The Booking: A Novel of Time, Debt and the Sea

By Chandan Kumar

Because sometimes the sea promotes you before the papers do...
At 2:04 AM, Arjun Chatterjee missed his ship. He also missed his MMD exam, his future, and the last chance to become the man he promised his father he'd be. Then he took his grandfather's remedy. One drop buys you the day you should have had. One day passed, one day owed. The exam? Cleared. The ship? Waiting. The debt? Due at midnight. But the formula remembers 1944. It remembers Captain T. Wren, the RAMC surgeon who made it so soldiers could forget the worst day of their lives. And Wren wants a new body. A new war. A new sea. Now Arjun is Second Mate on MV Eastern Light with 300,000 tons of crude, a crew that's starting to forget why they sail, and a debt that's calling in every favor since 1971. To save his ship, Arjun will have to pay for a war he didn't fight, a day he didn't live, and a future he hasn't met yet. The tide is coming in.
The ledger is closing.
And the only thing more dangerous than missing your ship...
...is catching it.
A bureaucratic horror story, a nautical ghost tale, and a love letter to everyone who's ever refreshed a government website at 2 AM.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H26K5HCW
• ISBN13: 9798258696427
• Release Date: May 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.27 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.5" x 8.5"