Songs of the broken road

Five young South Asians—an activist, a medical student, a climate researcher, a content moderator, and a migrant mechanic—walk fractured paths through a world scarred by war, disinformation, and ecological collapse. Aisha battles the psychic toll of misinformation, Ravi carries medicine and compassion across India’s highways, Diya wrestles with climate grief in Tasmania, Kavya moderates the darkest corners of the internet, and Rishi resists erasure and exile in Budapest. Though scattered across continents, their broken roads converge in Goa during the monsoon festival of Chikhal Kalo, where mud and ritual dissolve grief into play. Here, amid rain-soaked earth and remembered songs, they discover that peace is not treaties or neutrality but the lived practice of care, dignity, and solidarity. Spanning crises both personal and global, Songs of the Broken Road is a polyphonic novel about resilience, memory, and the fragile hope that even in a burning world, muddy hands can still shape futures worth living.