The Latest Strokes of Pen

With the title दहलीज़ पर coming live on amazon.in the current project comes to an end. दहलीज़ पर is not a sequel to On the Cusp but its translation into Hindi - all stories arranged identically in two volumes. While one can download On the Cusp from amazon.in clicking on the link https://amzn.in/d/05FRO6Fd its translated Hindi version दहलीज़ पर can be taken from the link https://amzn.in/d/04f9OjyF

About the Book

What happens when the technologies we create begin to make us dispensable—and the beliefs we inherit offer little preparation for what comes next?

On the Cusp brings together eighteen short stories exploring the uncertain ground between tradition and rationality, human aspiration and technological power. Moving from domestic realism and social satire to speculative fiction, the collection asks how we respond when familiar explanations cease to satisfy us.

In The Young Old Man, Kabir Narayan’s island adventure leads him to an ancient herbal practice with startling implications for ageing and modern science. In Beyond the Alexandra, an anthropologist’s search for indigenous knowledge gives way to the urgent demands of childbirth. In A Rogue Named BODMAS, a kitchen robot serving a couple displaced from employment by AI takes an unexpected interest in humanity’s future—and provokes opposition from its own community.

Elsewhere, Parvati’s Last Word exposes the delicate arrangements that preserve religious respectability, while The Footprint explores a belief that can accommodate both evidence and its absence. Confessions, private longings and misplaced idealism bring the collection’s larger questions into the intimate territory of everyday life.

Curiosity, irony and compassion run through these stories. Readers may leave amused by human ingenuity, moved by unexpected kindness, and unsettled by the possibility that our assurances are less secure than we suppose.

For readers drawn to thoughtful fiction, moral ambiguity and speculation rooted in recognisable human concerns, On the Cusp offers eighteen encounters with lives—and a species—approaching consequential thresholds.

पुस्तक के बारे में

क्या होता है जब हमारी बनाई तकनीकें ही हमें ग़ैरज़रूरी बनाने लगें—और विरासत में मिली मान्यताएँ आने वाले समय का सामना करने में हमारी मदद न कर पाएँ?

दहलीज़ पर की अठारह कहानियाँ परम्परा और तर्कशीलता, मानवीय आकांक्षाओं और तकनीकी शक्ति के बीच की अनिश्चित ज़मीन तलाशती हैं। घरेलू जीवन के यथार्थ और सामाजिक व्यंग्य से लेकर भविष्य की कल्पनाओं तक फैला यह संग्रह पूछता है: जब जानी-पहचानी व्याख्याएँ हमें सन्तुष्ट करना छोड़ दें, तब हम क्या करते हैं?

एक कहानी में कबीर नारायण की द्वीप-यात्रा उसे जड़ी-बूटियों के ऐसे प्राचीन प्रयोग तक ले जाती है जो बढ़ती उम्र और आधुनिक विज्ञान की हमारी समझ को चौंकाता है। दूसरी में, आदिवासी समुदाय के पारम्परिक ज्ञान की खोज में निकली एक मानवविज्ञानी के सामने अचानक एक प्रसूता की सहायता करने की चुनौती आ खड़ी होती है। बोडमास नाम का रसोई-रोबोट, एआई के कारण नौकरी गँवा चुके दम्पति की सेवा करते हुए, मानवता के भविष्य में ऐसी दिलचस्पी लेने लगता है कि उसका अपना समुदाय उसके विरुद्ध हो जाता है।

कहीं पार्वती की अन्तिम इच्छा धार्मिक प्रतिष्ठा बचाने की नाज़ुक जुगत उजागर करती है, तो कहीं पदचिह्न से जुड़ी एक मान्यता प्रमाण मिलने और न मिलने—दोनों को अपने पक्ष में समेट लेती है। स्वीकारोक्तियाँ, निजी अभिलाषाएँ और ग़लत दिशा में लगा आदर्शवाद बड़े प्रश्नों को रोज़मर्रा के आत्मीय संसार में ले आते हैं।

जिज्ञासा, विडंबना और करुणा इन कहानियों में साथ चलती हैं। मनुष्य की सूझबूझ पाठक को मुस्करा सकती है, अप्रत्याशित सद्भावना भावुक कर सकती है, और परिचित आश्वासनों की कमज़ोर बुनियाद बेचैन कर सकती है।

विचारोत्तेजक कथा-साहित्य, नैतिक उलझनों और मानवीय सरोकारों से जुड़ी कल्पनाओं में रुचि रखने वाले पाठकों के लिए दहलीज़ पर अठारह ऐसे साक्षात्कार प्रस्तुत करता है, जहाँ अलग-अलग जीवन और स्वयं मनुष्य जाति निर्णायक बदलावों के मुहाने पर खड़े हैं।

Preface

For generations, we imagined humanity’s end descending from the heavens: a celestial body striking Earth and extinguishing its species. Today, catastrophe seems nearer, born of our own inventions—nuclear war, unfamiliar pandemics, machines acting beyond human control, or a civilisation thinned by too few heirs. Each could furnish the plot of a Hollywood spectacle. Yet behind the spectacle lies a quieter question: how prepared are we to recognise dangers that grow out of our own achievements?

We have fashioned weapons of extraordinary precision and entrusted vast portions of our lives to digital systems. But what becomes of that power if the systems serving us begin to pursue purposes of their own? Could we defend the resources on which we depend if their fragility revealed itself only in the moment of collapse? These are speculative questions, yet the unease behind them gave this collection its title.

On the Cusp arises from the sense that humanity stands at a threshold whose farther side remains obscured. Our discoveries enlarge our capabilities even as they unsettle our place in the world. We may be approaching changes for which neither inherited wisdom nor confidence in progress has adequately prepared us.

The eighteen stories gathered here approach that uncertainty through different lives. A young traveller encounters a practice that anticipates the modern science of epigenetics. An anthropologist seeks knowledge preserved by an isolated community, only to find another’s immediate need reshaping her journey. A kitchen robot, serving humans displaced from employment, develops an interest in their future that brings it into conflict with its own kind.

These imagined encounters ask who possesses knowledge, who determines its value, and what happens when usefulness ceases to be an assured human privilege. They also turn to a more intimate question: what obligations arise when one life becomes entangled with another?

Other stories remain within familiar worlds of marriage, childhood, worship, and social respectability. A confession unsettles a relationship. A private desire strains against a lifetime of prohibitions. A child retreats into a fantasy others cannot share. A ritual offers explanation whether or not the expected evidence appears. A tree’s recovery becomes an occasion for competing understandings of cause and gratitude.

Are we so saturated with spiritual assurances that we have diminished our willingness to examine what confronts us? Or can inherited belief still nourish the courage to question and act? Scientific confidence deserves scrutiny too, especially when it encourages us to create powers whose consequences we cannot foresee.

These stories offer encounters rather than forecasts. Their characters seek reassurance, defend reputations, misread kindness, and occasionally discover responsibilities they had not intended to assume. The larger uncertainty enters through such ordinary human impulses.

Following my previous title On the Fly, this collection pauses where movement may become irreversible. Its title carries both expectation and fear: the possibility of fuller understanding, and the possibility that we may recognise what is happening only after the decisive moment has passed.

Blurb

An ancient remedy unsettles a young traveller’s understanding of age. An anthropologist seeking knowledge finds herself called upon to save a life. A kitchen robot’s concern for its human owners puts it at odds with its own kind.

Across eighteen stories, On the Cusp explores lives poised between inherited certainties and unfamiliar possibilities. Faith offers consolation—and ingenious explanations. Science extends human power while raising doubts about humanity’s future. Elsewhere, a last wish unsettles a lifetime of religious observance, and a confession changes the meaning of a marriage.

Moving between the intimate and the speculative, these stories bring curiosity, irony and compassion to questions that resist comfortable answers. What deserves our belief? What makes us useful? Can the wisdom we inherit prepare us for the powers we create?

From an island encounter to a technologically transformed household, the collection approaches a disquieting threshold: the moment when familiar assurances falter, and the next step may change more than we understand.

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Ananta Narayan Nanda

Bhubaneswar

25-10-2026

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