Prayer and Gunpowder

Prayer and Gunpowder is the opening movement of a larger novel that reimagines piracy in the Mughal Empire through a lyrical, historically inflected narrative. Set in a fictional coastal city haunted by imperial fragility and foreign encroachment, the story follows a young boy, Adam, whose life is ruptured by colonial violence. What begins in the rhythms of everyday life--scarves in the market, whispered prayers, the jovial defiance of youth--erupts into loss, enlistment, and conscription into a crumbling navy that can no longer protect its shores. The novel explores themes of grief, rupture, inheritance, and spiritual reckoning, filtered through the consciousness of a boy coming of age in the shadow of war. While grounded in Mughal history, the world of Prayer and Gunpowder is shaped by creative departures: a speculative cartography, imagined rulers, and a stylistic register attuned to interiority and the tension between stillness and violence. This thesis forms the foundation of a longer work inspired by historical fiction, postcolonial narrative traditions, and literary modes that chart personal transformation within collapsing empires. Through close attention to sensory detail and psychological depth, it asks how empires unravel--and what remains of the self when the world that shaped it has turned to ash.