The More Things Change -- Part 1: Innocence Lost

This is a story about India. The main protagonist is Dev Kumar, an idyllic person who could pass for a native of any province. As a boy traumatized by orphanhood, he returns to his mythical birthplace – Bakpur – in the mythical state of Mangal, which could just as well be any city and state in any part of India. When he tires of living in Bakpur, he travels to America to find the pot of gold that sits at the end of every rainbow on the horizon in that great country. What he discovers instead is that: the more one approaches the horizon, the further away it moves. The restless prodigal eventually returns home – to a truism in life that greedy mortals do not recognize till it is too late – that all that glitters is not gold. This is also a story about the aspirations and hopes of two other children of modern India - one a prodigy and the other, a diary writer - interleaved into the main story of Dev Kumar.