Vermilion Harvest: Playtime at the Bagh

In a politically tense Amritsar in 1919, an Anglo-Indian schoolteacher and a feisty Muslim stu-dent activist fall in love, but find that courting openly is easier said than done — not only are they from different communities but his political activism comes at the cost of their romance. Against the deadline of a ticking time-bomb, the schoolteacher must find her lover to warn him about General Dyer’s impending attack on Jallianwala Bagh. But will she succeed in getting to the venue on time? ‘Playtime at the Bagh’ during Baisakhi is a metaphor for General Dyer’s game of bullets in Jallianwala Bagh on April 13th 1919.

In terms of comparison, this story is TITANIC meets GANDHI. Although the story itself is fiction, the scenes and characters outlined in its backdrop are very real. The massacre is the single event that sparked India's independence movement -- the country was finally free in 1947. The issues outlined in the book - freedom of speech and movement, anti sedition laws, inter-faith marriage, communalism etc. could not be more relevant today.