How Nalin Verma is preserving the soul of purvanchal through love, memory and folklore

4 min readJun 14, 2026 01:37 PM IST

Sacred Unions and Other Stories by Nalin Verma.

From demystifying politics to co-authoring Lalu Prasad’s autobiography, Gopalganj to Raisina Road (2019) to chronicling the folklores of Bihar, Nalin Verma has cast his lens wide. With his latest book, Sacred Unions and Other Stories that follows his Greatest Folk Tales of Bihar (2019) and Lores of Love & Saint Gorakhnath (2025), he continues to document the culture of Purvanchal. The subjects of his works may be diverse but the common thread that runs through them lies in the empathy and sensibility with which he treats them.

In Sacred Unions and Other Stories, Verma, a veteran journalist with a career spanning over thirty years, transports his readers straight into the heart of the rural landscape, unearthing raw emotions and intrinsic values that have been on the retreat in urban India. Having spent a significant part of his formative years in his ancestral village in Siwan, Verma captures and conveys this world in rich, evocative detail.

On the surface, Sacred Unions and Other Stories is an anthology of five tales, yet the Purvanchal setting and its characters are a microcosm of this world. The story, ‘The Flower Girl’ evokes the author’s own days at Patna University where his hostel overlooked the majestic Ganga. The river, with its undulating waves and passing boatmen, breathes a sense of serenity and peace into the prose. It is near these banks that he encounters the flower girl. Verma is drawn both by her and the flowers; the rose she generously gifts him continues to nestle against his fingers long after he returns to his hostel room.

The author seamlessly carries this tenderness into the web of complex human emotions in the titular story, ‘Sacred Unions’. The narrative beautifully illustrates how love exists beyond the confines of caste, region, religion, bias, and a judgmental world. The poignant longing of a child born out of an inter-faith union mirrors the author’s own deep empathy. As the text reflects: “Manu wondered about his father… Whenever he asked who his father was, Shakuntala always gave the same answer: ‘Your name is Manu and you are the son of the Sun. Be patient, for that is the patience of your love for your father’.”

Reflecting on his craft, Verma notes: “Beyond geographies, all stories of the world are about love, longing, separation, hate, and despair. But a particular region brings its own distinct value to it. I am not sure what is uniquely Purvanchali about my tales, but one thing is certain—they are reflections of a lived life. If they find a connection with readers thousands of miles away from India, it feels as though my flower girl is offering a universal rose to all beholders of love.”

The collection also gestures deftly toward the dramatic transformations ushered in post-1990s, when liberalisation, migration, and digital technology fundamentally altered both rural and urban topographies. The advent of the internet and smartphones exposed communities, once rooted for generations within fixed geographical and cultural frameworks, to an entirely new social order. For younger readers growing up in an era of instant messaging and social media, these stories offer a nostalgic glimpse into how their parents and grandparents loved, longed, communicated, and resisted in a world untouched by digital connectivity.

At its core, Sacred Unions and Other Stories is a masterful exploration of memory, belonging, desire, and shifting social tides in the Hindi heartland, a deeply moving literary journey through the emotional and cultural landscape of Purvanchal.

Santosh Singh is a Senior Assistant Editor with The Indian Express since June 2008.

Expertise

He covers Bihar with main focus on politics, society and governance.

Investigative and explanatory stories are also his forte. Singh has 25 years of experience in print journalism covering Bihar, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka.

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