We grew up hearing stories of the quest for an independent India, of the atrocities of the Raj, the crack of the lathis on protestors’ backs, the arrests, the hunger strikes, and the stubborn courage of our forefathers who fought so we could govern ourselves and live in peace. But what if their efforts had failed? What if the British never left? Vaishnavi Patel’s Ten Incarnations of Rebellion brings forth a narrative rooted in these very questions. It follows Kalki Divekar, a child of Kingston—a city the Britishers built on the ashes of Bombay—and the journey she goes on to take down the empire from within.
An entry into India’s growing Science Fiction Fantasy scene, it sits apart in its context—not entirely futuristic, not entirely fantasy—it serves as a blend of an alternate timeline, mythology, and historical fiction. Patel, known for Kaikeyi and Goddess of The River, expands her home ground of mythological retellings and presents a story that serves as an answer to the “what ifs” of the struggle for independence.
Patel’s narrative unfolds effortlessly as it blends history and thrill with mythology. Structured as ten chapters that run parallel to the ten incarnations of Vishnu, the novel charts the evolution of Kalki from a school-going 19-year-old into a figure forced to shoulder the weight of rebellion. Her early defiance is impulsive and intimate, shaped by anger, surveillance, and the quiet humiliations under an unbroken empire. As Kalki recruits her friends Fauzia and Yashu into the movement, these small acts of resistance begin to gather momentum, demanding strategy, sacrifice, and increasingly difficult choices. Patel’s writing, while being quite straightforward, builds an atmosphere thick with unease and adrenaline. As Kalki’s conviction hardens into calculation, act by act, the youthful idealism gives way to the burdens of leadership, propelling the story towards an explosive finish.
Throughout the book, Patel threads in undercurrents that explore a variety of concerns—from the persistence of caste hierarchies to the presence of queer love—with a deftness that feels organic rather than tokenistic. These themes don’t serve as side quests but rather as reminders that dismantling the empire does not automatically undo internal forms of division and violence. Patel resists the temptation to frame the freedom struggle in absolutes or easy moral victories. Instead, resistance is shown as something that corrodes even as it empowers, forcing its participants to confront the ethical costs of their actions. The novel repeatedly returns to questions of violence, the choosing of lesser evils, and the uneasy arithmetic of “hurting a few to save hundreds”, asking who gets included in the calculations and who is quietly written off. In doing so, it suggests that revolution may be necessary, but it is never clean—and its consequences linger long after the moment of defiance has passed.