Aavarana: The Veil

by S.L. Bhyrappa

Hadis, Akbar Nama, Badshah Nama, Tughlaq Nama, Tuzhuk-e-Babri, volumes of Ijaz-e-Khusravi, Masir-e-Alamgiri

We hollered about our right to artistic freedom, but denied the same freedom to our critics. What we did was

gangsterism—we defined everything. Our idea of progress was Progress, our classification of dialectics became Logical Reasoning, our definition of economics was Economics and we had the Final Word on history because, well, because we were doing all of this in the service of history.

History is a quest for truth.

Sewell’s A Forgotten Empire stood on the topmost rack of the third bookshelf. She pulled it out.

George Michael and Philip Wagoner’s definitive Vijayanagara: Architectural Inventory of the Sacred Shrine.

She decided to revisit Motichandra and Diana Eck’s scholarly work on Varanasi. She began to think about the alternate history of Kashi.

Raand, saand…and…and….well…’