A Hundred Little Flames - (a novel)
Shenoy PreetiPreeti Shenoy is one of India’s top-selling novelists, writing very successful commercial fiction and, more recently, non-fiction. She writes fluently, using simple language, and it’s easy to see how she has built up an enormous following, being described as 100 most influential celebrities in India by Forbes.
The story of this book spins out in rural Kerala where young Ayan is sent on his father’s orders to keep his cantankerous grandfather company, having just lost his job. We gradually find out that the real reason for which Ayan’s father, Jairaj, does this is so he can move his father out of the ancestral home in order to sell it for a tidy sum. What the domineering Jairaj does not bargain for, however, is that his son turns out to have a great deal more heart than he has and is also slowly developing a backbone that will help him stand up to his father when the time is right. As Ayan’s relationship with Gopal Shankar, his grandfather, develops, he begins to reassess his own priorities towards his career, friendships, and relationships. The biggest lesson he learns is that true love, when it comes, is life’s most precious commodity and one not to be trifled with.
Shenoy develops these two characters beautifully, making both men completely credible. Gopal Shankar, in particular, is the elderly relative all of us have in our families - grouchy and opinionated but, in this case, we are treated to a wonderful back story that explains exactly why this is the case.
This book is partially the story of elder abuse, an increasingly urgent one, not just in India but even in developed countries and one cannot help but cheer a nice young man, like Ayan, who refuses to stand by and allow such a travesty to happen.
The other, more meditative, sub-plot of lost love is equally moving, and Shenoy is commended for daring to explore the realm of love between older people and society’s usual scorn and revulsion towards such a prospect.
(Jaishree Misra has written 8 novels published by Penguin and Harper Collins. Her first book of nonfiction A House For Mr. Misra is about the two years she spent trying to build a house on a Kerala beach.)