The Quarantine Paper

‘An unforgettable story… Tells us of the passions and betrayals ignored by history’6 December 1992. That first Sunday in December, while the Prime Minister of India dozed in Delhi, lesser things happened to lesser people in Bombay.Mohammad Yunus doused his clothes with kerosene and struck a match.Balkrishna More leaned out over the frenzied maha-aarti in the street below his balcony and jumped to his death.In a shuttered room in Girgaum, three old men waited for an answer.Enraptured, Radhika and Anwar were oblivious to the nasal BBC monotone on the tv screen. Who saw it first? It was there, happening right before them.A saffron ant crawled up the black dome. Then one more. Then another. Then a swarm of them. And then madness spilled every which way.In 303, Nandanvan Apartments, Ratan Oak looked out of the window and discovered he had been living in the wrong house all his life.An unforgettable story set in the turbulent years of 1992 and 1896, when the palimpsest called Bombay is overwritten with hate, and sometimes, redeemed by love, The Quarantine Papers tells of the passions and betrayals ignored by history.