Gita Mehta reds her novel 'Snakes and Ladders', in Varanasi

From the archive record

Gita Mehta reads her novel 'Snakes and Ladders. She reads, "Years ago when my son is only five years old he told me a story about gods in India I have tried to find out the way he might have learnt the story because he doesn't remember and no one else seems to know it I've consulted some scholars of Varanasi and look through books on Indian legends but I haven't succeeded in finding it's origins maybe this story is his own a child's explanation of the birth of his country. In any case, the background to the story is this. Shiv is deep in meditation in an ice-locked cave in the Himalaya. The Goddess who loves him has been banished from his sight let she disturb his meditation. She wanders the world trying to forget the great ascetic determined not even to turn and look in his direction but