It is safe to assume that any book of significance is hard to bring into the world. Even so, Kannada writer Vasudhendra’s collection of short stories Mohanaswamy has had a particularly precarious journey to publication. The year in which it was published, 2013, began with the author taking a bus from Hospet to the nearby Tungabhadra dam with the intention of drowning himself. His nerve failed and he returned. “Courage is not always a good thing,” he says, quite cheerfully, w