I put down my diary, and suddenly, it doesn’t matter that sixty-one years have passed. I can still taste the dirt of the battlefield in my mouth; hear the screams of the men and horses in my ears. There was a time I used to read these words over and over, as if reliving my trauma could change it somehow. Shri Rama was the one who instructed me to put my diaries away. I was becoming a tree rooted in the soil of tragedy, he said, and with every fresh reading I was watering the roots, sinking deeper, allowing my pain to grow stronger. “Plant your roots in fresh soil,” he told me. And so my words were shut away. Until now, when Miss Pennywell and all of her readers will find them. When the war was finished and the British flag was hoisted over every fortress, Arjun and I were married by Shri Rama, who not only survived the war, but made a new life for himself in the city of Bombay. Since Arjun and I were both rebels, it was impossible to remain near Jhansi. So we moved to the bustling city of Mumbai.
