The Adventure

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Professor Gaitonde, also called Gangadharpant, is the protagonist and a historian. He experiences a sudden shift into an alternate world and later tries to understand what happened to him.

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The Battle of Panipat is the turning point of history in the story. In one world, the Marathas lose it; in the alternate world, they win it handsomely, and this changes the entire course of history.

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After the Marathas win, Abdali is routed and chased back to Kabul. Maratha power grows, the East India Company is pushed back to small pockets of influence, and Indian political power develops differe…

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Rajendra Deshpande is a scientist and physicist friend of Gaitonde. He listens to Gaitonde’s experience and explains it using catastrophe theory and the many-worlds idea of quantum theory.

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An alternate world is a different version of reality where events take a different course. Gaitonde experiences one such world where the Marathas won Panipat and history developed differently.

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He found a Bombay very different from the one he knew. The train, the station names, the East India Company building, and the political setup all showed that history had taken another turn.

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GBMR stands for Greater Bombay Metropolitan Railway. It shows that the place is under British territory in the alternate world, and the Union Jack on each carriage reinforces that idea.

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Sarhad is described as the point where the British Raj begins. It marks the shift from the Indian side to the British-controlled side of the route in the alternate world.