{"id":224,"date":"2011-10-26T15:38:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-26T15:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/booksyalove.com\/?p=224"},"modified":"2021-03-19T15:37:11","modified_gmt":"2021-03-19T20:37:11","slug":"karma-by-cathy-ostlere-fiction-lost-in-her-parents-india-during-civil-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/?p=224","title":{"rendered":"Karma, by Cathy Ostlere (fiction) – lost in her parents’ India during civil war"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n

World Wednesday takes us from the prairies of Canada<\/a> to the crowded streets of India<\/a> as Maya travels to her parents’ homeland on a grief-stricken mission.<\/p>\n

Instead of learning more about her Sikh<\/a> and Hindu<\/a> heritage or meeting family for the first time, she’s flung into the chaos, violence, and massacre that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984.<\/a><\/p>\n

Look for this stunning verse novel at your local library<\/a> or independent bookstore<\/a> – you need to hear Maya’s story for yourself.
\n**kmm<\/p>\n

Book info<\/b>: Karma \/ Cathy Ostlere. Razorbill, 2011, paperback 2012. [author’s website<\/a>] [publisher site<\/a>] [book trailer<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Recommendation<\/b>: At 15, Maya is taking her mother\u2019s ashes home to India, back to the grandparents she\u2019s never met, traveling with her father in 1984, far from Canada where she was born.<\/p>\n

Unheard-of for a Sikh and a Hindu to marry in India of the 1960s! Disowned by her family, his family warning of spiritual disaster, Maya\u2019s parents emigrate to Manitoba, where Bapu hopes to be successful and Mata prays for children and peace.<\/p>\n

The aloneness that the prairie winds swirled around her mother finds Maya in the crowded streets of poverty-stricken New Delhi, as she tries to make sense of everything in her journal, her diary in verse.
\nSuddenly, India\u2019s Prime Minister is assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards, and Hindus begin killing Sikhs in revenge. Bapu disguises himself and leaves Maya at their hotel while he tries to find a safe way for them to get to his hometown.<\/p>\n

When rioters set fire to the hotel, Maya flees blindly into a city filled with mayhem, heading to the train station to go \u2013 anywhere. An accident, an attack, a fright, amnesia, a lost girl\u2026 Others continue telling Maya\u2019s story when her own voice is no longer sufficient, as she journeys and drifts in confusion.<\/p>\n

Can she find her voice again? Can she find her father? Did he really plan for her to marry someone here in India? How can she keep going, knowing that she left Mata\u2019s ashes behind? This powerful novel in verse takes mature readers to a far land in a time not so distant, when civil war almost fractured India and its horrors threatened a young girl\u2019s hold on reality. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com<\/a>) Review copy courtesy of the publisher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

World Wednesday takes us from the prairies of Canada to the crowded streets of India as Maya travels to her parents’ homeland on a grief-stricken mission. Instead of learning more about her Sikh and Hindu heritage or meeting family for the first time, she’s flung into the chaos, violence, and massacre that followed the assassination […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19,50],"tags":[90,92,20,5,43,95,31,93,15,21,35,6],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-historical","tag-abandonment","tag-canada","tag-conflict","tag-coping","tag-growing-up","tag-india","tag-non-us-author","tag-poetry","tag-relationships","tag-self-image","tag-surprises","tag-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11804,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions\/11804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}