The Hills of Angheri

by Kavery Nambisan

Twelve-year-old Nalli is restless to pursue a dream rather unusual for a girl in her traditional society: she wants to be a doctor. After all, how else will she stand by Jai—her friend and hero—when he returns as a qualified surgeon to start Angheri’s very own hospital? Adamantly resisting all the objections her family raises, Nalli travels to Madras and then to London to study, and experiences a world she had never imagined. She learns to keep her voice down and sit with her knees together, is haunted by Subbu, the first human cadaver she cuts up, and encounters complicated medical cases that test her faith in the values Appa taught her to live by and her own skills as a surgeon. Yet, for all her adventures, Nalli yearns constantly for a sight of Angheri’s hills, for Ajja’s gods and Appa’s advice, and, most of all, for the hospital of her dreams to become a reality. But her return home is fraught with heartbreak and disillusion, and Nalli sets off again, this time to remote Keshavganj