In the heart of Kolkata, where the city’s spiritual and cultural life converges during Durga Puja, joy turned to wailing on a rain-soaked Saturday evening. The community pandal at Chorbagan in north Kolkata, one of the countless temporary temples that spring up to honor Goddess Durga, became the site of a catastrophe that left 19 people dead and many more injured. What should have been an evening of devotion and festivity transformed into a desperate scramble for life, as thousands of worshippers found themselves trapped in a surge of panic and fear. The initial investigation by Kolkata Police has begun…

When Geoffrey Hinga was twelve years old, epilepsy entered his life without warning, and it swept his family into a storm of fear and confusion. His mother, desperate to understand why her son’s body would suddenly betray him, moved from one church to another and from one herbalist to another, clinging to the hope that someone could explain what was happening. In her distress she wondered whether his illness might be a curse, and she searched for a remedy in every unfamiliar concoction she could find, hoping that somehow one of them would bring relief. Hinga, now thirty-two and working…