A STORY—a work of fiction—is never as straight as a train track.

Thirty-four years before Salman Rushdie was stabbed on stage at a literary event in New York, he wrote a story about miraculous things in the village of Titlipur.

In that Indian village, hundreds of butterflies appear, flying around and landing everywhere. The locals believe the butterflies are spirits of Bibiji, a young woman who died 120 years ago. At the time of her