‘I come from burying the dead baby
Under the Paalai Tree
All through night the tree
Cries in a thin voice’
‒ Tamilnathi



The French judge, Eve Daniel, read each line of Ms Diana’s death certificate. When he finished, he rubbed his fingers over the lion symbol embossed on the head of the certificate and, holding the document up, scrutinized it. As the judge played around with the certificate, the refugee petitioner T. Pratheeban looked on expressionlessly. After placing the paper to one side, the judge, rubbing his fat face with his fingers, began to ask Pratheeban these following questions:

‘When the bomb fell on Diana Mahendiraraja, where were you?’

‘When we heard the sound of the bombing airplanes, we woke up. There was the sound of the bombs falling on the school. Immediately, I ran out to the shelter that had been dug behind the hut under the paalai tree, and got in. All those who were sleeping in the hut also came out one after another to the dugout. The bomb hit Diana as she was running to the dugout. We couldn’t even find her body. In the half-a-well-deep hole that the bomb blast made between the dugout and the hut, the clothes Diana had been wearing were scattered like dust.’

Now the judge’s eyes had no expression as they gazed at Pratheeban. Then the thin voice of the judge spread like light into that place. ‘What is the relationship between you and the Diana who died in the bombing?’

Pratheeban looked at the translator’s face. Even as the translator began to repeat the question in Tamil, Pratheeban’s face darkened. His eyes filled the place with darkness. When his chest moved up and down and he heaved a sigh, all those seated in the inquiry hall must have heard it. With his voice trembling, Pratheeban answered the judge’s question:

‘Diana was my cousin. When we moved from the Allaipiddi Island after the mass murders there, we stayed with her family at Nallankulam.’

‘How many bombs landed that day?’

‘Three bombs came down. The first bomb fell on the village school, the second bomb fell on a housing colony about half a kilometre from there and the third bomb fell on Diana’s house.’

‘The village that is mentioned here, Nallankulam. How far is it from Killinochi town?’

‘About five kilometres’ distance.’

The judge stopped asking questions, and bent down to write something. When he looked up, the refugee petitioner T. Pratheeban’s lawyer said, ‘ My Lord, the Tamil news article about the air-raid bombing on 21 May 2007 and its French translation have been submitted to you.’

The judge nodded and placed Diana’s death certificate next to the news article and looked at them both. His fingers kept rubbing over the embossed lion symbol on the top of the death certificate. The lion symbol was the size of a one-rupee coin printed on rough paper, and the judge’s fingers slid smoothly over its edges. The judge Eve Daniel had enough experience in differentiating a forged certificate from a genuine one by rubbing the embossed symbol, and he knew that this was a genuine death certificate.

~~~


When they heard the far-off siren, the women who had been lying on their beds in the delivery ward, without any conscious thought, rolled down and hid under them. When the siren rose and fell all over them in a scream, they all howled along with it. A young woman, who had been walking up and down, unable to bear the pain of labour, held her lower stomach with her hands and ran and hid in the bathroom. The little girl Dushyanthi who had been standing near her mother’s bed, jumped onto the bed, huddled under the mosquito net covering her mother, and closed her eyes. Dushyanthi must have believed that the mosquito net would protect her from a bomb weighing 150 kilos.

The two airplanes had been hidden by the clouds in the south. But now they slid into view, simultaneously descending with a howling sound over Moolai Maternity Hospital and showering it with bombs. With a deafening noise, the hospital office and kitchens burst into pieces. The impact of the bomb made the tiles on the roof of the delivery ward fly off like paper and the ward filled up with sulphurous smoke. It was then just ninety minutes since Diana had been born. Her mother had passed out during the delivery and lay on the bed like a clay doll washed out by a flood.

A nurse placed Diana and three other infants in a wheeled cart, dragged the cart over to the lane behind the hospital, and parked it under the leafless portia tree. When she looked up, the two planes that had been whistling overhead climbed into the clouds and vanished. An innocent smile broke out on the face of the nurse. Diana too smiled to herself.

When Diana was three, on a night during the rainy season, they had to leave their village. The whole of Jaffna was walking through the Kaithady Bridge. Diana was wearing a sack over her head and was seated on her father’s shoulders. Her father’s name was Mahendiraraja. The village called him Mental Mahendram. Her father was placing one stick-like leg in front of the other and walking along. Her mother, with a bundle on her head and a bag in hand, was walking in front.

Tearing the darkness, dots of light began to fall from the sky. Search lights from the airplanes loomed over the people. Using that light, folk moved inch by inch towards Vanni. When a woman delivered a baby on the bridge or an old man or an infant died, the line of refugees came to a halt. The ones in front were unable to move. Diana’s father had to lean one foot on the other to be able to stand and wait. When her mother took a look, Diana was frozen on her father’s shoulders like a statue. They couldn’t pry her fingers away from the grip she had on her father’s hair. The child could not be shifted from the shoulders either. Her eyes were half-closed. When the father tried to sit down with Diana, the huge crowds from behind pushed him forcefully ahead. Even the heavy downpour could not wet the bridge, teeming as it was with a surge of moving bodies. All the rain did was wash away the father’s tears.

No one knew the name for Diana’s peculiar condition. She would be running around actively but when she heard a loud noise or if someone threatened her, first her ears would stop hearing, then she would split her mouth wide open and yawn a couple of times. Then her body would become still as a statue. If she had been sitting, she would be a seated statue. If she had been eating, she would stiffen up, with her fingers still inside the rice bowl. Her eyes half-open, her pupils would roll up. Sometimes, after freezing into this rigid state while still standing, she would fall flat on the ground without curling up. After three or four minutes, her eyes blinking in confusion, she would gain consciousness. She would have no memory of those minutes past.

When the war planes circled over the crowds who had gone for the Vattrapalai Amman temple festival, people had scattered and fled. When Father tried to hold on to Diana’s hand and run, Diana had opened her mouth wide and yawned. Father lifted her and ran into the temple. When the bombing plane came down, Diana, her eyes half shut, landed inside the temple. When afterwards the folk came running to see, Diana was found amidst the wreckage like a silver statue, unmoving. When she opened her eyes and blinked, she first smiled with a kind of shame. There are no lines between the feelings of shame and fear. In a moment, shame becomes fear and fear can turn into shame. Now Diana began to be scared. When fear began to pursue her, she couldn’t feel any shame.

The fear-filled Diana’s body began to bloat. Her periods began when she was ten years old. Her arms and thighs rolled with flesh on her fair-skinned body. Her cheeks and chin looked swollen. She came to be called ‘Fatty’ in the village and ‘Gundu Diana’ or ‘Plump Diana’ in school.

The doctor at the French volunteer clinic in Killinochi ran tests on Diana and said that her disease of going into a rigid state is the reason behind her extreme weight gain. The doctor told Diana’s mother that in Vanni alone there were twenty children with the same disease. When her mother showed her father the pills and told him about this, Father immediately said, ‘There are twenty fat boys and fat girls in Vanni.’ Mother smiled with difficulty.

Once, when Diana was returning from school, she saw that the Movement had bound a man to the paalai tree on the side of the main road. The man was believed to be a spy for the army. The Movement had found a grenade on him that had been given to him by the military. The grenade was now hanging around his neck. Diana moved away from the crowd around him and began to run towards her house. As she carried her fat body and ran on, panting, the grenade on the man’s chest was set off. When the sound of that blast hit Diana, she began to yawn. The yawns left her mouth, accompanied by sighs. And right on that street, one leg stretched before the other and hands gripping her books, in her white uniform, Diana stood like a statue. And so these incidents continued.

When Diana was in the eighth grade, one morning the Movement came to her school. With the girls gathered in the courtyard, the Movement leader began to speak about the necessity of the Struggle. The Movement ordered sternly that all those in the tenth standard and above must attend the first-aid training camps conducted by the Movement in the coming two weekends. The Movement announced that those who failed to come to the training camp would be forbidden from taking their final exams. When the female students were giving their names in for the training, one of the Movement boys’ gaze fell on Diana, who was standing in the eighth-grade line. Diana’s large body showed her as being older than she really was. He must have fancied himself an ace detective; he began to suspect that she was hiding amidst the eighth graders to avoid going to the training camp. When he crooked his finger and asked her to come forward, she didn’t move. The Movement boy narrowed his eyes and went up to her. Diana was frozen. When he turned back in silence, she fell over backwards, hitting the back of her head on the floor.

The next weekend, when the female students who had been taken for training by the Movement all stood gathered in the training field, the war planes neatly aimed their bombs on them. Sixty-four of the students lay shattered into flesh bits on those training grounds. Their fellow female students’ collective wails rose to the sky. When the sixty-four bodies were laid out together, Diana went with the other school students to pay her respects. She kept crying all day. When the sorrow and fear became unbearable, she wished she could simply freeze up. She sat down in a corner of the memorial hall and, her hands rigid and eyes tightly shut, she opened and closed her mouth like a fish, trying to yawn her way into rigidity.

After a few days, the Movement announced that every household needed to send a male or female to join the Movement. In the early morning hours, they shook awake the small children and took them away. Children at schools and on streets were captured and taken by the Movement. The parents went searching for their children, and waited hopelessly with no food or water on the steps of the Movement offices.

Diana feared that at any moment they might come for her too. She even thought that if she’d had a brother, younger or older, the Movement would have taken him and that she could have escaped. Now Diana cared nothing for anyone else. All she thought about was how to escape when the aerial bombing took place or shelling happened or when the Movement came to get her. Mostly she was preoccupied with how not to fall into a frozen state. She told her mother, ‘There is no point in these people taking me because I would be of no use to them. I would just fall down frozen.’ Her father, who was cutting sticks in the back, said, ‘They want a person from each household, right? If they come here, I will go with them.’ Diana wanted to laugh.

The Movement came one morning to get their neighbour Palani’s son. When they surrounded Palani’s home, his son ran to the tall paalai tree behind their hut, climbed up like a monkey and hid there. The Movement had surrounded the tree and threatened the boy to get down.

Palani had originally come from the tea plantations and settled down in Vanni. Even now his speech was an unadulterated plantation-Tamil. Diana would laugh uproariously upon hearing him use the colloquial Indian Tamil words salli for money and perumal to indicate God. He would fondly call Diana ‘Gundu baby’ while he addressed Mental Mahendram as ‘Annatchi’, a title of respect.

That day Palani begged and pleaded with the Movement calling them saami, or lord. He implored, ‘We are poverty- stricken, Saami, allow my son to go!’ One of the Movement boys responded, ‘We are asking for Tamil Eelam for the poor too,’ and, picking up a rock, threw it at the boy in the tree. The boy leapt onto another branch.

There were more stones under the tree than the branches on it. When a rock struck the boy, he screamed, ‘Father!’ And when he heard the cry, Palani’s legs sped into the hut. He returned at the same speed he went in, and there was an axe in his hand. Before the Movement boys could gather themselves, the axe fell on one of the boys’ shoulder. Immediately, the wounded Movement boy was taken away in a van. Ten minutes later, the hands of Palani and his son were bound to each other by rope and they were dragged through the streets by the Movement.

When she saw the Movement coming to Palani’s hut, Diana ran into the kitchen and hid herself in the pantry box. The box held pots and pans and rice and other stuff, and it was with great difficulty that Diana was able to fit her fat body in. After the Movement left, the father ran in and opened the pantry box. Kneeling on her hands and knees like a cow, Diana had frozen into a statue.

At the beginning of the year, before Diana entered the ninth grade, she needed new underclothes, footwear and other personal items. As Diana kept on bloating, even in those famine-stricken days, she needed new clothes every six months. Diana and her mother left for Killinochi town to purchase these items. They were travelling in a tractor that was going their way from Nallankulam, and halfway to town they could hear the sounds of bombing. As they neared the town, they encountered those returning from Killinochi, who said that because of the air-raid, everyone in town was dead. Terrified, Diana said, ‘Mother, let’s return too.’ When her mother asked the tractor driver, he loudly spat and answered, ‘They will bomb tomorrow too.’ Saying this, he drove his vehicle towards the centre of the town.

The shops were still open in the market street. Business was also halfway going on. Frightened, Diana watched as some people loaded the bloodied bodies from the sides of the street onto a vehicle. She sat in the tractor and stretched her mouth in a yawn. Her ears shut down. With her arms and legs crossed, Diana turned into a statue.

Diana told her father that they needed to make a dugout shelter in the back of their hut to hide during air raids. Her father laughed and said, ‘They won’t come into this jungle to bomb.’ In fact, it was more accurate to call Nallankulam a jungle than a village. There were eight huts around a small pond. You could count just three stone-built houses in Nallankulam. There were no structural amenities that would befit a village. Even to go to school, Diana needed to walk three kilometres. When Diana told her mother that they needed a dugout shelter, her mother replied, ‘What kind of a shameful request is that?’ Until then, no one had built a dugout shelter in Nallankulam.

But Diana was not willing to let go of her request. Round the clock, she obsessed over her terror of an air-raid. The row of the female student corpses laid out in Vallipunam was rolling through her mind’s eye all the time. She saw sixty-four Dianas, stretched out on the ground, all arranged in a row. She saw herself sprawled out on the streets of Killinochi, her stomach torn open and intestines pouring out. One night, she said to her father, ‘When the planes come to drop bombs, you and Mother would be able to run away. I would be frozen and fallen on the ground.’ The father nodded his head slowly. ‘You are a fatty. You cannot be carried to safety either,’ he said with a laugh. His laughter sounded like a hiccup.

The next morning, her father brought along ‘Muzhiyan’ Selvam. Selvam had a shovel on one shoulder and a long iron rod on the other. Father had a steel sand-carrying tray turned over on his head. Behind the hut and under the tall paalai tree, Selvam and Father began to dig a dugout shelter. Diana did not go to school that day. Excitedly she helped those digging the shelter. Her father was not physically strong enough to work continuously. Every ten minutes, he would put the shovel down and say, ‘Who is going to come all the way here to throw bombs?’ On one of those occasions, Selvam smiled with his bulging eyes and responded to Father’s moans, saying, ‘Anney, the child desires it, right?’ And he continued to work like a machine. Her mother came over and with her hand covering her mouth said, ‘The neighbours are going to laugh at this drama.’

Selvam must have been about twenty-five or twenty-six years old. He had a lean but firm, dark body. His famine-struck face had a pair of bulging eyes that looked like they might pop out at any moment. His stained large teeth stuck out of his lips. Those lips would usually have a drop of dried blood on them. When in conversation, he would tilt his head sideways. While speaking, he would hold the fingers of his right hand tightly together as if he was smearing slaked-lime paste on a betel leaf. That night, after the work was over, Diana’s father went and got some toddy, which he and Selvam, sitting in the front yard of the hut, later drank. Her father was not someone who drank often. When he did have an occasion to drink, he would ready himself as though he was going to attack a military outpost. But after drinking a half-coconut shell of toddy, he would pass out. This time, when he passed out, Selvam lifted him up, brought him into the hut and placed him on a mat. Then he drank alone in the front yard for a while, until Diana’s mother began conversing with him. Selvam spoke slowly and carefully. Every now and then, certain cultural references - proverbs, witticisms, and even the lines from the folk song ‘Kaathavarayan koothu’ - would slip off his tongue. There was a deep allure in the way Selvam would finish each sentence with a harmoniously dragged out ‘Right?’.

The work on the dugout shelter went on for three days. When she was at school, Diana kept on thinking of the hidey-hole. When school was over, she would hurry back home to watch the dugout taking shape. All the way home, her thoughts would be filled with the dugout shelter. When she got home, without even changing her school clothes, she would go and stand by the shelter. Selvam was an excellent worker. In the ‘L’-shaped six-foot-deep hole, he had built in wooden steps to climb down. On top of the shelter, he had arranged wooden sticks so tightly that even a breath of air could not pass through; over that, he had arranged rocks and filled the top with soil. Selvam had built the whole structure like an artist. That dugout was the Taj Mahal he had built for Diana.

Selvam was already married. He had married his cousin Meera. They had a three-year-old daughter too. Two years ago, on Diwali, Selvam had beaten Meera and chased her off with the baby to her mother’s house. For the last two years, Meera’s family and Selvam had been unrelenting enemies. Last year when Meera came to Selvam’s mother’s funeral, Selvam hit her in front of everyone. ‘The old woman died bemoaning the fact that a woman unsuited to family life was brought into her home as her daughter-in-law,’ Selvam kept saying as he kicked her. But Meera bore all the beating as she buried her face on the corpse’s legs and wept, repeating, ‘Aunt, aunt!’ Finally, when Selvam hefted the wooden pestle in his hand, folk sent Meera away from there. As Meera left, she was carrying the baby in one hand and beating her own stomach with the other, all the while howling loudly. Even then, not a curse came out of her mouth. After that, she never stepped on Selvam’s front yard. A few days afterwards, two of Meera’s brothers waylaid Selvam as he was coming back from digging a well in Ganapathy’s garden, and thrashed him, stamping his body with blows from an iron rod and a bicycle chain. His stomach and chest also bore deep scratches from a sharpened stick.

Now, Selvam continued to visit Diana’s house even after the work on the dugout shelter was over. When he visited, he would bring with him venison or some dried wild-animal meat as an excuse. On the evenings when he came, Diana would be seated on top of the dugout shelter, either studying or simply watching for hours the dense growth of the paalai tree that grew over it. Only after the venison had been cooked and he’d eaten would Selvam leave. Diana’s mother felt sorry for him, and said, ‘Poor fellow, living alone. He has no one to cook for him.’

As Diana went to and came from school, Selvam would follow, rolling his bicycle along behind her. When Selvam set himself out to laugh and tell a funny story, he would definitely make his listeners laugh. When Selvam wept and told a sad story, his listeners would weep too. That was the kind of charm he had. Selvam wept, telling Diana about his wife Meera. With tears in his eyes he told her that she had taken his baby away from him and that she had complained to the Movement about him and got the Movement to beat him up.

On 20 May, in the early morning before the darkness had been split, Diana ran away with Selvam. He had been waiting under the tree behind Diana’s house with a new dress in his hands. He gave that to Diana, told her to remove the dress she was wearing, leave it there, and wear the new gown and come away with him. Selvam’s principle was that Diana should not bring with her from her home even the clothes she was wearing. There was nothing to take away from Diana’s house anyway. They both held each other’s hands and walked towards Selvam’s hut. As she was walking, suddenly, turning her ears sideways, Diana stopped. Her legs started to tremble. She could hear the thin sound of an airplane in the distance. She shook off Selvam’s hand and said softly, ‘They are coming to bomb us.’ Selvam took her hand again and said, ‘That is the Movement’s plane. It is going to Iranai Madu.’ By the time Diana arrived at Selvam’s hut, the land had started to lighten.

Selvam’s wife Meera saw to it that Diana’s father and mother did not suffer trying to find out where Diana had gone. It was Meera’s voice that woke the sleeping parents from their sleep mat. She informed them through her abuse that Diana was at Selvam’s place. Unable to control her tears and anger, she screamed, ‘Did you move all the way from Jaffna to Vanni so that you could seperate me from my husband?’ Diana’s mother sat down on the floor in shock. The father, with his mouth open, kept walking round and round the screaming Meera. ‘Don’t you act like a madman,’ Meera spat at him. Even after Meera left, Diana’s father kept dragging his feet and walking around the front yard. Diana’s mother got up, came near him and said, looking at his face, ‘The fatty ran away with the bug- eyed.’ The father, with his eyes shining said calmly, ‘Now the Movement can’t take her away.’ The mother ground her teeth together. Inside her tightly closed mouth, her tongue trembled saying, ‘Madman.’

When Diana crouched inside Selvam’s hut and looked through the woven wall of dried palm leaves, she could see Meera walking towards the hut barefoot, with the baby in her arms. Hunkered down at the entrance to the hut, Selvam was also watching Meera’s approach with bloodshot eyes. As soon as she came near, Selvam leapt up like a bull and knocked her down with a shove. When Meera fell down on the hot sand, Selvam plucked the baby away from her. Meera must not have expected something like this to happen, so now, more than getting her husband back, she was more concerned with retrieving her baby. She clung on to Selvam’s feet as he walked away. She begged and cried for the baby to be given back to her. Selvam tried to retreat into his hut with the baby but Meera wouldn’t let go of his feet. Selvam lifted the baby high and called out in a loud voice, ‘Diana, Diana!’ Then Diana’s mouth opened with a deep sigh and her ears shut down.

Inexplicably, Selvam turned and walked onto the street with the baby in his arms. Meera came after him, screaming. The few people in the street tried to pacify Selvam. Seeing the village folk must have made Meera a little more courageous. She complained to them, ‘He has brought that fatty over and is chasing me away!’ and wept loudly. Hearing this, Selvam picked up a big stick lying on the street and hit Meera on the head with it. But even with all the beating, Meera refused to leave. Only after he set the baby down did Meera become calm. She lifted the baby into her arms and headed towards her mother’s house. And even then, even as she wept loudly and carried on, not a single curse came out of her mouth.

When Selvam came back into the hut, Diana was frozen in place, bent low and holding onto the woven palm leaves. After the fit had passed, Selvam laid her down on the mat and went out. He returned with a bottle of arrack, some bread and beef curry. Telling Diana to eat, Selvam sat in the front yard and began to drink. He must have expected either an unpleasant visit from Diana’s parents, who might come to take Diana back, or else a clash with Meera’s brothers, who would most likely come to attack him. Near at hand, on the ground, was a long sword that he’d had made by Ayyampillai asari from the steel chassis of a truck. Even after midnight, he remained seated in the front yard, sword in hand like an Iyyanar statue, waiting for his enemies. Or maybe he was protecting Diana.

Later, Diana woke up from deep sleep with the curious feeling that her legs had been brutally pressed down. She was covered in darkness, and was immediately aware of a smell of rotting fruit. She sat up and lit the lamp near her head. Standing erect at the head of the mat where she’d been sleeping was a sword, the tip of its blade pierced into the ground. At her feet squatted Selvam, fully naked with his reddened eyes bulging. Diana quickly blew the lamp out and lay face-down on the mat. Selvam’s strong arms turned Diana over. His hand fell on her breast, and with a feeling of terror she held it tightly against her. The odour of rotten fruit spread all over her body. Spittle began to ooze from Diana’s mouth. Her hips started to rise up without conscious thought. All her weight seemed to have moved to her ankles. When Selvam lifted one of her fat legs onto his back, Diana’s eyes started to close. Tense, she murmured in warning, ‘I am going to become frozen.’ Selvam’s sweat dripped over her. She opened her mouth wide and said, ‘I am yawning, I am going to freeze.’ Selvam’s strong hand covered her mouth and controlled the yawn. His other hand snaked down Diana’s back and covered her anus. Her mind was still. She heard Selvam draw up the sword from near her head. He was lying on the mat with one arm around Diana and the other holding the sword. Diana felt a sharp pain below her stomach. She covered her naked stomach with her hands and thought that a baby was being formed within her. Then there was the sound of airplanes flying over Nallankulam.

Diana jumped up from the mat and cupped her hands over her ears to listen. Suddenly, there was a loud noise as if the planes had struck the roofs of the huts as they flew by. Diana stood up, put on her dress and ran outside the hut to see. The roar that began from behind her went northwards and came back again over Nallankulam. As Diana watched, right in front of her eyes, one of the planes, with its red lights blinking, shot downwards towards the earth sharply and then rose up again. Immediately, a terrible blast occurred in that village. Diana didn’t think even for a second. In that deep darkness she began to run from Selvam’s front yard. She ran through the woods towards the dugout shelter in the back of her hut, under the paalai tree. Right then there was another blast, and smoke appeared in the southern part of Nallankulam. As she ran, Diana felt her ears shut down. She knew that she was going to fall down frozen. Diana then found that she couldn’t move her legs. Her eyes began to close. She knelt down under a paalai tree nearby. The roar of the planes began to get louder again. As she knelt under the paalai tree, Diana told herself that somehow she must not become rigid. She thought that somehow she needed to get herself up and run over to the dugout shelter. As her mouth split open in a yawn, Diana immediately pressed both her hands over her mouth and tried to stifle the yawn. Then the shameless Diana lifted one hand from her mouth and covered her anus with it.

~~~


After the refugee interview was over, the refugee petitioner T. Pratheeban came out and hurriedly called up a friend of his. He told his friend that his interview had gone well and that he had answered all the questions correctly and clearly. However, there was one thing that was bothering him. He stopped his narrative and asked his friend a question: ‘How far is it from Nallankulam to Killinochi town?’ That friend was from Vanni. He was able to easily calculate the distance and tell him, ‘No less than fifteen kilometres.’ Pratheeban’s heart stuttered. During the interview, he had said that the distance between Nallankulam and Killinochi town was five kilometres. He held on to the phone with one hand, and with the other smacked his forehead heavily and muttered, ‘She has destroyed me, that cursed woman.’

He had bought Diana’s death certificate from a person who sold death certificates, birth certificates and marriage certificates for the sum of thirty euros.

Excerpted with permission from The MGR Murder, Shobasakthi, translated by Anushiya Ramaswamy, Penguin Books.