired police officer and former Governor of Nagaland and Manipur. Together they conjure up a motley of many moods and backdrops, sometimes sprightly, sometimes sad. But always full of a love for life and for nature.

224 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2017