Kota Neelima has been a journalist for over twenty years, covering politics in New Delhi, India. She is Senior Research Fellow, South Asia Studies at The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC. Her recent academic research in India on perception seeks to develop a structure based on rural and urban voter choices. Her previous books include the bestselling Shoes of the Dead and Death of a Moneylender, among others. Also a well-known painter, Neelima's works are a part of several collections in India and abroad, including the Museum of Sacred Art, Belgium.
What happens when a journalist makes the journey from stories on the page to reality?
Living with a carefully cultivated nonchalance amidst the rough and tumble of Delhi's journalistic world, Ari occasionally grapples with a desire to do more than just flirt with ideas and flog the words. But he leads his life away from fights big and small, professional and ideological. He awaits fate, surrendering to the force of the flow of life, like a riverstone-supine in the riverbed, always facilitating persistent currents, never contesting them.
When a strange challenge thrown by his former professor and mentor hurts Ari deeply, he knows it is the pain of his futility, the knowledge of his own wasted existence. Just when the latent fear of a meaningless life threatens to convince him of its reality, he finds himself caught in a tragic situation-the violent death of a friend fighting for the cause of farmers.
As the dust settles, Ari discovers that for the first time in his life he is more than a mere spectator of events.
