India Travel Fiction

Some months back Biff’s father went to India to legally open up some gold mines that had been absorbed by the India Republic. The setting for same was in exotic and mystical segments of India, with much action to be in and around the vicinity of the Himalayas. At first it was more of a sight-seeing tour than adventure with Biff accompanied by two friends from earlier times … Kamuka, met at the headwaters of the Amazon River in Brazil, and Likake (“Lee”) Mahenili of Hawaii. They headed out by sea and still had one more night to spend on shipboard as they reached Calcutta.

The Parsees are among the oldest, most secretive and most influential communities in the city: respected, envied and sometimes feared. When prominent industrialist Cyrus Zorabian is murdered on holy ground, his body dumped inside a Tower of Silence - where the Parsee dead are consumed by vultures - the police dismiss it as a random killing. But his daughter is unconvinced. Chopra, uneasy at entering this world of power and privilege, is soon plagued by doubts about the case. But murder is murder.

Molly Moon returns...and bumps into earlier versions of herself, four of them, to be exact, all kidnapped and transported back in time to nineteenth-century India by Molly's most fearsome nemesis yet, an insane maharaja. Molly foiled his plans once already, by stopping Primo Cell from becoming president of the United States. This time around, the maharaja is determined to alter the course of history. The only thing standing in his way is Molly and her brave pug, Petula.

Soon after upending her life to accompany her boyfriend, Ryan, to the Arctic, Maya realises it’s not all Northern Lights and husky sleigh rides. Instead, she’s facing sub-zero temperatures, 24-hour darkness, crippling anxiety - and a distant boyfriend as a result. In her loneliest moment, Maya opens her late mother’s recipe book and cooks Indian food for the first time. Through this, her confidence unexpectedly grows - she makes friends, secures a job as a chef and life in the Arctic no longer freezes her with fear.

Back in the mid-1980s when I was teaching in Warren College at the University of California, San Diego, we were required to use Mark Twain's famous book, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in our classes. However, we were cautioned beforehand that certain words that were in common usage in the 19th century (such as the n-word) were no longer acceptable either in speech or print today.