Book excerpt: ‘The history of women is left to us in folklore and tradition, in faintly-remembered lullabies and the half-forgotten touch of a grandmother’s hand, in recipes, ancestral jewellery, and cautionary tales about the limits of a woman’s empowerment. Mountain Echoes describes the Kumaoni way of life through the eyes of four highly-talented and individualistic women. Their recollections mirror a social universe that no longer exists, that has been dissolved in the mainstream of modernization and urbanization, of democracy, education and emancipation. Shivani, Tare Pande, Jiya, and Shakuntala Pande were all alive and well when this book was first published in 1998. In the midst of all the rapid and unrecognizable charge that surrounds us, their stories and their memories are distilled into an even more precious evocation of times past.’