India, Jan. 11 -- Dear Reader,

A Sunday morning in January, with the feel of winter in the salty sea air. We sit in a rooftop coffee shop on the Arabian Sea. Above us, planes fly by. And pigeons too.

"Be careful," the waiter warns us. "Should we put the roof up?"

"No, no," we laugh. We like the sky above us. Besides, pigeons are lucky.

Railsong, the saga we are reading this month, confirms this. As our motherless heroine, Charu Chitol, emerges from the railway train onto Victoria Terminus, a pigeon shits in her hair. "Vanda nahi," a passerby tells her. It is no matter. Pigeon shit on your hair is, in fact, an omen of good fortune. It is a story we all recognise, a folk refrain from our lives.

Railsong has many moments that resonate t...