2024 JCB Prize for Literature: Read the opening passages of the ten longlisted novels

The Distaste of the Earth, Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih

It was a bright winter morning on the eleventh moon of Naiwieng when Nongbah first noticed the strange transformation of Manik.

Nongbah was the capital of Hima Mokkhiew, the state of Mokkhiew in Ri Bhoi, one of the most powerful states in Ri Hynñiew Trep, or Khasi Land, in those days, hundreds of years before the coming of the Ahoms to Assam. It was located on a vast expanse of flat land, almost unimpeded except for low hills in the distance to the east and south, and an extensive forest in the north and north-east. The north-eastern part of the forest was sanctified as a sacred grove, and it was there that the hima’s priests performed all the religious rituals of the state. Beyond the forest to the north-west were more hills, quite thickly wooded. In the south-west were paddy fields, and beyond them was a large plateau partly covered with tall trees. The hills to the east and south did not form an extended range but rose from the plain in clusters as if someone had planted them there. And all of them were barren, except for the wooded areas between the folds. Little streams flowed towards the town in a northerly direction from these thickets.

There were no signs of fortification anywhere – only observation posts in the hills, for the town was protected by well-fortified villages in the outlying districts.

The town’s houses were mostly made of bamboo and thatch for the poor and wood and thatch for the well-to-do. Between the houses could be seen, if you stood on one of the low hills, a network of dirt lanes and by-lanes criss-crossing like the lines in a person’s palm. Two great pathways intersected the town precisely in the middle, making it appear like a carefully planned settlement. One of the pathways ran north to south, cutting through the forest; the other ran east to west. The weekly market and most of the shops were situated around the intersection – known as Sawlad, the town square and the commercial hub.

When Manik showed up, the sun was already high above the low hills on the eastern fringe. The townspeople were busy with their morning chores, making all those morning noises so common to country life everywhere, for Nongbah, like all Khasi towns in those days, was essentially an enormous village where farming and the rearing of domestic animals like chickens, pigs, goats and cattle, combined with manufacturing activities needed to support an agrarian economy or to meet the requirements of defence and trade. It was the clamour of the children that drew them away from whatever they were doing to come and stare at the spectacle Manik was making of himself.

Chronicle of an Hour and a Half, Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari

He gave me five children and then he rested, like God after Creation.

He gave me five sons even before the fifth anniversary of our marriage. He named them Ibrahim, Imran, Dulqar, Rashid and Burhan. Then he rested while I eked out a living scrubbing dishes, washing clothes, and mopping floors, tailoring churidars and salwars and blouses, dialling numbers all day at a telephone booth, rolling beedis for a local cooperative brand, sewing and stuffing mattresses and pillows with kapok fibre for the Communist Mattress Company.

All this while I wiped my children's bottoms, suckled them to ruddy health until my breasts were flat, took their clothes to the stream in the predawn dark and thrashed them clean, let out all the chickens and ducks from the coops in the morning and coaxed them back in at dusk, swept the yard strewn with teak and jackfruit and mahogany leaves, quarrelled with all the aluminium pots and pans in the kitchen, broke damp coconut husks and damp wood with machete and hatchet and pushed them into the sawdust stove and lit the fire by blowing through a pipe as long as my arm, cooked and fed the boys chickpea and yam and horse gram and beef and fish and partridge so that they grew as big as their father. All this while he lay by my side, snoring and farting, or lounged in his wicker chair reading the obituary column in the third newspaper expecting his fifth black tea before breakfast, or else followed me around the house nagging me about his piles, his chronic constipation. Sometimes I can’t believe he gave me five children, that I brought up five sons who grew just as big and useless as their father, that at forty-nine I still have to eke out a living to feed all the jobless men in the house. In this leaking house.

When they came I was alone in the house, counting the leaking holes in the roof and, believe me, there were thirty. Thirty. It’s a wonder the house has not yet collapsed. But then it’s also a wonder Nabeesu has not collapsed either, or gone mad. Even this morning I asked my husband if he had any intention of repairing the roof, or throwing a tarp over it at least. But he said nothing. He just stood there looking at me with that look he had when he had finally given up on impregnating me, realising he couldn’t do it any more.

Hurda, Atharva Pandit

Everything in front of her was blue and green, golden and bright. The air was pleasant and crisp except for the whiff of cow dung, which did not bother Anisha all that much, not as much as the cow dung itself – splattered on the road, there for the entire day until the cleaners arrived late in the evening and scooped it up. Anisha, eldest of three sisters, always wanted everything to be clean, tiptop clean. Flick a speck of dust here, clean a line of grime there. It bothered her when she couldn’t do that. When she noticed a stain, a smear, something soiled, it bothered her when she couldn’t pick it up, when she couldn’t clean it up, when she couldn’t make it look right again.

Perhaps that’s why she went away, her mother would say later, because she could feel the dirt roiling inside her house but couldn’t clean it. She could scrub the walls and scrape the floor, but how could she clean the muck that filled her with disgust but couldn’t be seen? So she went away, said her mother. She went away. And along with her went her sisters, because they couldn’t stand to live inside that shithole either.

That day, on February 14, 2013, Anisha was out and about because she was supposed to go to school; she was supposed to be in school, but she carried no school bag and she wasn’t wearing her uniform. Instead, she sported a watermelon-green top. There was a hint of a smile on her lips and her eyes sparkled with anticipation. That day, she was a happy girl, all of fourteen, wearing her favourite top. She knew it could attract attention, of course, a girl wearing anything attracts attention, but at that time of the morning, at around quarter past seven, people didn’t really care about who was wearing what, because such people – people who would have noticed – were yet to step out of their houses. Or so Anisha believed.

Of Mothers and Other Perishables, Radhika Oberoi

This is my favourite part of the house. The storeroom. It’s tiny, really; there was barely enough room for me to stand inside it when I was alive. Everything is exactly the way it was all those years ago, when the storeroom was built to accommodate all the worldly requirements of my life.

Here are the Godrej almirahs, all four of them, standing in pairs and facing each other. This one to my left has some of my sarees. The Banarasis. They no longer hang from satin hangers; they have been folded and wrapped in mul-mul, as though they were corpses of hand-woven silk and gold. Everything inside the storeroom is a corpse of some sort – here is the corpse of a winter evening, there is the corpse of a trip to Europe, everywhere there are corpses of charmed days and perfumed nights, stilled before their time.

I could wrap a Banarasi around what used to be my slender-but-pleasingly-plump-in-all-the-right-places body (my husband used to say) even now, when all that is left of me is this dismembered voice. It wouldn’t be obvious to my daughter – who has been coming into the storeroom for the nearly three decades that I have been dead, to unfold and refold the sarees in a variety of ways so that the fabric doesn’t tear – that I have draped one of my favourites around me. Maybe I’ll pick the cobalt blue katan silk with the meenakari work – I can still smell the zari on it.

Pure gold zari has the type of smell that can take you back to your own wedding, when you were beautiful, when your body was a flute, whispery with all that was yet to come. Pure gold zari has the type of smell that is part cool metal and part molten desire. It is finely woven, this zari, and it gleams with floral motifs that speak to you in slivery gold: may you bloom, may you be fertile, may your trembling thighs bring forth generations. It doesn’t tell of catheters inserted in the flute-like body and the sound of retching echoing through the house.

But I will dwell on my illness later. Or, maybe I won’t… everything will depend on how this tale unfolds.

Lorenzo Searches for the Meaning of Life, Upamanyu Chatterjee

It is the 20th of December 1980, a Saturday, and at dinner, Lorenzo Senesi, who will turn twenty-two in a little over a month, tells his mother, “Mamma, I think I just might go down to Padua with Roberto and Francesca for Christmas and the New Year. Should be back by the 3rd or 4th of January.”

Elda glances at her son but says nothing. Amedeo the father grunts once to acknowledge that the information has reached his ears. Paola, Lorenzo’s sister, older by fourteen months, asks in a tone that suggests that it wouldn't matter if he doesn't respond, “With those two? But I thought you were bored to death of them.”

The next morning, Lorenzo packs some essential things, including his copy of Carlo Carretto’s The Desert in the City, in an overnight bag, places the bag on the rear seat of his Renault 5, goes to the kennel in the corner of the garden to hug and nuzzle Vega the dog (a handsome golden-brown beast, half German Shepherd, a quarter Retriever, and in her reflective moments, there is something about her eyes that recalls the young Sylvester Stallone) and is off. Francesca and Roberto are nowhere to be seen. From Aquilinia, the dot on the outskirts of Trieste where they stay (a workers’ village, really, in an adiunct to the Aquila oil refinery is how it was conceived and inaugurated in 1938, with habitual pomp, by Mussolini), he takes La Strada Costiera, the scenic coast road, down to the plains.

It is late in the morning, and bright and sunny. On his right lie the hummocks, ridges and undulations of karst, their eroded limestone continually sneaking a peek between the trees of lime and pine at the brilliant blue, on his left, of the bay of Trieste. The landscape tumbles down in leaps and bounds to the radiant sea that stretches like blue polythene till the haze of the horizon. On some curves, he can spot the white sails of boats, as still as life, on the aquamarine lapping at the feet of Miramare Castle.

The Renault, three years old, is an acquisition that dates from his road accident and the insurance money that he reaped as one of its consequences. It moves well; he makes good time to Sistiana and thence to Monfalcone where, having left the Adriatic and reached the bland plains, he takes the A 4 west-south-west towards Milan. He is undecided – but only for a moment – between the radio and the cassette player. Radio Punto Zero on FM wins; with his arms fully stretched to grip the steering wheel, he leans back in the seat to enjoy Adriano Celentano crooning “Il Tempo Se Ne Va”.

Talashnama: A Quest, Ismail Darbesh, translated from the Bengali by V Ramaswamy

The mosque is the House of Allah. It lies at the very heart of the lives of the Muslim community. The identity, prosperity, and spread of all the Muslims in the world centre around this court of the Lord of the Universe. All their hopes and anxieties, their wants and fulfilments, joys and pains revolve around its minarets.

The currents of eternity flow with great vigour. As time goes by, more and more weeds sprout in the garden of religion. And so, many people descend to the sphere of religion in order to clear those weeds. But the weeds don't die. It's as if their seeds are to be found in every pore of society. There is still one sphere in the world now in which one can easily pass off darkness as light and light as darkness – and that is religion. The light of religion is not exactly clear, it’s incomplete and hazy. Can that light show the way? Besides, has anyone ever received absolute light? And yet, why does the earth itself carry on with half daylight and half night? Why is a side of the moon in perpetual darkness?

Religion exists. The light of religion exists. The mosque exists. The imam and the devout too exist. The azan still sounds today, calling the faithful to prayer five times a day. That melodious vocal strain comes wafting from far away. The womenfolk in Muslim neighbourhoods cover their heads with their scarves in reverence.

It was the hour for the Fajr prayer now. A time in between darkness and light. Concluding the prayer, Imam Saheb turned his head to the left and recited the salaam. Kalu Miya, one of the musulli – those who came to the mosque regularly to offer prayers – also turned his head leftwards for the concluding salaam, and observed that Haji Burhanuddin Saheb, who was the mutawalli, or the trustee, of the mosque, was sitting right next to him. As soon as the prayer ended, their eyes met. Kalu Miya smiled furtively and signalled that he had something very urgent to discuss. Haji Saheb nodded in acknowledgement. They always had something to discuss. In fact, their discussions were so important that they could get by without completing the remaining sunnat and nafl parts of the prayers at some hours of the day. That is because their discussions were religious discussions – discussions about the mosque, discussions about the errors and omissions of the Imam Saheb.

Maria, Just Maria, Sandhya Mary, translated from the Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil

You must have come across such people, those who age prematurely for no apparent reason, who wake up from a night's sleep with faces lined with a lifetime of misery. Scientists say that our dreams last only for a few seconds, but for some people, there is unspeakable trauma in their dreams, the kind of trauma they would have never experienced in their waking lives, that drives them to madness.

When I woke up, I was in a deep pond of sorrow. Why did such unbearable dreams come in search of me?

When my brain finally adjusted to reality, I was Maria. Maria who had misplaced a few years of her life. Or, as Mama would say, Maria who had wasted her life; Maria who had wasted her time… Maybe I am wasting my time, but what else can I do with it? I have nothing else to do except to let it pass, let it go to waste. Who was it, I wonder, that discovered time was a thing to be used…

Earlier, my idea about life – not that I have given it much thought – was that being alive was something super. But now, when I think about life, what comes to mind is that clichéd bit of dialogue from Hollywood films: “LIFE SUCKS”.

Human life up until the age of twenty is nothing to be taken seriously. All it amounts to is the sum total of ignorance, immaturity, stupidity, and above all else, arrogance. It doesn’t matter if it is Isaac Newton, Shakespeare or Socrates, there is no one who does not think about some idiotic thing they did before they were twenty and say “aiyye” with an embarrassed laugh. Those years, in short, are wasted. The twenties are the time for planning life and dreaming about it. In our thirties, we try to build something out of life as it unfolds. The best thing about the forties is that we come to certain realizations, and with a deep sigh we accept the most significant of them – that life is rarely as we dream of it. And along with it, we finally learn a lesson that makes living somewhat easier, that there is only this much to life. In short, the best thing about the forties is that we can apply the wisdom gained from the life lived thus far to the rest of our life, and we can spend our fifties with the help of this wisdom. The sixties bring with them various bodily ailments and their accompanying mental ailments, and by the seventies, old age sets in, heralding a time of loneliness, pain, helplessness and vulnerability, a time when even those who lived a grand life understand that their life has, in the final reckoning, amounted to nothing much. A time when we realise that we, as human beings, have lived life like a worm and will die like a worm. Even the most famous writers, scientists or politicians will find that their accomplishments are of no help. I would very much like to write a book about the old age of a political leader or a family man who has lived a completely autocratic life.

Sanatan, Sharankumar Limbale, translated from the Marathi by Paromita Sengupta

The Mahars were screaming. It was a special kind of noise – one that could only be heard on the day of Holi, the festival of howls. The children of the untouchables were howling with joy. On any other day, these screams would have been regarded as unholy, and people would have crouched in fear. But today it is a holy scream, for it is Holi today. Holi, the carnival of jubilation, of rapture. The Mahars were exulting in that rapture. They were all laughing loudly, screaming loudly.

Bhimnak Mahar was busy scattering the dry grass and useless fodder around the site of the Holi pyre. Sidnak Mahar was preparing the holy fire. Bhimnak and Sidnak – both in the prime of their youth. The best of friends. Children paid them heed; they were their heroes.

The Mahar women had started filing in with their offering plates. The elderly Mahars sat under the old tamarind tree and got busy talking to each other. “This year the Holi pyre is too high,” said Yesnak Mahar, scratching his back against the tree. He used to play the trumpet, and so people called him the Trumpet Player.

“Keep a safe distance or you might burn yourselves,” Ambarnak Mahar warned the youths lighting the pyre. His chatter continued for a while. Bhimnak and Sidnak were trying to ward off the children who came too close to the fire.

The Holi pyre was scorching, just like the relationship between the Mahars and the Brahmins. It was now blazing, raging uncontrollably. Children were having great fun in the bright light of the burning Holi. Their merriment was just like the flaming fire, which had now reached the rendi leaves. The sky was full of smoke. Women were rapt in their worship rituals, and the children screamed their hearts out.

Leaf, Water, and Flow, Avadhoot Dongare, translated from the Marathi by Nadeem Khan

There is this path in the interior of Ratnagiri. It is a dust track – red, hard earth. In the summer it gets dusty, and when the wind blows, the dust blows with the heat. No such dust during the monsoon and winter. In winter, the air is heavy; but the cold, as such, is just the Ratnagiri kind. The rains, by comparison, are something else altogether. It is cold during winter, but not all that cold. Summer is sweaty, but not really hot. But the rains clam you up proper. The water makes a tremendous sound and attacks from all directions.

There isn’t any crowd on this by-path. There is this slushy kind of lake here. You may see occasional white lotuses there. There is moss everywhere all the time. Some egrets visit that water body once in a while. There is a well there too, but it is quite lost amid all the weeds and shrubbery surrounding it. Lined with stones gone black, it's not a pretty well to look at. There doesn't seem to be much water in it either. When it rains, you can see some mysterious water deep down inside.

One side of this path has pretty dense, wild vegetation – a profuse tangle of trees. There are some teak trees, standing erect. These teaks are not bent and twisty like the coconut trees beyond. They shoot straight up. A dense litter of crisp leaves below.

One such teak leaf fell in the still, clear water of a puddle down there in that red earth. The sunlight had preceded it, but when the leaf floated in, the rays got on top of it. White leaf. Small compared to the other big leaves that had fallen around it. Its veins are quite clear, its edge is rough. The upper edge dips into the water such that it is difficult to separate the leaf from its reflection in the water. There is a muddy twig next to it. A leaf sometimes gets caught in a channel, arrested by a stone or a piece of stick, or something. But here the water was still. And since there hadn't been any rains, it lay stagnant, and now this leaf resting peacefully on its surface.

Which of those trees could this leaf have belonged to? Could it have fallen off because the tree’s need for it was over? Could the tree have caused it to fall? Why did it fall exactly where it had fallen? When would it have sprouted on the tree, and how long would it have stayed there? When did the process of dying start with this leaf? I didn't have an answer to any of these historical questions. But I saw that leaf fall on the water. That sighting was definitely something I possessed, and I don’t think I have any sense of guilt about it.

The One Legged, Sakyajit Bhattacharya, translated from the Bengali by Rituparna Mukherjee

On a particularly cool, dewy dawn, waking up in his room on the second floor, Tunu heard Biswa Mama pulling water from the well and splashing as he bathed. And accompanying that was his humming that emanated from his throat and stirred the atmosphere, slithering up the branches of the Akanda, Siris and Guava trees, slowly touching the light cover of darkness, spreading across the empty field, rushing to claim the dark forest yonder. He could sense without opening his eyes how the song snaked up the one-legged palm tree in the middle of the empty field. Lakshmi Puja happened a few days back, the air of the dying night was soaked cold. Tunu got up and opened the window, albeit with a little trepidation. His grandparents were asleep in the next room. If they heard the window creak, he would surely get an earful, for the morning chill could aggravate his tonsils. Still, Tunu licked his lips greedily, pressing his cheeks to the grill of the window. He wanted, with all his might, to knife that darkness in the desolate field. With the break of each day, he longed to catch a glimpse of that ancient dome-like structure sitting in the forest through the mist. Everything around him – the damp neem trees, the dead crow, the heavy air – sat bloated and green like stale bread. His eyesight couldn’t get past the solitary palm tree in the forest. His eyes stumbled at the faint countenance of the umbrella-like head of the tree. Earthworms crawled up to his lower abdomen. His chest turned cold, and he felt the need to pee often.