Across lives, cities and continents, melancholy and its tentacles inhabit spaces that are often left unexplored. Through ten stories and ten main protagonists, this book paints a portrait of the universal emotion that strikes the deepest and lingers the longest—sorrow. A nuanced narrative of the eternal human existence, this collection embraces light, laughter, hope and that silently pulsating craving called love, delivering a communal meditation on mortal failings and human persistence. The stories traverse the length and breadth of the world picking up a train of melody from the sonorous sound of the Bosphorus to the resounding refrain of the Qawwali, from the quiet streets of Isfahan to a crowded city in Japan, from two lovers fraught with desire in Bombay to one man’s spiritual awakening in Lebanon. Each story, mired by the undercurrent of simple occurrences and profound epiphanies, also forms an unwitting part of a Sufi’s journey as he navigates the world in his mystic inquiry of the unknown.
