Shades within Shadows (a novel)

We live under the shadow of rulers, religion and ritual; of childhood fears, adult realities and hovering death. We live in shadows of varying shades, from hues of darkening night, through lightening shades of gray, to brightest light. Within these shades of many shadows, our stories spawn and mature, some sad, some happy, some tragic, mostly soon forgotten, but some preserved and written about. Shades within Shadows tells one such tale of an entire community sucked into a maelstrom that devastates and nearly destroys them. Forced out of Goa by the ominous shadow of war, epidemics and the Santo Officio, immigrants to Kanara fell under another of the darkest shade, that of the 'Shadow of God'. Shades within Shadows is the story of Jaki, Zuan, Joao, Foka and Paulu, Konngi, Karminn and Katrin, Natal and Bastiao, and of others, during the turbulent months of Tipu's seige of Mangalore fort and its horrendous aftermath. 'The Captivity' occurred in 1784. Tradition has it that the deportation of Kanara's Christians, immigrants from Goa over the past 200 years, to Srirangapatna by Tipu Sultan took place on Ash Wednesday. Males of a suitable age were circumcised and inducted into his military slave battalions and younger females were absorbed in his service. The following fifteen years of his reign saw large numbers of these captives dead or converted to Islam. Less than a third returned, impoverished and deprived, most of them having lost their families and property. An estimated Christian population in Kanara of 40,000 in 1784 was reduced to 10,000 by 1800.