Devaki Nandan Khatri's Chandrakanta is the virtual Taj Mahal in Hindi fiction, still as much glorious and historical. As the Taj is the emblem of real love, here we have the fictional counter-part. What's more, it is the exuberance of magic and romance, imagination and fantasy, suspense after suspense, battles and wars, espionage and conspiracy, tricks and tact, all blended together to make a sensational love story. Here we have the aiyars, human beings with extraordi-nary capacity to transmogrify themselves and take on the appearance of anybody, their voice, their manners and all. Moreover, there is the Tilism, which is a hidden treasure constructed underground with ingenious safeguards and magic locks and entrances. Chandrakanta has the spell of fantasy, a detective novel, a romance per excellence. It can be regarded as the fictional mother of Harry Potter.

In the idyllic university town, young women daydreamed as they lay on the grass and gazed up at the clouds. Young men took morning walks at Alfred Park. Hot summer afternoons were for drinking sherbet and eating watermelons, and evenings were meant for reading poetry. It was also a time of stifling social mores, and love was an unattainable ideal seldom realized. Allahabad of the 1940s is the serene backdrop to the turbulence of Chander’s love for his professor’s daughter Sudha. Driven by his passionate belief in the transcending purity of their love, Chander persuades Sudha to marry another man, to devastating consequences. Unhinged by his separation from Sudha and consumed by a restless desire to make sense of love—Is it really about sex? Is the purity of love a lie?—Chander spirals into a destructive affair with the seductive Pammi. Immensely popular since its publication more half a century ago, Chander & Sudha continues to seduce readers with its potent mix of tender passion and heartbreaking tragedy.