“In my grandmother’s stories, things happened in pairs, like school children holding hands, walking back home before dusk. Which is why I knew there was a reason I was reminded of those stories now that Lata was gone.”
A History of Assembled Hearts
A History of Assembled Heartbeats traces the journey of Rajeev as he unravels the circumstances surrounding his wife’s disappearance. He is convinced it is connected to the stories his grandmother told him as a child. Tales of the mythical bird Pakshaach, and the disappearance of two men and the trees, come back to Rajeev and guide him to Lata, who is in a place beyond the real world, where she was always meant to be.
Kalpana Negi holds an MFA from the University of Memphis and has studied Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh.
She has attended the Tin House Summer Workshop and her work is published or forthcoming in TriQuarterly magazine, Five Points, EVENT Poetry and Prose, and the University of Memphis Magazine among other journals. She serves as the Prose Editor for The Adroit Journal.
Kalpana lives in Indianapolis and can occasionally be found retweeting stuff @KalpanaNegi0.