After a bomb blast rips through Sikandar Chowk Park, Allahabad, killing fifty-seven people, a journalist pieces together the lives of eleven of the dead from the heap of mutilated bodies. Among them a self-effacing music teacher who won't go abroad on a fellowship because of his family of stray dogs; an Anglo-Indian widow coping with the knowledge of her husband's infidelity thirty-five years ago; a precocious 'problem' child; a firebrand feminist confronting the sexual misdemeanours of her friend's husband; and a young dalit woman who defies her marriage and her society and enters into a relationship with an unemployed Brahmin boy - all ordinary people leading ordinary lives in a quintessential mofussil Indian township. Neelum Saran Gour's vibrant prose conjures up a multitude of characters involved in a maze of relationships, and the dynamics of events which propel them to Sikandar Chowk Park on the fateful day. In the process, she crafts a tale at once poignant and witty which ingeniously addresses contemporary issues of communal and caste prejudices, bigotry and faith, forgiveness and redemption.
- ISBN13 9780144000210
- Publish Date 1 June 2018 (first published 16 August 2005)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 26 November 2021
- Publish Country IN
- Publisher Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd
- Imprint Penguin Books India
- Format Paperback
- Pages 296
- Language English