Who is Ka? wonders the giant eagle as he encounters this name at the end of a Vedic hymn, hidden in the foliage of the tree Rauhina. Ka is the secret name of Prajapati, the progenitor from whom the thirty-three gods and countless humans descend. Soon, gods and humans would no longer care for him and would almost forget him. Ka means "Who?" and is the final question one asks when all other questions have been posed. The remarkable achievement is that Ka is both a scholarly investigation and a novel at the same time. It is something truly innovative, and that is so rare in the world of books that it should be celebrated, wrote Salman Rushdie.