Neel is a journalist drawn to war zones. It's in these spaces riven by conflict that his sense of dislocation, of not belonging anywhere, drops off him. At all other times, he's in quest, seeking solid ground: a home. It is a pursuit that takes him halfway across the world to America and back to the urban dystopia of Delhi, headlong into fleeting relationships that glimmer with the promise of shelter
Is Neel—haunted by the past and exiled from the present—likely to find what he desires in ephemeral associations? Will he chance upon the quiet anchorage he seeks in short-term dwellings and the objects he gathers within them-coffee percolators and rugs, posters and penknives? Or is the home he so badly wants elsewhere? Not in the noise and blood and lust outside, but in some sanctuary within?
Our Friends in Good Houses—renowned journalist Rahul Pandita's first novel-takes a precarious double journey, into the world and into the heart.
Vulnerable, provocative and astute, it is one of the finest explorations yet of the long road to a place called home.
Review
'In this tingling meditation on impermanence, I heard many things, things denied to the ear: nourishment, need, aloneness, the heart's acoustic of spade moving soil, hitting stone.'
Sumana Roy
'Rahul Pandita's unhurried novel reminds us that a good book is the original "immersive reality." He ventures where only a novel can-inside the mind of a character-to explore what happens when a man longs for mooring. What are we to do when everything worth living for, like love and home, bears the heaviness of permanence, while the only life worth living feels light and nomadic? The novel is addictive, sagely ...'
Manu Joseph
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