The First Naad (The Panchanad Chronicles)

Where Knowledge Remembers.

Above the Beas River, in the foothills of Punjab, stands Panchanad Veda Sthal High School. Its admission exam is the hardest in the district. Its brick corridors have not changed since the British left. And nobody can quite explain why so many of its students grow up to do extraordinary things. "The air there is different," the uncles say, and laugh, and then stop laughing.

Aarav Mehta has just won a place there. He writes everything down: patterns, timelines, strange circular symbols he cannot stop drawing and cannot explain. In his first term he finds three others who don't fit either. Veer, who has more courage than money. Kavya, who feels the mood of a room before anyone speaks. Meera, who notices the small things everyone else walks past.

Together with a teacher who asks more questions than she answers, and a brown street dog who has adopted the school as his own, they begin to sense that the hill their school stands on is not just a hill. That it remembers things the world has forgotten.

And that some of what it remembers has been waiting a very long time to be found.

Rooted in Hindu mythology and Vedic philosophy, The First Naad opens The Panchanad Chronicles, an adventure series set in contemporary India.