The Five Wounds, Book Two · Trailer

Peacetime: the trailer

Twenty-nine years in one small town, told by the light: kerosene, lantern, tubelight, television blue and a gas flame. The camera barely moves, except three times, and then it goes very far. 100 seconds, 4K, with sound. Every line on screen is the book's own.

1. 0:001969
2. 0:09From the moon
3. 0:231971
4. 0:32The queue
5. 0:41The water year
6. 0:52The shelves
7. 1:04The blue flame
8. 1:13Fighting
9. 1:20The monsoon
10. 1:30Peacetime

Every line on screen, with its time

1. 0:001969A tin trunk, rice running across the floor, a bride's face in kerosene light. Remember that she fell asleep happy.
2. 0:09From the moonFrom a radio in a courtyard all the way back to the moon, where a small town's lamps still show. If the sky is clear, they can see that our lamps are lit.
3. 0:231971A lantern painted half black, quilts held over a window. Hold the light. Do not move.
4. 0:32The queueThe shadows of a queue on a wall at dawn, numbered chits, a purple thumb. Peace was expensive that decade.
5. 0:41The water yearThrough the 1978 flood at chest height. It was an army, magnificently supplied, waiting for a front.
6. 0:52The shelvesOne kitchen wall past one at night, across the years: a shadow moving brass tins in peace, and stillness in every crisis. Nothing was coming.
7. 1:04The blue flameA gas ring lights, and a lane turns television blue. In the house where all is well, this daughter-in-law ails.
8. 1:13FightingA ladle, a lid, steam, a lamp chimney. How well you look, Amma, when you are fighting.
9. 1:20The monsoonUp into the monsoon cloud. And who holds the hair.
10. 1:30Peacetime1969 to 1998. This book will spend twenty-nine years on that sentence. Manu Vishranti.

Everything in it, and much more, is on the book's own page. Start reading Peacetime freeNow the book itself