A young man discovers the cruel fate of his childhood friend. Subodh stepped off the train as it stopped briefly at the small railway station that served the village of Bhimanagar. With the gathering dusk, flocks of migratory starlings streaked across the darkening sky as they made their way to a grove of trees nearby to roost.

A travel enthusiast who toured most of the Arab world in search of religious and linguistic knowledge including Gaza, Cairo, Mecca,...