Book Title: The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay
Author: Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi
Publisher: HarperCollins India
Number of Pages: 496
ISBN: 978-9356998681
Date Published: Sept. 5, 2024
Price: INR 324
Book Excerpt
Chapter 27
Pg. 347 – 348
IN THE FIFTH MONTH OF HER PREGNANCY, RHEA felt strange and looked ravishing, as if something larger than her—the principle of continuity, perhaps—had taken possession of her. Walking through a lush green park in Singapore, she felt powerfully connected to the wiry arms of jacaranda trees, to the clean, crisp air, to the blue blanket of sky. Frequently tired, annoyed for no reason, she was given to incomprehensible impulses: she ate salt, cried flagrantly, scratched her arms until they were bloody. She dreamed profoundly, in troubling, precise particulars. She saw herself in a cold, barren room, redolent of a torture chamber, where she was surrounded by beings, minor deities, spirits that were mostly benevolent and unspeakably old, angels who scattered dust from their wings when no one was looking and then sighed at the mess they had made. But the most recurrent image in her dreams was of a small brown beast, hairy, with a long, restless tail and large mad eyes, hissing feverishly at her. Waking from these horrifying visions, she craved for the clarifying genius of her father’s words: If Dr Thacker had been alive, he would have cast an illuminating and deft narrative over the hazy, terrifying clutch of images that seized her mind. The sadness she had experienced at her father’s death competed with the loneliness she battled following Karan’s eviction from her life. She recognized that just as her father had lit the lamp of her imagination, she had done the same for Karan; now, remembering both men in private was a habit that made her sleepy with exhaustion.
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Excerpted with permission from The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, Published by HarperCollins India.
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