The Burden Of Foreknowledge
Jawahara Saidullah
In 16th century India, when Nadee is swept away by the raging Yamuna, her life itself becomes a journey. A journey that takes her from her devastated village, Zammrpur, to the burning ghats of Kashi, to the courts of Agra and then on to the city of dreams, Fatehpur-Sikri. Even as her life interwines with history barriers between the future and the past, the dead and the living break down until they becomes indistinguishable. In Akbar's Hindustan, Nadee is the eternal wanderer and soothsayer. She is doomed to love Kashi's unattainable king of the dead, the Dom Raja, to serve the legendary courtesan, Chhappan Chhoori and then the almost mythical emperor, Akbar. When her new born son, the legacy of her love, disappears she slides further into madness and despair as she searches desperately for her one link to herself. Nade is blindingly aware of her destiny, though she remains powerless to change it. The Burden of Foreknowledge is story that traces an unusual life, a life that brushes against greatness but rremains inexorably trained towards its own ultimate fate. As the boundaries between reality and fantasy collide, the story reaches its climactic conclusion in the abandoned and desolate city of dreams, when Nadee finally achieves what has been predestined.
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