THE WORD THAT MADE HIM AN OUTSIDER: JAYANTA BORA’S THE LYNDOHH CHRONICLES: THE DKHAR EXPLORES IDENTITY, MEMORY, AND BELONGING

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM – Some novels tell a story. Others ask a question that lingers long after the final page.

In The Lyndohh Chronicles: The Dkhar, author Jayanta Bora explores a question that resonates far beyond the hills of Northeast India:

What happens when a place you love is also the place that taught you what it means to be an outsider?

Published on 28 May 2026, The Dkhar is the opening volume of The Lyndohh Chronicles, an ambitious literary trilogy that follows its protagonist, Lyndohh, across continents, cultures, and decades of memory. Beginning in Shillong, Meghalaya, the narrative ultimately extends through Bombay, the United States, Kazakhstan, South Africa, Thailand, and the United Kingdom, tracing a deeply personal search for identity and belonging.

At the heart of the novel lies a single Khasi word: Dkhar.

Traditionally used to describe an outsider, stranger, settler, or simply someone who is “not us”, the word becomes the emotional and philosophical centre of the narrative. Rather than attempting to define the term, Bora examines what happens when a person is shaped by a label they did not choose and how that label quietly influences relationships, memory, self-worth, and the search for home.

The novel begins with Lyndohh living in Southsea on England’s southern coast. A mysterious sequence of numbers, 10766, which has followed him across countries and decades, reappears and sets in motion an unexpected return to Shillong. What follows is not simply a homecoming, but an excavation of memory.

Shillong itself emerges as one of the novel’s most compelling presences. The city is not merely a backdrop but a living character, rendered through its rain-soaked streets, pine-covered hills, school corridors, markets, music, churches, tea stalls, and shifting social landscape. Through Lyndohh’s recollections, Bora captures both the intimacy and complexity of growing up in a place that simultaneously nurtures and alienates.

Written in a cinematic, memory-driven style, The Dkhar moves fluidly across time, blending humour, friendship, loss, adolescence, migration, addiction, longing, and reconciliation. The result is a novel that speaks not only to readers familiar with Shillong, but to anyone who has wrestled with questions of identity, exile, belonging, or return.

Although this is Bora’s debut work of fiction, the trilogy represents the culmination of a five-year writing journey that began during the global pandemic. What started as fragments of memory gradually expanded into six interconnected volumes spanning three parts.

Reflecting on the novel, Bora notes:

“This book does not attempt to decode the word. It asks what happens when you are named by it.”

As readers increasingly seek literature that bridges cultures and explores identity in nuanced ways, The Dkhar arrives as a distinctive contribution to contemporary literary fiction. It offers not only a story of one man and one city, but a meditation on the places, names, and memories that shape all of us.

The Lyndohh Chronicles: The Dkhar is available worldwide through Amazon in hardcover, paperback, and digital editions.

About the Author

Jayanta Bora is a global People & Culture strategist, organisational development practitioner, educator, and writer. Having lived and worked across India, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Thailand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, his writing draws upon themes of memory, identity, migration, culture, and belonging. The Lyndohh Chronicles is his debut literary trilogy.

Media Contact:

Jayanta Bora

Email: jbora1@yahoo.com

United Kingdom