Description
If writing is protest, then writing hope is a powerful, reverberating protest amidst the din of doomsday prophesying that we have come to expect. The stories in this book function on the grand stage that is Time itself: past-present-future, looping, stretching, compressing, endless, infinite, yet finite in every living moment. The poetic tone is deeply meditative, turning inwards to access sources of hope as well as excavate what lies beneath, what holds the secrets to resilience and resurgence, to restoration and revival.
Let the uniqueness of this book impel you to read, then sit back, let the music of its language, the richness of its images, its vision and world-building flood your senses. For this collection presents the writer at her collective and individual best: as poet, writer, translator and the recreator of myths for a newer world, one in which earth rises once again. The canvas, the scope, the width of vision and imagination, of compassion and belonging, is vast, all-encompassing, all-embodied. This is a book of stories at a heightened level of invoking, querying, demanding answers, seeking pathways towards a single goal — of the earth rising.
The subject of time is endless, fascinating, even mind boggling. Therefore, I ask you to narrow the focus and look at your outstretched hand. Like five fingers branching out, time in this collection opens in five spatial directions, from the cupping palm. And since this is speculative fiction, there is a sixth.
Pasts Re-Presented: mythic time, unique in each individual’s imagination
Now: slipperiness we slide through, seemingly unable to hear its heartbeat
Ten Years from Now: multiple, depending on where one is, and to what species one belongs
In the Near Future: oddly familiar and disturbingly unreal, when you have ceased to exist
In the Far Future: unknown and uncanny, possibly like mercury-lined clouds
Prophecies That Come True: a remembering of future potentials and past wisdoms
Priya Sarukkai Chabria is a poet, writer, translator and literary curator. Her publications include five poetry collections, two SF novels, translations from Classical Tamil, and literary nonfiction. As Founding Editor of Poetry at Sangam she recently edited the anthology The Dragon’s Heart: World Poetry in Translation (2025). She won the Muse India Translation Prize, Kitaab Experimental Story Award, Best Reads from Feminist Press and Outstanding Contribution to Literature by the Indian government. Residencies include Writer’s Centre, Norwich; Sun Yat-Sen International Writers Program, Guangzhou and Indian Institute of Advanced Studies. She has presented at Commonwealth Literature Conference, Innsbruck, UCLA, JLF, etc. She has curated seminars and folios for the Indian Academy of Literature, Raza Foundation, Sahapedia, etc. Priya has performed in multidisciplinary collaborations across India. Her engagement with Sanskrit aesthetics and Tamil Sangam poetics has been widely published. www.priyasarukkaichabria.com.
Reviews
Joseph Schreiber in Roughghosts.com
For Indian poet and writer Priya Sarukkai Chabria, the fate of our planet is an ongoing and vital theme. She sees it as a question that arises in the myths and traditions of a distant past, swirls around the influence of technology and artificial intelligence shaping our present existence, and reaches far into the future where an unknown realm of possibilities can only be imagined. Yet, she is prepared to explore new ways of thinking about and envisioning what we have come from and where we may be going. Now a wide-ranging selection of her poignant and thought-provoking fictional imaginings have been gathered in her new book, Earthrise Stories: Pasts Potentials Prophesies.
Priya Sarukkai’s storytelling is elemental, fusing prose and poetry with dexterity and boldness. Through her, the earth becomes voice, vessel and vengeance and the woman long silenced rises not as a muse or metaphor but as an uncontainable force. After the end, I dream the deluge. Then the drought. The deluge swells again in my dream, licking its furthest fluttering edges, it laps at its last refuge. I dream death. I scent it all around. Silent stars open in my heart signalling it is again time.’
Vinita Agrawal in Outlook India
Writing serves as a powerful and indispensable tool for environmental activism, fundamentally shaping the fight to save the Earth from destruction. It preserves knowledge and builds a lasting record of both the crises and the resistance, while also proposing concrete solutions and sustainable visions for the future. Writing acts as a critical conduit for raising awareness, translating complex scientific data on climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution into compelling narratives that resonate with diverse audiences. Speculative fiction is the genre in which we might place Chabria’s mix of fiction and non-fiction, exposing ecological injustices that have occurred over time. Chabria quotes from Vedic texts as also from The Ramayana and The Mahabharata and creates a deftly woven narrative of time. The dexterity with which she tells her story is a catalyst for transcending time and finding brilliant new perspectives in its fold.
Priteegandha Naik in PR&TA Journal
Chabria’s work seeks to redirect the conversation and inspire hope and empathy to restitch our connections with nature. By privileging emotion over cold, hard truths, over reason and facts, Chabria’s work opens the ground for a more personal relationship with nature. Rooted in Hindu myth yet expansive in scope, Chabria’s work is both distinctly Indian and universally resonant. Drawing from Indic traditions, she expands their resonance to emphasise the timelessness of nature’s role. The book, divided into six parts, is accompanied by beautiful illustrations by Gargi Sharma, which break the flow of the written word and reiterate the interdisciplinarity of climate change issues. I believe that Chabria’s book functions as a meta-text; its propensity to combine prose and poetry in unconventional ways in different genre-distinct styles reiterates the need to adopt multi-pronged approaches to deal with the vastness of the climate crisis. Each section offers a unique lens, both stylistically and thematically.
