Murli Melwani’s Beyond the Rainbow wins International Impact Book Award, giving the global Sindhi story its literary due
Melwani’s book is a collection of short stories that blend fiction, memoir, sociology and humour, tracing life across continents. From Hong Kong and Taiwan, to other parts of the world, Melwani’s characters are drawn from Sindhis he met while travelling across the globe for his business
Murli Melwani, a former English literature professor-turned-businessman-turned author, has just scooped the International Impact Book Award: Contemporary Fiction-Literary Fiction for his book Beyond the Rainbow. The recognition puts the Hindu Sindhi community front and centre. Displaced by the Partition of 1947 and scattered globally, the Hindu Sindhis became entrepreneurs, while their deeper identity and losses went untold.
Melwani’s book is a collection of short stories that blend fiction, memoir, sociology and humour, tracing life across continents. From Hong Kong and Taiwan, to other parts of the world, Melwani’s characters are drawn from Sindhis he met while travelling across the globe for his business. Through stories rooted in the lives of real Sindhis, the collection explores themes of cultural loss, global mobility, economic resilience and identity, while offering strangers a first look at how Sindhis conduct business.
“Sindhis are largely misrepresented as being flashy, owning big cars… You know, in India, there’s a saying, ‘If you see a Sindhi and a snake, then beat the Sindhi and spare the snake.’ My stories show the other side of Sindhi nature. I have observed Sindhis as hard-working and enterprising. The older generation misses Sindh and what a paradise it was. I felt that that should reach a wider audience,” says Melwani.
In Beyond the Rainbow, each short story is set in a different country or city, based on Melwani’s long years in Taiwan and travels across Asia and the Americas. Writing a Fairytale, which is set in Chile, sees how family always comes first for the diaspora; while Water on a Hot Plate sheds light on stories of young Sindhis who speak the languages of the place they grew up in, but not their mother tongue.
Murli Melwani
To push these stories forward, Melwani nominated his book for the International Impact Book Award. These awards are a global program recognising and celebrating authors whose works have a significant positive influence on readers and communities. For Melwani, who has written other short story collections, this award brings validation. “It’s encouragement for me. Books are my first love… You know, every writer needs vanity. So, when I received the certificate, I printed it. I haven’t hung it up anywhere, but it’s kept with my books,” he laughs.
Melwani’s life mirrors the arc of his fiction. Raised in Shillong, he taught English literature before being forced to pivot into the export business at the age of 40. He first set himself and his family up in Taiwan, travelling across Asia, Latin America and North America. Eventually, he moved to the US. Only later did he write seriously. But books were always part of Melwani’s world.
Before he ran a bookshop in Shillong along with being a professor, as a 16-year-old he spent ample time at the library. He tells us a story of how he hid from the security guard and spent the night reading. His only worry: How will I get out of the library in the morning? “But this is what books do to me,” he says.
You will find such colourful narrations in his short stories too. But Melwani’s character-driven fiction also teaches. It’s a collection that you can pick up story by story, with each narrative standing alone yet connecting through cultural motifs. “A lot of non-Sindhis have been taken by the narratives, too. When I first thought of the book, it was my natural and emotional reaction to how Sindhis are. But gradually, it also came to show how Sindhis carry on their business,” says Melwani.
As the award has brought momentum, Melwani is now working on a memoir, and will showcase his move from Taiwan to Dallas and how he assimilated into life in the US. “All writing is rewriting… so that’s what I am doing now,” he says.
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