Lashes of Lightning: (A Satirical Story of Free Radicals)

Bijli Kandyal is an Indian Himalayan girl who has just returned home from gathering flowers to celebrate the last day of a spring festival. But after she arrives, she is horrified to find her polygamist father beating her mother. When she attempts to defend her mother, Bijli is beaten as well. The following day after she discloses the situation to a relative, Bijli and her mother are rescued by a family member and the girl is eventually taken to San Francisco by her maternal uncle, Gunanand, a radical, atheist engineer. While she is attending the University of California at Berkeley, Bijli's uncle is killed by a drunk driver while crossing the street. One day when she finds some of his writings detailing social injustices, she decides to share them with her girlfriends, Maya, an African American undergraduate student majoring in South Asian studies and Indira, a Caucasian woman majoring in anthropology. As Gunanand's stories are slowly unveiled, Bijli sets out on a vengeful journey that takes her back to her village to confront past wrongs. In this intriguing novella, an Indian Himalayan girl who escapes an abusive childhood to live in California eventually returns to her village to seek revenge.