Fear gnaws at their hearts. Is writ large on their faces? When? When? When? A blast, followed by a clash tooth and nail, an eye for an eye, a fight to the finish. And then...

And then a gory re-beginning of the gory ending. They get up, shake off the dust and move on to fight yet again the battle that seethes in their hearts. They have dreams, hopes, responsibilities... Some fulfill them in zones comparatively safe. And there are the many others who struggle ceaselessly in unfriendly terrain. Set across South Asia each of the stories in this collection locates the pulse of defiant individual expression in people scarred by terror.

Living in a deadline-centric world, Meenakshi Iyer freelances for The South Asian Times, a US-based weekly. The job of a journalist, she thinks, is about living in a charged, high-voltage atmosphere where newsfeeds that jerk awake mind and spirit are more important than plain, bodily feeds.

A keen South Asia observer, she covered developments in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Pakistan during her days at The Hindustan Times (www.hindustantimes.com). Her stint in mainstream media woke her to the inner uprootedness and unerasable scars of the mind bequeathed to the people by crass, divisive politics and policy makers of the subcontinent.

After having travelled across the country, from Maharashtra to Kashmir, from Tamil Nadu to West Bengal, she has now settled in New Delhi. When not working, she spends time with books, more books, and exchanges ideas with like-minded people. She dreams of meeting General Pervez Musharraf someday... in flesh and blood, not in fiction.