Krishna’S Heretic Lovers: The Story of Chandidas and Rami

This book recounts the legendary love story of Chandidas and Rami, 14th-century Bengalis. He is a young Brahmin priest who renounces his caste status to become an heretical poet-musician wandering the byways of India with a small band of mystics and bards. Rami is a beautiful 20-year-old widow, of low caste, living with her two children. To survive, she washes the clothes of local villagers. An overwhelming magnetism of love and fate compels them to come together against prevailing religious and social customs. Rami leaves all of her familiar world behind to travel, sing and praise the Divine with her beloved Chandidas, along the dusty roads of Bengal. Krishnas Heretic Lovers is an historical romance that blends fiction and fact, love and sex, action and spiritual teachings, politics, and true characters with the authentic poetry written by the revered poet Chandidas (later known as the Father of Bengali poetry). The synthesis of these elements, together with rare insight into the practices of a genuine tantric sect, creates an unforgettable alchemy for readers. Vivid descriptions of cultural and natural environments along with richly detailed characters capture the religion, politics, and lifestyle of the late 14th /early 15th century of remote Bengali villages. The reader is transported into an era when the basic human freedom to create, love, and worship based on ones natural impulse had to be carved from the stone of rigid hierarchical, even feudal, societal and religious structures.