‘The Lights of Shantinagar’: A heartwarming novel about the things people do out of and for love
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Indian families are no strangers to overly theatrical displays of both brimming affection and curt abhorrence, even as cracks continue simmering beneath the surface – destructive cracks that threaten to shatter the carefully curated portrait of familial perfection into a million little pieces.
What binds the members of this familial ecosystem together, much like electrons suspended in a quantum state, is an unruly and overwhelming force: one that exerts its pull upon them, compelling them towards acts of tenderness, sacrifice and even absurdity they might not otherwise think of committing. This force, as inexplicable as it is inescapable, is love.
Nidhi Arora’s debut novel, The Lights of Shantinagar, captures the events that transpire in not one but many such families, their lives intricately intertwined by their residence in the middle-class, anything-but-ordinary town of Shantinagar.
With the arrival of Sumi – Arora’s ambitious, zealous and bright-eyed protagonist – as a newlywed bride at the Kapoors’ residence, events are set into motion that compel the residents of Shantinagar, and Sumi herself, to confront whether their perception of reality is truly restricted to what meets the eye, or whether, much like the world of quantum physics that Sumi inhabits, two seemingly contradictory truths can coexist until the moment they are forced...