The Association of Small Bombs

January 25, 2016
The disintegration of the lives of both Hindus and Muslims affected by a bomb blast at Lajpat Market in Delhi in 1996 is the subject of Mahajan’s second novel (after Family Planning). In the aftermath of the violence we follow not only a Muslim boy who survives, Mansoor Ahmed, but his parents; the Hindu parents of Mansoor’s two friends killed in the blast; the bomb maker, named “Shockie”; and several activists who seek justice after the tragedy. The lives of Mansoor’s parents and the dead brothers’ mother and father unravel, their careers and marriages frayed by grief and anxiety. Mansoor tries to concentrate on his studies in the States, but returns to India and falls in with a charismatic activist called Ayub, soon to be unhinged by a breakup with his upper-class girlfriend. Mahajan’s talent is in conveying the sense that the world is gray, not black-and-white, and he accomplishes this by weaving together the evolving motives and passions of his characters so intricately that in the end we see each as culpable, and human. In his searing story, lives (and life itself) are subjected to close inspection and at times discombobulation.

The ordinary humanity in these characters--before, during, and after tragedy besets them--is the strength of this audiobook, and of Neil Shah's narration. A bomb goes off in a Indian market square, killing two Hindu boys. It leaves their parents and their young Muslim friend who survived the attack to wonder why fate chose them. The bomber, whose story we also hear, is a Kashmiri separatist, and the country's long politics forms the story's backdrop. But Mahajan's themes expand well beyond those borders. Shah eschews the melodramatic, instead leaving the room needed to hear the wailing of mothers, the confusion of fathers, and the disenfranchisement of youth. In "keeping it real," Shah ensures that listeners connect with Mahajan's story. K.W. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine