The ancient whore, the handmaiden of dimly remembered Hindu Kings, the Courtesan of Mughal Emperors', the 'Paris of the East', Lahore is more than the Grandeur of Mughal Forts and Gardens, Mosques and Mausoleums; the jewel colours of overlasting spring. It is also the city of poets, the city of love, longing, sin and splendour. This anthology brings together verse and prose: essays, stories, chronicles and profiles by people who have shared a ...
Set in 1938 India against the backdrop of Mahatma Gandhi’s rise to power, Water follows the life of eight-year-old Chuyia, a child-bride who is abandoned at a widow’s ashram in Benares after her fifty-year-old husband dies. There, she is expected to spend the rest of her life in penitence.Unwilling to accept her fate, Chuyia becomes a catalyst for change in the lives of the widows. When her friend, the beautiful widow–prostitute Kalyani, falls in love with ...