The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey: a Novel

Rupi birthed her eldest son squatting in the middle of a paddy field, shin-deep in mud and slush. Soon after, Gurubari, her rival inove, gave her an illness that wasike the alakjari vine which engulfs the tallest, greenest trees of the forest and sucks their hearts out. Now Rupi, once the strongest woman in her village,ives out her days on a cot in the backyard, and herife dissolves into incomprehensible ruin around her. The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey is the story of the Baskeys the patriarch Somai; his alcoholic, irrepressible daughter Putki; Khorda, Putki s devout, upright husband, and their sons Sido and Doso; and Sido s wife Rupi. Equally, the novel is about Kadamdihi, the Santhal village in Jharkhand in which the Baskeysive. For it is in full view of the village that the variousarge and small dramas of the Baskeys sives play out, even as the village cheers them on, finds fault with them, prays for them and, most of all, enjoys the spectacle they provide. An astonishingly assured and original debut, The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey brings to vividife a village, its people, and the gods good and bad who influence them. Through their intersectingives, it explores the age-old notions of good and evil and the murky ways in which the heart and the mind work.