Parul: A Love Story – Harsha Dehejia

Explore a modern philosophical love story rooted in Indian aesthetics with 'Parul: A Love Story' by Harsha Dehejia, now available at Beetle Bookshop.

On the night of the full moon, beneath the shades of the Parijatak tree, Parul would meet Prafull once every month. The two are mirror opposites. Prafull is a learned, rational philosopher steeped in the cool abstractions of Advaita Vedanta, seeking to transcend the world. Parul lives by instinct and feeling—her world revolving around rangolis, embroidered old fabrics, the birds in her garden, art, and beauty—eager to touch, live in, and celebrate the world.

Their courtship unfolds across a single ritual year, from Chaitra to Phalgun, until one full moon night when Parul leaves. What follows turns the novel from love into longing—a pilgrimage taking Parul from a Radha–Krishna temple to a Sufi dargah in Ajmer, and onward to a Himalayan village where a painter still practises the almost-forgotten art of the Barahmasa. Years later, Prafull finds her by accident in a museum gallery, standing before a stone image of Krishna under another woman’s name.

Weaving Sanskrit verse, Kangra miniatures, Sufi lore, and seasonal folk songs, Harsha Dehejia reimagines one of Indian aesthetics’ oldest arguments—between shringara and bhakti, the classical and the folk, presence and vira