The floating logs move on and thus moving reach their destination, in singles or pairs, in their own time, at their own pace, to their own destiny, in their own way.

He was Meher, beneficence, to his kin, himself, to society at large, rising from his tiny idyllic world, designed by his destiny.

And ringing in the hours, the sentinel of time, is the Clock Tower, in the New Market of Calcutta (now Kolkata), the noble city. The twentieth century has dropped away. He has rung the gong of the twenty first century. The present is irrevocably being wrapped up as past, in the folds of time.

Shukla Lal was born in Amritsar in 1937. As a child, she imbibed the beauty and diversity of this beautiful land - India. Her family moved from Amritsar/Lahore/ Shimla to the Central and Southern cities of Madras (now Chennai)/Nagpur/Hyderabad and eventually found their anchor in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in the mid-1950s. Nearly 40 years later, she moved to New Delhi. Since catching the literary bug on her 80th birthday, Shukla has written two historical romance sagas set in over the last eight decades and a collection of poems, all captured gamely on her iPad Notes App.

*To my four children and their respective spouses who egged me on for years to write and at the young age of 80 the literary spurt has come!

*To my six grandchildren for their quiet support, but especially my youngest grandchild, Rohan, for being the first one to take time out to read the very first drafts and give me encouraging inputs.

Special thanks to Sukesh and Sonia for their time and mothering both the book and me regarding my iPad.

Google and Wikipedia, are the sources from which some relevant public information was gleaned and confirmed.