Third Eye Rising

Third Eye Rising explores the neurodiversity of India through two of the country’s most compelling aspects: family ties and spiritual faith. In a land where divisions of caste and class threaten survival, where the religious are corrupt and the corrupt religious, and where dogmas and superstitions impede economic and individual progress, Shroff shows how spiritual realizations impact daily lives and how they help withstand circumstances of corruption, greed, betrayal, prejudice, and personal loss.
In the title story, “Third Eye Rising,” a young wife must prove her innocence to her sadistic in-laws; in “The Kitemaker’s Dilemma” a nomadic kitemaker takes it on himself to save a melancholic boy from exile; in “Bhikoo Badshah’s Poison” a migrant youth, employed in the city, attempts to shed the burden of his caste; in “Diwali Star” a retired police inspector draws on the events of the epic Ramayana to redefine his relationship with his sons; in “A Matter of Misfortune” two childhood friends have a face-off over the two faces of India: urban and rural; in “Oh Dad!” a dutiful son takes it on himself to protect his father from an unscrupulous taxman; in “An Invisible Truth” an employer delves into his manservant’s life only to get a life-changing insight into his own.
Through these stories, we learn how in India it is spiritual faith that unifies, inspires, and frees its recipients from the bondage of struggle. Shroff has tackled his subject—the darker side of India—with the full democracy of his imagination and an empathy that believes in the eternal unity of man.
Murzban Shroff’s fiction is steeped in the most ancient of Indian folkways, and at the same time engaged with the various shocks of twenty-first century modernization. These stories treat their subjects with Chekhovian simplicity, and also partake of Chekhov’s eerie transparency: that sense that he has given the reader everything without seeming to do anything at all. Third Eye Rising is the best work to date by a writer whose gifts have always been remarkable.
—Madison Smartt Bell, author of Barking Man, All Souls’ Rising, and Anything GoesThe stories of Third Eye Rising feel like tales from another time, with all the characters of Shakespeare, the suspense of 1001 nights, a Panchatantra returning to life in our time. A boy fears his father, the Ramayana plays on an Inspector’s television, marriages are tested, a village harbors secrets, animals domestic and wild pass through imbued with meaning, wisdom lurks in the most unlikely places. Murzban Shroff has invented a mythology for our time, simple stories that open like blooms and surprise us by singing, voices timeless and urgent and moving.
—Bill Roorbach, author of Life Among Giants, The Remedy for Love, and The Girl of the LakeSuch thoughtful and elegantly-built stories here, never skirting the complex ways we interact, talk to one another, live together, pull apart. Shroff demonstrates deep insight about our relationships and the forces that test their strength and survival.
—Aimee Bender, author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
A splendid collection, beautifully crafted, full of dreams, fake marriages and endless longing. Shroff is a captivating storyteller.
—Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao


Genre: Literary Fiction