Real-life characters in situations stranger than fiction lure you into this intriguing collection of stories from a master storyteller. Here you find a young executive on an official mission to Samarkand faced with a headless apparition in the mausoleum of Timur the Lame, while supernatural retribution awaits the unfaithful businessman who deserts his loving wife to spend a weekend in a lonely holiday cottage.
The undefiled forests of Dantewada reveal secrets about mythical tribal deities to a young lady anthropologist whose colleague disappears mysteriously, ancient fairy tales about beautiful princesses and magic boxes spill onto London life, while a young boy is all set to unravel the web of cruelty and bigotry as his village splits into two camps over the murder of a local servant at the hands of his heartless landlord. And finally, join in the excitement of an entire village, who get on their bicycles to trace and capture the intended son-in-law of a local landlord whose mysterious disappearance on the eve of his wedding threatens the waste of a magnificent feast.
From a distinguished civil servant with thirty-five years' experience in the Indian government, to an author eliciting praise from the late Khushwant Singh, was an easy leap for Moosa Raza. He published his first book Of Nawabs and Nightingales in 1995, a bestseller at the time. His second book, In Search of Oneness, was inspired by his quest for the common threads between the Bhagwad Gita, the Quran and Sufism. The next was a translation of over 400 Persian Couplets of the famous Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib (translated into Urdu/Tamil), a unique contribution to mystical poetry; while his fourth, Kashmir: Land of Regrets, is a memoir of his stewardship of that state before it was reduced to a Union Territory. Moosa Raza was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2010 for his service to the nation.
This book would not have seen the light of day but for the efforts of my son Jafar, who repeatedly went through every story, especially every non-English word and the translatations. A large part of the credit goes to my editor, Veena Batra, who went through every sentence, every comma and every full stop "to give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name" (Shakespeare). My daughters Shahla, Gazala and Maliha read my writings as they came off the home printer. They made many suggestions "some helpful and some otherwise".
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