In Maji’s novel, readers encounter the many enchanted worlds of uranium mining in central India. Here, the Indian state and Adivasi communities classify and understand nuclear materials, processes and institutions as exceptional or mundane in distinctive ways. We argue that in these encounters, choices are shaped by the spiritual and material continuities of Adivasi life and political and cultural forces of mainstream India arising from extractive economies, modernity & postcolonial conditions.

From Cold War extraction to post-mining remediation, this paper examines how uranium mining in East Germany – locally embedded in global power structures – shaped everyday life, regional identity and long-term futures. It traces how people live with ambivalences and radioactive afterlives, and how knowledge, memory and nuclear heritage circulate across generations. By revealing spatio-temporal entanglements, it demonstrates why nuclear legacies demand justice, responsibility, future visions.