Thank you for stopping by I'm delighted to be taking part in the blog tour for Karna's Wheel by Michael Tobert and sharing an extract today. First of all though let's take a look at the description for the book...
Karna’s Wheel by Michael Tobert
Paperback: 264 pages
Publisher: Top Hat Books (28 Sept. 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1785358243
ISBN-13: 978-1785358241
Secrets present.
Secrets past. Secrets in India, where Stephen’s grandfather is a lowly
functionary in the engine room of the Raj. Secrets at home, held tightly by
Stephen’s half-Indian, half-Scottish mother. Only by uncovering what has been
hidden can Stephen win Julia, a woman with secrets of her own...
Set in St Andrews, Scotland before the
millennium; among the early-Twentieth century jute mills of Dundee; in the
industrial underbelly of colonial Calcutta and on the epic plains of ancient
India, Karna’s Wheel is a poignant story about love, inheritance, and the
things which make us what we are.
'Karna's Wheel is compelling, multi-layered and
beautifully written.'
Chris Given-Wilson, shortlisted for the Wolfson
History Prize 2017
Amazon UK
Howrah
station, midmorning, a buzzing behind a blurred image, like a stir of bees. In
the blur of the hive, there is movement as of bodies crawling over bodies.
Slowly the buzz, the blur and the bodies come into focus. We hear voices
shouting, crying, arguing, and we see people swarming over a platform. A day
night train from up-country—one of many—has just pulled in. It exhales after
its journey (a pungent white-grey steamy purr of a breath) and continues to
breathe out bodies.
From
their dress, we realize that the passengers are poor. They look about in
bewilderment as if this is the first time they have seen such things as they
see now. Two people catch our interest: a mister and missus from up-country,
Sunil Kanaujia and his wife, Parvati. They are villagers like the others, good
with buffalo and at making dung cakes; yet there is something about this couple
that singles them out.
The
husband is young, dignified and tired. Around his wrist he wears the sacred
thread, the sign that his forbears, before they were tillers of the land, were
Brahmin. We notice how he carries himself: clearly a man not accustomed to
taking care where his shadow falls. Yet, it is to his wife, half in shot, that
the eye is drawn.
Parvati
is busying herself gathering up her belongings on the station platform. As she
straightens, we see she is a girl on the cusp between childhood and womanhood,
about to step over. Her face is fresh, still soft from the world of family,
fields, crops, trees, air, river and rocks that she has left behind. Her body
is lithe, almost feline, as it is for young women who have just become aware of
the power that has magically descended, the power to attract. We see her
pleasure in this, as well as her uncertainty. As she moves, she holds a hand in
front of her breast to protect it from men’s eyes. She keeps her head lowered
and attends only to the commands of her husband.
Sunil
looks around at the countless heads on the station platform rippling like the
sea, a current of humanity propelled by its own unknowable purposes. He hears
the clank of pistons, feels the iron and steel and concrete around him and is
gripped by despair.
Sunil
and Parvati push through the crowd. He has a roll of bedding balanced on his
head. In each hand, he carries a box tied with string from which pots descend.
He steps over bodies. Parvati follows. He asks directions of a stranger. Hands
point, heads shake.
Three
hours later, a durwan, the keeper of
the mill gate, is looking out from behind the smoke of a strangled bidi and
scratching his arse.
MICHAEL TOBERT went to Oxford University, started a publishing company of sorts and lives in Scotland where he and his wife have built a Montessori nursery school at the bottom of their garden. She, and others, nurture the children while he scythes the nettles and whispers encouragement to the wild flowers.
For more, please go to http://www.michaeltobertbooks.com/
Thanks for the Blog Tour support Rachel x
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