Following a Prayer: A Novel - Sundar Sarukkai

A spellbinding, deeply evocative story about reclaiming voice, agency, and faith. Written by one of India's leading contemporary philosophers, this luminous novel traces the space where thought, childhood curiosity, and imagination converge.

In Following a Prayer, a twelve-year-old girl named Kalpana goes missing one morning from her home in a remote village nestled deep within the dense hills of the Western Ghats. When she mysteriously returns three days later, she has gone completely silent—utterly refusing to speak. What happened during those missing days? What prevents her from communicating with her parents and sister except through frantic notes and cryptic scribbles? And why does her grandmother's presence provoke such a raw, volatile reaction from her?

As the quiet village prepares for its annual Deepavali festival, a whisper begins to spread through the community: Kalpana will finally break her silence the day after the festival. As anticipation builds to a fever pitch, the village waits on the edge of its seat—wondering what she will say, and what truths her words will shatter.

Deftly told through the eyes of three young schoolgirls in rural Karnataka, Sundar Sarukkai’s stunning fiction debut explores the perennial binaries of speech and silence, language and meaning, reason and faith. It follows the experience of thinking to its simplest beginnings, tracing its intimate contact with how we speak, how we act, and how we care for one another. Beautiful, enchanting, and profoundly philosophical, this book defies all expectations to sweep readers toward a truly unforgettable end.