My roads led to India…

Tags

adoption, Adventure, healing, India, New novel

My latest novel, published by Pocol Press, debuts next month. The Hand of Ganesh will be available through the publisher, ordering from your favorite bookstore, and on Amazon. It seems that elephant god Ganesh helped me overcome obstacles as I sought to tell this story, one of adoption, travel, and women’s friendship. Turn back the clock: As I was growing up, my father filled my imagination with visions of India. Richard Beard was a veteran of WWII who’d been stationed in Calcutta as a clinical psychologist for the Army Airforce. After he passed away, I compiled his wartime letters into a book titled From Calcutta with Love – The WWII Letters of Richard and Reva Beard. (Texas Tech University Press, 2002). All my life, I’d wanted to write fiction, and with the publication of Beast of Bengal (Pocol Press, 2005), that dream became a reality. Beast of Bengal is a suspenseful tale set in the China-Burma-India theater of WWII. After visiting Southern India in 2013, I had another story to tell. I recruited Clara Jordan, the somewhat autobiographical heroine of All the Wrong Places (Pocol Press, 2017) to join a new character, Arundati Benet, and took both women to Tamil Nadu and Mahabalipuram, an ancient temple complex. My newest novel spans generations and tells of friendship and bonding. It also presents a rich tapestry of India, as seen through American eyes.

Ganesh is the said to swallow the sorrows of the Universe and protect the world.

Here’s a summary of The Hand of Ganesh:

A young girl, barely alive, washes up on a beach near the Indian ruins of Mahabalipuram. Thus begins a journey of discovery for Richard and Rita Benet accompanied by an artifact of the elephant God Ganesh. Equal parts self-actualization, travelogue, and mystery/adventure story, The Hand of Ganesh dives deep into several American protagonists’ curiosities about India. As the multi-generational story progresses, two young women remain obsessed with finding their birthmothers; one from Santa Fe, New Mexico and the other born in India itself. The pair are compelled to travel to the Subcontinent. Amidst the backdrop of the world’s largest gathering of humanity, the Kumbha Mela, Clara and Arundati embrace their moment and decide together how to process their respective beginnings.

As publication draws nearer, stay tuned for updates. The Hand of Ganesh can be pre-ordered by going to http://www.pocolpress.com.

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My Writing Life ~ From Fact to Fiction

Tags

adoptee, adoption, diary-writing, Fiction, India, Native American, nonfiction, reunions, Searching, Southwest, suspense, writing

You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are. – Joss Whedon

It’s hell writing and it’s hell not writing. The only tolerable state is just having written.
Robert Hass

*******************************************************************************************

I’ve enjoyed a lifetime of reading novels, and for the past decade, I’ve devoted my energy to writing them. A shift of focus, closer to my heart. Previously, my writing life had been devoted to nonfiction. As a young child, I recorded the events of each day in a diary (a habit that I’ve continued to this day!) For a decade, I made my living as a technical writer in the Information Services division of Los Alamos Laboratory. In the early 1980s, my love of hiking, running and bicycling resulted in the guidebook Santa Fe on Foot-Exploring the City Different. The fourth edition was published last year by Ocean Tree Books.
In 1991, another nonfiction book followed: The Santa Fe Trail by Bicycle, an account of my 1,000-mile bicycle journey from Santa Fe to New Franklin, Missouri. Fifteen of us cycled from Santa Fe to New Franklin, Missouri. We biked from dawn until afternoon, camping every night. My book began as newspaper articles. After each day of bicycling, I’d handwrite an account and fax it to The Albuquerque Journal. The quest for a fax machine took me to some unusual places. I’d bike around whatever town we’d camped near looking for a business that had a fax machine I could pay to use. The most offbeat fax machine location was an undertaker’s showroom, the friendliest was a bookstore.
Other nonfiction books came, one after another. From Calcutta with Love-The WWII Letters of Richard and Reva Beard; The Goodbye Baby-Adoptee Diaries. My true love, from adolescence forward, was fiction. At long last, I’m realizing that dream.
I began the journey into the world of fiction-writing with a WWII suspense novel Beast of Bengal. It was inspired by a comment my brother John made about our father Richard. After Daddy died, I asked John to send me all the letters from WWII that my parents exchanged. “He didn’t DO anything,” John grumpily replied. “Nobody will be interested in these letters.” My brother was dead wrong. People were very interested in the archived letters, and From Calcutta with Love sold out. Texas Tech University Press, the publisher, returned full rights to me, and the book is currently being considered for re-publication by Pajarito Press.
In 2017,Pocol Press published my second novel All the Wrong Places, a page-turner set in a fictitious Native American school. Teacher Clara Jordan has to run for her life when her duplicitous lover Henry DiMarco realizes she is aware of his criminal activities. Moreover, she must draw upon inner strength to help her students survive the ragged remains of the school year.
One book just leads to another. Clara Jordan, my heroine, has more to tell. In All the Wrong Places, she lost her best friend, broke up with a bad boyfriend, and learned that the birthmother she’d been seeking died in an accident.

In  Hand of Ganesh, my girl moves from Red Mesa, New Mexico to Santa Fe. She meets Arundhati “Dottie” Bennett, a fellow adoptee, and they become close friends. Clara decides to help Dottie search for her origins. To do the necessary sleuthing, the two women must travel to Southern India. A daunting challenge, but as I left Clara and Dot, they were plotting and scheming for a way. What happens next? Though I have a general idea, I’m waiting for my characters to guide me. Throughout the day, I write down ideas that pop up while I’m in the dentist’s chair, in the middle of a hike, in the shower – or sometimes when I’m officially “writing.” My job is to collect the ideas and show up at the computer every day. This showing up feels like what I should be doing. Writing fiction is what I’ve been working toward for decades. In answer to the question posed by poet Mary Oliver
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
My answer is to listen to my characters and do their bidding.

*************************************************

Join adoptee Elaine Pinkerton on monthly Mondays for reflections on adoption and the writing life. Please email elaine.coleman2013@gmail.com if you’d like to propose a guest blog. Comments are welcome!

Author, Elaine Pinkerton, traveled to India to research her latest novel Hand of Ganesh

My Writing Life ~ From Fact to Fiction

Tags

adoptee, adoption, diary-writing, Fiction, India, Native American, nonfiction, reunions, Searching, Southwest, suspense, writing

You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are. – Joss Whedon

It’s hell writing and it’s hell not writing. The only tolerable state is just having written.
Robert Hass

*******************************************************************************************

I’ve enjoyed a lifetime of reading novels, and for the past decade, I’ve devoted my energy to writing them. A shift of focus, closer to my heart. Previously, my writing life had been devoted to nonfiction. As a young child, I recorded the events of each day in a diary (a habit that I’ve continued to this day!) For a decade, I made my living as a technical writer in the Information Services division of Los Alamos Laboratory. In the early 1980s, my love of hiking, running and bicycling resulted in the guidebook Santa Fe on Foot-Exploring the City Different. The fourth edition was published last year by Ocean Tree Books.
In 1991, another nonfiction book followed: The Santa Fe Trail by Bicycle, an account of my 1,000-mile bicycle journey from Santa Fe to New Franklin, Missouri. Fifteen of us cycled from Santa Fe to New Franklin, Missouri. We biked from dawn until afternoon, camping every night. My book began as newspaper articles. After each day of bicycling, I’d handwrite an account and fax it to The Albuquerque Journal. The quest for a fax machine took me to some unusual places. I’d bike around whatever town we’d camped near looking for a business that had a fax machine I could pay to use. The most offbeat fax machine location was an undertaker’s showroom, the friendliest was a bookstore.
Other nonfiction books came, one after another. From Calcutta with Love-The WWII Letters of Richard and Reva Beard; The Goodbye Baby-Adoptee Diaries. My true love, from adolescence forward, was fiction. At long last, I’m realizing that dream.
I began the journey into the world of fiction-writing with a WWII suspense novel Beast of Bengal. It was inspired by a comment my brother John made about our father Richard. After Daddy died, I asked John to send me all the letters from WWII that my parents exchanged. “He didn’t DO anything,” John grumpily replied. “Nobody will be interested in these letters.” My brother was dead wrong. People were very interested in the archived letters, and From Calcutta with Love sold out. Texas Tech University Press, the publisher, returned full rights to me, and the book is currently being considered for re-publication by Pajarito Press.
In 2017,Pocol Press published my second novel All the Wrong Places, a page-turner set in a fictitious Native American school. Teacher Clara Jordan has to run for her life when her duplicitous lover Henry DiMarco realizes she is aware of his criminal activities. Moreover, she must draw upon inner strength to help her students survive the ragged remains of the school year.
One book just leads to another. Clara Jordan, my heroine, has more to tell. In All the Wrong Places, she lost her best friend, broke up with a bad boyfriend, and learned that the birthmother she’d been seeking died in an accident.

In  Hand of Ganesh, my girl moves from Red Mesa, New Mexico to Santa Fe. She meets Arundhati “Dottie” Bennett, a fellow adoptee, and they become close friends. Clara decides to help Dottie search for her origins. To do the necessary sleuthing, the two women must travel to Southern India. A daunting challenge, but as I left Clara and Dot, they were plotting and scheming for a way. What happens next? Though I have a general idea, I’m waiting for my characters to guide me. Throughout the day, I write down ideas that pop up while I’m in the dentist’s chair, in the middle of a hike, in the shower – or sometimes when I’m officially “writing.” My job is to collect the ideas and show up at the computer every day. This showing up feels like what I should be doing. Writing fiction is what I’ve been working toward for decades. In answer to the question posed by poet Mary Oliver
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
My answer is to listen to my characters and do their bidding.

*************************************************

Join adoptee Elaine Pinkerton on monthly Mondays for reflections on adoption and the writing life. Please email elaine.coleman2013@gmail.com if you’d like to propose a guest blog. Comments are welcome!

Author, Elaine Pinkerton, traveled to India to research her latest novel Hand of Ganesh

Clara and Dottie go to India

Tags

adoptees, birthparents, Fiction, India, Khumba Mela, roots, Searching

Returning to Fiction

Today, going from the nonfiction world (writing about adoption) to fiction (still writing about adoption), I’m presenting scenes from my longtime novel-in-progress, Clara and the Hand of Ganesha. For months, the book gathered metaphorical dust. A new year, a fresh start, or rather a re-start. The central themes of adoption and the search for authenticity are propelling the book forward. This is just a preview and may not be exactly what ends up in my novel.

Here’s a brief summary: The two central characters are both adult adoptees. Clara Jordan, part Native American, loves her adoptive parents, but feels driven to find out about her origins. Arundati Ragan, known to her friends as “Dottie,” lost her adoptive parents in the Mumbai massacre of 2008. She now longs to go to India to search for her birthparents. Like Clara, she is challenged by the mystery surrounding her origins. When the two adoptees’ paths cross, they become friends and decide to travel together to India.

Scene One:

Arundhati Benet was pushed open the library’s heavy doors. Dot Benet, as she was

Searching for clues

known to her friends, shouldered in a briefcase heavy with articles from magazines, books, handwritten notes. She also lugged a carrying case with a new MacBook Thin and charging device. She headed toward the nearest carrel. Dottie Benet was not her original name. Born Arundhati Rangan, she was one of two adult adoptees in the library that day..

Scene Two:

“May I help you find anything?” The reference librarian’s question pierced through Clara’s reverie.

The University of Virginia Library’s deep silence so engulfed her, she thought rather than voiced her first response. Well yes, my roots, my origins, where I’m from. I doubt that you could help me with that.

The middle-aged gray haired, bespeckled woman stood impatiently, hovering over Clara’s table, awaiting an answer.

Finally Clara answered, “I’m doing some genealogy research. Just browsing…actually, looking for ideas.”

“There are some websites I can direct you to.” When Clara didn’t answer, the librarian continued. “If you’ll tell me more about your search, maybe there are materials right here in the library that you could begin with.”

This woman looked trustworthy. Why not tell all? She was getting nowhere on her own, and the longer she waited, the less likely that she’d discover the truth.

Clara, who usually didn’t confide in anyone – much less total strangers – decided to open up.

Author’s Note: Stay tuned for monthly installments. If you’ve read ALL THE WRONG PLACES (available from Pocol Press or Amazon), you’ll notice that my protagonist is named “Clara,” just like the heroine of my last novel. Not an accident! This new work-in-progress is a sequel.

Join Elaine on alternate Mondays.

ADOPTING FICTION~Characters in Search of a Plot

Tags

adoptee, Adoptee Recovery, Characters, Deadline, Fiction, India, Interviewing, New Mexico, novel, writing

January is a great month for new beginnings.

As an author and adoptee, I find myself forever involved in a personal makeover. Maybe it’s the extreme sort of freedom granted by having more than one family tree – the parents to which one is born and the adoptive parents who raised one. Whatever the case, I find myself often embarking on new ventures. This became crystal clear during the creation of my memoir The Goodbye Baby~Adoptee Diaries. During the 50s,60s and 70s, I sought to be the kind of daughter my parents wished they had, never meeting my own impossible standards. Harvesting my journals for that book was a route to being at peace with having been adopted. It freed me to write other books.

Searching for characters took me to Mahabalipuram, India

Always a new avenue… However, the constant thread has been and will always be writing.  After the debut of my guidebook Santa Fe On Foot-Exploring the City Different, I suffered from post-publication letdown  This reaction is not uncommon. With writers I know, the joy of completing a book brings with it a dreary vacuum, an emptiness. The only solution is to begin another book.
Good news: I have a novel coming out this April, All the Wrong Places. It’s being issued by Pocol Press, an independent publisher located in Clifton, Virginia. Here’s the plot…
Adoptee Clara moves from the east coast to Red Mesa, New Mexico, and begins a teaching year at the American Indian Academy. Shortly after the start of a new semester, headmaster Joseph Speckled Rock is found dead on Clara’s classroom floor. Both teacher and students are shocked.
    Clara deals with her students’ grief and her own frustration by daily running in the rough hills surrounding the academy. Carnell Dorame, a talented student and Clara’s favorite, uses the Internet to trace the identity of her birthmother. The school’s computer teacher Henry DiMarco invites Clara out for a date and they end up becoming lovers. Henry, however, is not what he seems. His real business is smuggling pottery, an enterprise that is tied in with the death of Speckled Rock.
    When Clara begins to suspect Henry’s dual nature, he decides that she is in the way and breaks up with her. She runs to a remote arroyo and underground cave studying petroglyphs that might lead to her birthmother’s identity. But it seems she is not alone…
Will adoptee Clara Jordan be able learn about her family tree? I can tell you this much: Clara does learn about her birthmother, but it is not a good reunion. She’s left with more questions than answers.

In Hindu tradition, Ganesha is a god of wisdom and success

I’m now at work on a second novel in the Clara Jordan series, The Hand of Ganesha. My heroine Clara moves to Santa Fe, New Mexico, still questing. There she befriends Arundhati Benet, another adoptee. The two discuss traveling to India to trace Dottie’s ancestry. Their friend Sanjay Roy invites them to go with him to Chennai, Tamil Nadu, where he has relatives. The two women end up being separated from Sanjay. They find themselves at a Kumba Mela festival and either find a clue as to Dottie’s real origins – or not. I’m “interviewing” Clara and Dottie. Daily “free writing” has yielded character revelation and background.r than imposing a plot, I listen to what they have to say about what happens.

Does the interview method work? Time will tell. I’ve given myself until Valentine’s Day to decide on a plot. After that I’ll begin the “real writing.” I’ll be armed with a plot, but that will be subject to change. The characters will have the final word.

********************************************************************

Join author Elaine Pinkerton on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption, writing, hiking and living in the Southwest. Stay tuned for news on All the Wrong Places, and check out http://www.santafeonfoot.com. Your comments are invited!

Adopting the airwaves–>I’m on the radio today!

Tags

adoption, Dealing with Adoption, India, Novel-in-progress, The Writing Life, Walking

At 4 p.m. Mountain Time, 101.1 F.M. KSFR–Wednesday afternoon I’ll be talking about my six published books with show host Abigail Adler. Please tune in!

The Last Word

Wednesdays at 4:00 pm

• Hosted by Abigail Adler

• 

For people who read, for people who write, for people who want to publish, or for people who are just curious…What do writers think? What do writers really do?  Find out – listen to THE LAST WORD: Conversations with Writers every Wednesday at 4 pm with host, Abigail Adler

 

From India with Love

Tags

adoptee, adoptive parents, army life, blended families, CBI Theater, clinical psychologist, Ganesha, India, long-distance romance, WWII

Was it the exotic nature of India that resulted in my adoption?

Note: In America, the 1940s were a peak time for adoption. Like other “Goodbye Babies,” I was a product of WWII. My army officer Dad, as relief from a seemingly endless assignment as clinical psychologist, wrote to my mother every night. I am convinced that it was their long-distance romance that strengthened my parents’ determination to create a family. At age five, after the war ended, my brother and I were adopted…

Ganesh, overcomer of obstacles, may have inspired my dad during his 18 months in Calcutta

India

February 18, 1945
Dearest Ritter: Everyone is so despondent tonight that it is very pitiful to behold. Groups meeting in
disconsolate clusters, dissatisfied expressions, and various mutterings occasion concern on all sides. The reason? Well, it is Sunday evening and there is no movie! Someone slipped somewhere and we are left to our devices — and very poor devices they are.
Tonight I joined one of the poker playing groups and played for a couple of hours, but grew bored after awhile — I did win ten rupees! despite poor hands. (But then, I always get poor hands!)
So when old Sturke came wandering along looking like the wrath of God incarnate, I joined him and returned to the basha. There I found Frank and John comfortably ensconced under the light. Our generators are working again, but asthmatic coughs indicate that all is not well.
It is difficult to know when one is well off, but at the moment I am very dissatisfied with my position. Of course, I have had a nice vacation, but it is hard to work at 20% of your potentialities all the time. Then there is the question of toadying to officers with a fourth of your (my) background, education, and ability. There is hardly an officer in the place, outside of their technical training, who comes within a mile of me in ability to organize, analyze, and explain. As I say, it is a little difficult to remember, month after month, that the U.S. government has seen fit to utilize a highly trained man as they have me — and reward him proportionately. If our country and homes were in desperate straits, and I had a rifle in my hands, and grenades in my pocket, and were battling to save my home and your honor and safety, it would be a different matter, indeed. But when the need is so great for trained educators and men who can speak a piece well and convincingly, and the government sees fit to throw all that away — then indeed, I question the wisdom and fruitfulness of the policy.
Now that I have that hot chestnut off my hands — let me hasten to add that I know you are aware of the folly of the whole business and that you agree. It just does me good to let off a little steam to you occasionally. If I don’t you will question whether my personality has not changed and I assure you, it hasn’t.
It has been cloudy today, and is definitely warmer out. Even at 10:00 o’clock in the evening it is still too warm for my sweater! More rain, I suspect.
My sweetest gal — how pleasant it is to dream of you and your treasures.

Ever in love,

Dick

An Adoptee in India, part 3

Tags

adoptee, Bollywood, Chennai, Hinduism, India, Novel-in-progress, St. Thomas, Tamil Nadu

Author’s Note: I grew up hearing about India from my adoptive Dad, who served at a military hospital during WWII. I’ve written one novel, Beast of Bengal, set in the northern part of the Subcontinent. My sequel, Arundati, starts in southern India, Mahabalipuram. This continuing “travel blog” covers highlights of my recent sojourn. India is like no other place in the world, and the places I visited transformed the plot of my novel. My heroine, Arundati, was literally “reborn.”

Saturday, 12/14
We met with  our guide, Charles, for breakfast, and by 8 were on the road. A tour of

Ceremonial dance paying homage to Lord Shiva

Chennai and cultural immersion in the ongoing travelogue by our leader. Tamil, explained Charles, is the land of the Tamils. Chennai is the Bollywood of India and at 9 million (counting the greater area) is the 4th largest city in the Subcontinent. Brits established the city, then called Madras, in 1639. Before the Brits, however, Scots arrived in 1524. In 1995, the name was changed to Chennai. It comprises 500 square miles.

Religion: 20% Christian, 15% Muslim, a sprinkling of Jews, Sikhs and Buddhists. The diversity of India theme continues to be a major thread of Charles’s explication. There are more than 1,600 dialects, 22 languages. Charles said more than once that Chennai has an 80 % literacy level.
In addition to the movie industry, Tamil Nadu is location of Bangalore – India’s Silicon Valley.

We passed the train station, a massive Victorian-style building and learned that there are 15 million train commuters. Also passed Fort St. George and the Anglican Church of South India, the University of Madras. A brief visit to an Armenian Church built in 1712, a white-washed complex of church and other buildings, crypts, gardens and dismal accumulations of bricks and rubble from ongoing efforts to restore and maintain the buildings. So moist on the brick walks, covered with a sheen of green mold, that walking was a bit slippery. The smell of mold filled the air!

After lunch, on to St. Thomas Cathedral, where the saint is buried. He came to

Santhome Church, where St. Thomas was buried

Kerala in 52 A.D., preached the Gospel to fishermen. In 1984, the cathedral became a basilica. Rumbling along, we crossed the Adayar River to the “other” Chennai. Pitiful slums, full of garbage and miserable, mud surrounded dwellings. Lots of mutts (they all seem to be the same brown smallish dog): they’re ubiquitous, tiny children, always people cooking. It seems the women are working extremely hard.
Charles and James continued their overview of India briefings.
The Hindu Trinity: Brahma the creator, Vishnu the protector (10 incarnations), Shiva the destroyer (married to Parvati). Ganesh is the son of Shiva and remover of obstacles. Main texts of Hinduism:  Vedas (which include the Upanishads) and the two epics (Mahabarata and Ramayana). Kolon are the designs outside entrances- sometimes white, other times in vivid colors. Karma: the law of cause and effect. Each action, it is believed, has a reaction.

I was amazed at the diversity of India’s religions!

ARUNDATI – novel in progress (continued)

Tags

artifacts, Ganesha, India, suspense

Hindu God Ganesha

Mahabalipuram, India
December 26, 1798

British traveler Jonathan Dinegar Goldingham strolled along the beach south of Chennai, where he was spending part of his winter holiday. His cousin, Elizabeth, a descendant of George Earl of Cumberland, had invited him to Calcutta, from whence Jonathan would travel to outlying areas as much as time allowed.
He’d found the India of his dreams.   Dinegar, as he was known, was happy to breathe in the cold, salty air of the sea pounding southern India. Mahabalipuram was indeed a fortuitous discovery, one of those gifts of travel that occurred to those with the money and leisure time for indulging the spirit of Wanderlust.
As he walked, he pondered the ancient civilization that was said to have existed here five thousand years earlier. Strains of the Bagavad Gita came to Dinegar, and he recited aloud,
He who neither likes nor dislikes, neither bemoans nor desires, who has renounced both the auspicious and inauspicious and who is full of devotion to me – he is dear to ME.
In his travelogue entry, he would write about the lost city under the sea, an Atlantis of Asia , the splendor of which surpassed mankind’s wildest dreams. After all, Mahabalipuram’s beauty was allegedly so great that the jealous gods wreaked punishment. In a colossal storm, they covered Mahabalipuram with water to keep it forever hidden from man’s admiration.
Children’s voices interrupted Dinegar’s private musings. Native urchins scampered along the shore looking for God only knew what. Tiny, skinny little boys — were there no girls in this village? — wearing only their dark brown skin or perhaps a filthy loincloth.
They were the perennial small boys to be found in impoverished countries anywhere in the world. Young as they were, they knew that a foreign visitor might mean money.
With the innate cleverness of survivors, the children sized up this white man.
Far taller than any  men they had seen in their native village. Skin a strange white, hair a shade not to be seen on any head in Chennai — blond — the visitor wore a white linen suit, a vest and pocket watch. He walked, stiff and upright, with a cane.
Rani, the tallest of the urchins and the best dressed, if loincloths could be considered dress at all, greeting Dinegar in an alien tongue. He held his hands in the universal greeting of “Namaste.” When Rani smiled, his face was quite handsome. What might this child want of him? What might he be offering?
The child thrust his hand into a black pouch hanging from his waist. He held out a gray piece of something to the British traveler. Was it a pebble?A shell?
Dinegar took the tiny stone fragment from Rani. “Ah, I see you have a relic, my boy.” The item was a hand attached to a severed wrist. It was pocked by erosion. Dinegar thought immediately that it must have come from the lost city of Mahabalipuram.  He was immediately interested. Apparently it had been presented by the sea at high tide. This enterprising little fellow was harvesting the ocean’s gifts to sell them.
Sensing the interest of his prospective customer, Rani began speaking English with astonishing proficiency. “Sahib, this is the hand of Ganesha, the son of Shiva. It is I am certain from the ruins beneath the sea.”
“Yes,” said Dinegar. “I know of the lost city of Mahabalipuram. It is in fact what brought me to your part of the world. That and the poetry of Coleridge.”
Rani waved the hand in front of Dinegar, holding it between his thumb and index finger. “Sahib, the hand of Ganesha is good luck. Is rare and valuable. You will not find another. Most of the relics from Mahabalipuram are in museums.”
“But I cannot take it if it belongs to India,” said Dinegar. It must be turned in to the authorities.”
“No, no. I am allowed to keep what I find. Name your price and it is yours.”
“Well, I don’t know…” began Dinegar.
Rani pressed the small object into Dinegar’s large palm. “Buy?” he pleaded.
It was such a small thing. Surely no one would miss it. With all the statuary allegedly buried under the sea, this was no more important than a grain of sand. After all, mused the professor, he could add it to his travel collection of shells, stones and mysterious objects from around the world. He relented.
“Only English money,” Dinegar said. “No rupees.”
“No problem, English money. Please, Sahib, buy,” Rani tapped his mouth and then patted his stomach, which looked as though it hadn’t been filled for a very long time.  This foreigner could not miss the message. Rani would do whatever it took to make his sale.    Dinegar took a shilling from his pocket and handed it to the boy.
“Good?” he inquired.
The answering smile of the boy made him think that he’d paid to much. No matter; the child had to be commended for his business sense.
“Good,” said Rani. “Brings luck. Luck good.
“Ah, I understand. This hand of Ganesha may change my fate for the better. Well I need that.” By now, Dinegar was surrounded by young boys, all of whom held bits and pieces of stone or brass, all of whom wanted a sale.
“No, money finished. Done. No.”
The small mob engulfed him, and Dinegar was forced to use his cane as a prod to make his way through the throng. He walked very briskly away from the shore, encouraged by the fact that a strolling couple, other British tourists, were nearing them. He hoped they would serve as a distraction while he made his escape.