3 Zaika Mansion - Gouri Dange

 I really think Gouri is among the finest fiction writers we have. She has this capacity to tell a complex, layered story with great economy in a manner that everyone understands what the story is about, what it is trying to say, who the characters are and where it is set. Not many writers can claim to leave all these elements in the reader's minds - they may stun and shock and awe but nothing remains.

So the story begins in an old Muslim household surviving on past glory living in 3 Zaika Mansion. Two brothers, one on each floor, live in the old building, with their aged mother and their broken families. The children of the older brother Naseer - Shaheen, Ehsaan, Ayesha and Farhan grow up in a conflicted atmosphere where their mother's relative comes and plonks himself in their home, and slowly starts claiming more space than required, instigating the mother to take decisions that further split the family. He manages to put their father in a sanitorium for the mentally ill, probably has an affair with the mother, gets Shaheen married off to a demanding family where she is treated like a typical daughter-in-law. The family disintegrates - Ayesha commits suicide, Ehsaan leaves, Shaheen has a terrible marriage and her only child Juhi starts blaming her for her father's accident and distances herself. Alone, Shaheen finds solace and family in the most unlikely of places. Lovely ending. Someone should make a movie or a web series out of this.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. Good going Gouri.