SUMMARY OF CHOLA ADVENTURE CHAPTER 1
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Anu Kumar’s A Chola Adventure catapults its reader back in time to 990 CE, Thanjavur. The prologue is an intriguing one: we’re introduced to twelve-year-old Raji through a recurring nightmare, in which there’s a relentless storm and a woman wailing piteously. The reader soon learns that Raji’s mother, the distinguished dancer, Menaka, has been banished from the kingdom for allegedly poisoning Prince Madurantaka, son of the now-dead King Uttama Chola. One morning, Raji wakes up to find that her grief-stricken father, Kesavan (a famed sculptor), who vanished soon after her mother’s exile, has returned home. Raji watches eagerly as her father begins to sculpt an astounding Nataraja to life, but remains as haunted as he is by her mother’s absence. What happened to the dancer who was abandoned at sea?
But spirited Raji is an architect too. In an abandoned cottage, she builds her own toy kingdom, a lovingly crafted mini replica of King Rajaraja’s empire, and dreams of sailing away and finding her mother. Her hideout is accidentally discovered by the king’s son, Rajendra Chola, and his cousin, Ananta, the bird-whisperer, who has suffered a loss of his own. Impressed by her craftsmanship and natural intelligence, Ananta and the prince persuade the queen mother to have Raji educated. But, even while she is kept busy at lessons, the nightmares return. One stormy night, she saves an injured Chinese sailor, little foreseeing what this rescue will result in…