Karan Mahajan
Not that I read a lot of fiction that can be called optimistic in subject or outlook, but this one was particularly depressing. I would even call it cruel because the insights on human behaviour are sharp and used effectively.. Ironically, I am not being negative about it, it’s just the way it is.
The book begins with an explosion, and then it simmers, before boiling towards another. That’s as much as I will spoil it for you. The explosion was not even something major, on a relative scale – “the death toll would be only thirteen dead with thirty injured — a small bomb. A typical bomb. A bomb of small consequences.”
But think about it, after the media makes a few meal tickets out of it in the next few days, after the government has done their song and dance, and after the NGOs have raised their point (again) what happens to the lives of the thirty injured, the families of the thirteen dead, and what goes on in the minds of the those who planted the bomb? This book is exactly that. (more…)