A love affair between two men in Darjeeling comes to a violent end in this unfocused tale of heartbreak, secrecy – and the separate lives they return to in Mumbai

Mahesh Rao’s third novel tells the story of two young men, Neville and Pavan, as their paths cross and recross in the years preceding India’s 2018 decriminalisation of homosexuality. It is a rather melancholy tale, in which the sky is always grey and the mood is always despondent, where secrecy and shame are the prevailing emotions, and violence is never far away. As gay men in pre-2018 India, Neville and Pavan exist in an in-between world. There are dating apps and hookups galore, but there is also open hostility and the threat of prosecution. Tempering this bleakness is Rao’s pleasingly wry humour and sharply satirical eye, which he casts over this period of cultural flux. The narrative is split into two sections – Darjeeling in 2014 and Mumbai in 2018 – proceeding in short chapters that alternate between Neville’s and Pavan’s points of view.

The story begins as a landslide blocks the routes to and from the Golden Peaks Hotel, a subpar establishment in the hills of Darjeeling where Pavan works and where Neville, along with his haughty mother Audrey and servile family friend Lorna, is a guest. With little else to do, and emboldened by the novel circumstances, the two men strike up a furtive romance. “[Pavan’s] sense of the world being held in suspension had continued to grow. The hotel was cut off. Rations were low. Routines had changed. There seemed to be a fated quality about his encounter with Neville.”

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