There is a story that Santanu Das, professor of English literature at King's College London, relays over an email interview, that if not immediately tugs at your heartstrings, might painfully stay with you. It's one that was shared by Punjabi novelist Mohan Kahlon. "Two of his great-uncles served in Mesopotamia [during the First World War]: one perished there, the other died on the voyage itself.

His grandmother went mad - clinically mad with grief - and their house in the village in Punjab came to be known as 'pagal-khana'," Das shares. Kahlon, who has also written a novel (Vahe Gaye Pani) about this, may have rendered this otherwise, haunting account to fiction. But Das brings it alive in a voluminous new title, India, Empire, and First World War Culture: Writings, Images, and Songs (Cambridge University Press), which recently released in the UK, and is available for pre-order in India.