On a sultry summer morning in 1863, in the port city of Surat on the western coast of India, while British officers still tossed and turned beneath the mosquito nets covering their beds, and a few intrepid souls chatting in Gujarati made their way to the Tapti river to bathe or wash their clothes in the shadow of shuttered shipyards, 28-year-old school headmaster Nandshankar Mehta climbed the stairs to the attic of his modest home, hitched up his cotton dhoti, and sat cross legged on the floor to write.

His wife later said that he barely stopped to think, barely crossed out a word as he told a tale set at the close of the 13th century, when India comprised a patchwork of warring kingdoms, and Karan, the Hindu ruler of Gujarat, is about to lose his kingdom to a Muslim sultan from Delhi.

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