Cover Design: Three Days of Sunshine

Needed: a cover design for a book: a collection of short stories in English set in India entitled “Three Days of Sunshine”. There are nine stories in the collection. I would like the cover design to convey moods from the first story – Three Days of Sunshine. The central character is a seventy-something old man who, accompanied only by his young nephew, stands down a blood-thirsty mob chasing a defenceless Muslim family. This old man showed immense promise as a youth: he studied engineering abroad back in the 1950’s when such a thing was rare; he worked in yet another country and had a global career ahead of him when circumstances tied him down to a meaningless existence in a small north Indian town. A sudden turn of events draws out hidden strengths he had thought lost. The story unfolds over three days when rioting mobs run wild in the town. The old man steps up for one last time in his life to take control. He alone – loose cotton clothes flapping in the hot breeze and a menacing Colt Peacemaker in his hand – stands between the mob and a cowering family. Through force of personality – something he had forgotten he possessed – he subdues the mob. Later he takes control of the entire locality and brings it to order. Then, when the rioting is over, he reverts to his colourless existence, doomed to count out his last days in oblivion. The old man’s nephew is the narrator (as if in a first-person account) of all the stories in the collection. This guy is a post-doctoral research fellow in a top Indian business school. He had travelled widely in India and abroad; he is fit and athletic; he loves the outdoors and the good things in life; girls keep falling for him regularly; he is intelligent and has a decent career in academia ahead of him – in short, he’s an eligible bachelor and gallant man-about-town. He has a golden heart and is a sucker for a sob-story – he can never refuse anyone’s appeal for his help. Deadline: I need the design by 28th April, 2014.