Nectar Of The Grateful Victim by Taran Dhillon.
Category: Fiction
Paperback: 220 pages
Language: English
ISBN: 1434384349

Introduction

"This is a fictionalized account of fifty years in the life of a woman I have named "Maya." Her story is by and large accurate and true, and her story is typical of many women who were born in India during the 1950s through the 1970s.

At the time of Maya’s birth, India had only been a nation herself for a decade, following her own turbulent and protracted birth. Hundreds of thousands of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs had been killed in bloody battles before and after Independence over principles, power, and territory. Mohandas (or "Mahatma") Gandhi, India’s spiritual father who had been instrumental in making the nation of India possible, and who had perhaps saved India from an all-out civil war, had been assassinated. Also, the controversial nation of Pakistan had been painfully carved out of India with the region known as West Pakistan only a short distance from the town in which Maya (and I) lived as teenagers.

But, to be honest and plainspoken (and those are very strong goals I have in presenting Maya’s story), all of this national and international turmoil leading up to and through her childhood actually seemed to have taken place around the relatively secure, insular vacuum of her own family, friends, and immediate community.

It was not that Maya lacked the proclivity to care about others beyond her district, or for the affairs of the world at large, it was more a matter of her being largely unaware of the powerful forces that shaped the world around her. It was a matter of having everything directly in front of her that her young mind needed to fully occupy it.
I believe that youngsters in almost any time, place, and circumstance have an inherent ability to get on with life to an astonishing degree. That was certainly the case for Maya from the time she was born near Bombay on the central west coast of India, through the time she subsequently came to dwell (twice) in far western India near Calcutta, and up to the time she called the northernmost reaches of India "home."

Accordingly, Maya’s story will make only occasional references to the great, then-current events of the world. This will make for a more accurate account of how she (along with so many other Indian-born women like myself) experienced life at the time, and it will also make for a more intimate story.

I trust that readers with a keen appreciation of historical context will find it easy to weave Maya’s story into the larger fabric of the times, for each of the places she encounters in the course of this story happened to have been in remarkable states of transition and/or upheaval. Many of these places and larger events are already widely known and discussed.

But now, it is time for Maya’s story itself . . ."