Gods don’t keep property deeds
Illustration by ChatGPT A story in three parts. Part 1 Kartik Venugopal had never been particularly interested in history. He had studied it at university merely because he didn’t get admission to any other course and it was customary for all young men and some women to attend the university until they married and settled down with some job in the locality. Politics became Kartik’s profession more because he wasn’t quite qualified for any real job. At 40, Kartik was one of the promising young faces of the Rashtravadi Janata Party, RJP, which ruled India from New Delhi. Kartik’s state of Kerala had recalcitrantly remained an uncomfortable exception to RJP’s expanding political map. The party had not won a single seat in the state assembly despite the charismatic Prime Minister’s eloquent rhetoric during the campaign. “Kerala is yet to awaken to its Hindu identity,” Amit Sharma, top leader of RJP in Delhi, had said to Kartik during the campaign. “We need to work on that.” Kar...
