In 1996 a bomb explodes in a crowded New Delhi marketplace. I am not giving anything away as the bomb detonates in the first pages of the book. Although a dozen or so people die, two of them, a pair of young brothers we will get to know very well, the book is not nearly so tragic as you might expect. Almost as if we are following bits of shrapnel from their emplacement in the exploding car through their airborne trajectory, the stories of everyone involved on the fateful day are observed as they hurtle through space and time. Mahajan's skill is to mix comedy and pathos in near equal proportions. The bomb makers make bad bombs that fail to go off and we can feel their frustration. One would-be bomber is all talk, no action, and cites Ghandi as a supporter, before landing in prison where he goes from all talk to complete silence. The father of the murdered brothers is so self-obsessed that our sympathy for his plight wains. A childhood friend of the two boys killed in the blast survives with comparatively minor injuries only to face a lifetime of deep discrimination for being born Muslim. The characters, like the plot, surge and sink on the chaotic sea of modern India. Being ably led through India marketplaces, dining rooms, bomb maker hideouts, and the inevitable ups and downs of what we all call life is why this book is worth reading. If you have the opportunity to listen to the audio book, the reader is exceptionally good at distinguishing a dozen beautiful Indian accents.
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