u/author-tvisha

In October 1984, The UNESCO Courier published a remarkable feature by Esteban Cobas Puente on one of India's least-documented communities: the Gaduliya Lohars, nomadic ironsmiths of the Mewar region. A few things from it worth knowing:

Who they are. A clan-based community of traditional ironsmiths associated with the Mewar region of Rajasthan (with related groups in Malwa and Gujarat). They travel in decorated bullock carts — gadi — which gives them their name, and traditionally lived entirely on the move: no permanent homes, camped by roadsides, their whole household and workshop on wheels.

The origin legend. Community oral tradition holds that their ancestors were the royal armourers of Maharana Pratap's army. When Akbar took Chittorgarh in 1568, they swore they would not settle — not return, not build houses, not even draw water from settled wells — until their Rana was restored.
Since Pratap never reoccupied Chittor, the vow was, by its own terms, never discharged. Historians treat the founding story as legend rather than documented record — but the living tradition it produced is ethnographically real, which is what makes the community significant.

The craft. Working from mud hearths fired by coal or dung cakes, buying scrap iron from junk dealers, two smiths per forge — one holding the hot iron with tongs (the chutki), one striking. They made and repaired agricultural implements, knives, tongs, scythes, and the kadai fire bowls now sold worldwide as antique garden pieces.

The modern situation. The article documents a craft community being dismantled by economics: machine-made steel goods undercutting hand-forged tools, poverty, illiteracy, health problems from smoke and heat. In 1955, Nehru personally led a march to Chittorgarh inviting them to come home and settle; by then the community had scattered too far across northern and central India for any single homecoming. Many families have since settled informally along roads and rail lines — the vow dissolving not because Mewar was reclaimed, but because the economy that sustained the wandering ended.

Sources:

• Cobas Puente, E. "The Gaduliya Lohars: India's wandering blacksmiths." The UNESCO Courier, Oct 1984. [https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000061262]
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfg-ehYHlOs
• https://youtu.be/uK8s1Wk0mR4?si=dyK3pf7uTvENpvbl

Dear All

This is my debut novel. I am engineer by profession, so I have no clue how to go about it other than google search. Also, I have a team that will do cover and formatting.

What are you best known methods to publish internationlly? My book will appeal to Non Resident Indians across the globe.

I have kindle ebook that is international. But I also want hardcopy to be available as many of my international friends love physical books. I am in USA.

Thanks in Advance

Tvisha

Hi

I am Tvisha(pen name). As a child I loved telling stories, but as I took up engineering and work, this talent got buried.

Recently with help of AI, I wrote 4 full length novels Within 1 month. I guess the stories just were always there, and AI helped give it the shape that is shareable. I am revising them since and and working with professional editor, but it’s just amazing to see.

I am Electronics Engineer working on building AI Chip, based in California — India-born, Gujarati by heritage. I have spent my adult life keeping the culture alive in my home and neighbourhood, through food, through classical dance, through the artwork of Gujarat, in the way that people do when they are far from the place they come from and understand that distance is erosion. TAPOVAN comes from that same instinct. It is an act of preservation as much as a novel.

I am requesting beta readers who can give the first few chapters of Book One a careful read and answer a short set of questions afterward where the story held you, where it lost you, and who you were reading for. It is roughly a ninety-minute commitment. I will send the chapters in whichever format suits you (EPUB, PDF, or Word), and for anyone who wants to continue past chapter three, the full manuscript is there.

This is my debut novel.

TAPOVAN is a story about what ordinary people do when history arrives at their door.
A village ironsmith. A princess with nowhere to go. A kingdom already lost. Across three books and two decades, Tapovan follows people whose choices decide a kingdom's fate and who never once get to make those choices freely.

It is set in 16th-century Gujarat and Rajputana, in a world where a festival and a forge are not separate things, and where a marriage can be worth four thousand soldiers. Nothing here is simple. Everything costs something.

At its centre is a love that is never spoken aloud not because the two of them are afraid, but because they are needed elsewhere, by people who cannot spare them. They do not feel weak because of the restraint. They draw strength from it.

If you read and loved the scope of Amish Tripathi or the court intrigue of Ashwin Sanghi, this is written for you.

If you are willing, comment here or message me, and tell me which format you'd like. Thank you for reading this far.

Best Regards
Tvisha