If you enjoyed Paper Names, look out for Fear and Lovely by Anjana Appachana, available now from VERVE Books!
Just as a single banyan tree in a grove of banyan trees cannot have one story, for each tree is born of the roots of another, so it was with us.
Mallika is a painfully shy young woman growing up in the heart of a lively, sometimes stifling New Delhi colony. Though she is surrounded by love, Mallika’s life is complicated by secrets that she, her mother and her aunt work hard to keep.
When she suffers a trauma aged nineteen that causes her to lose three days of her memory and slowly spiral into a deep depression, Mallika must find a way out of this abyss, back to herself and those she cares about. But she must also hide her mental illness from her community.
In a narrative that u
