Extract: Banjara, by Shana Chandra

Rajasthan 1888: Avani Rathod, a nomad of the Banjara community, is summoned to teach a blue-eyed colonial officer the trees of her region, but instead is misled into indenture to the sugarcane plantations of Fiji. While on the voyage that leads her away from her ancestral land, Avani's baby forms in her belly and she forges close friendships with the other women bound for the Pacific - bonds that will be tested once they reach the islands, under the suffocating colonial powers.

Aotearoa 2016: Avani's great-granddaughter, Meera Chand, seeks the true history of her ancestors - the forgotten and displaced Girmitiya. Meera's search for her great-grandmother's origins leads her to a region of India, where she learns the rhythms of Odissi dance and where she meets up with her former lover - the man she can never have, but whom she can't forget.

Set in Aotearoa, Australia, India and Fiji, Banjara is an essential reimagining of Indo-Fijian Girmitiya history, and a love letter to our ancestors whose stories live on in our genes.

Extracted from Banjara by Shana Chandra, RRP $37.99, published by Moa Press (14 April 2026)

PART ONE

PRITHVI (EARTH)

पृथ्वी

AVANI - Rajasthan, India 1888

Have you ever tried to gouge the bare earth with your hands? It is harder than you think. Especially when you feel blue eyes on your skin.

My nani’s voice coils around me, up from the earth, with each scratch I make. Our people – the Banjara – are made of the red dust of Rajasthan. Though we roam and we roam, it is this land we are moulded from.

‘The desert is part of me too,’ I whisper back.

The little brass bell prises loose from my anklet, round like a tamarind seed, split like a soap nut shell. I cradle it in my palm, then slip it into the dirt cavity and seal it quick. The dust bleeds from the cracks in my skin. My fingers are full.

बञ्जरा

The first time I see him, he does not look at me. Even though he is there to watch me. It’s me who should keep my eyes lowered. But I can’t. Each time I turn, I see. Rolled-up sleeve. Pink skin smothered with curly hairs. Cheek flushed from fire.

The crooked khejri tree next to him leans one way then the next, keeping its leaf-clouds from drifting away. The black horses tied to its trunk whinny softly, tossing sand with their muzzles, trying to find clumps of stray dhaman to eat. Their coats are shiny as if they have been polished, just like their owners’ boots. Our drumbeat begins, and the white bunting of the tents starts to quake.

We have been summoned to dance for them. We are not dancers by trade, we are cattle herders and salt dealers, but when they command, we comply. They get bored at night, these officers in the desert. Their wives are at home in the cities, cooling their foreheads with the fans we embroidered for them. I’ve heard the memsahibs have punkah-wallah too, who silently sway cloth sheets back and forth, bringing wind to the women’s faces. The ladies have boots by their petticoated sides to throw at their punkah- wallah if the swaying stops. They do not deserve our labours. I buried the bell to keep a note safe, so they won’t hear the full sound of our ghungroo when we spin.

‘They’re pretending to be snakes,’ says the one with the barren head, his tobacco smoke forming spirits, his rifle balancing against the carved arm of his chair.

What he does not know is that the language of our sowing, raking and harvesting is held in our dance. It is another tribe whose movements mimic the snake, whom they tame and charm. This man, if faced with a serpent, would have no idea how to escape its bite. He laughs, and the other men are quick to join in, exposing the ivory in their mouths. But not him. Not the one with the blue eyes who doesn’t look.

बञ्जरा

The second time I see him, his voice reaches me first.

‘Let me help you with that.’

I tug my orhni over my eyes and shake my head, but he pries the clay pot from my hands, letting his fingers sweep mine. He strings the lota to the tethered rope. But his knot is too loose. And even though I’m not meant to touch him, I nudge him aside, to tie it tighter. I feel him glance at me. When he lowers the pot, it pulses as it drops.

His back is towards me, sweat blotting his cotton shirt. Little yellow hairs, drowsy with the heat, cling to the base of his neck. His black boots form footprints that will stay in the sand long after he is gone.

When he hands me the lota, water splashes over, melting the crescents left by my bare feet. He is not used to savouring every drop.

बञ्जरा

‘What took you so long?’ My sister snatches the potful of water, eyes following me as I sit with her daughter to roll roti. I say nothing, but when she turns away, I place little bits of dough on Radha’s nose, and we giggle. Radha takes the cowrie at the end of my veil and puts it in her mouth to suck like always.

At night, as I put my ear to the earth to sleep, I listen to the breathing around me: my sister’s breath is slow and steady as if nothing can quicken it; her daughter’s is fast-paced, her husband’s is strong enough to quiver the curled ends of his moustache.

The fingernail moon shines through the open window of our mud hut.

It beckons to me, so I rise and dip my finger into the clay pot, into the moon flickering on the water’s surface.

I take one drop of water and slip the wetness under my tongue.

बञ्जरा

The fresh morning air is still cold with the moon’s milk. The tang from our night fire in the courtyard is strong, smoke whispering from the sweet dung and wood oil. We have only one cow now, Basant, but so do the other families here, and we share their dung to fuel our fires, strengthen our hut walls and fertilise our few crops. In the olden times, when we used to travel, each of our tribes would have thousands of oxen whom we would protect with our lathi, daggers and dogs, and who would protect us and our sacks of grains and salt on the road. At night, we would stack those sacks as a barrier around us, our families forming the heartbeat inside.

Passing Basant, I pat the white ridge on her back, her warm ears as pink as his when I saw the sun through them. The bell at her neck, the same as the one I buried, chimes.

Banjara will be available in bookstores on the 14th April 2026.