Description
About The Book :
Every housing society in India has three things: a WhatsApp group that never sleeps, an uncle who knows everyone’s business, and one flat that nobody talks about.
When a light comes on in a flat that should be empty, Abhishek, a data guy who trusts numbers more than people, goes up with a torch, a cricket bat and half his society. What he finds behind that door sends him on a year-long journey across eleven Indian cities, from a Kolkata para to a Mumbai chawl and finally to the ghats of Varanasi, with his ever-practical wife Shweta and their ten-year-old daughter Sammy, who notices everything.
The Lights We Leave On… is a collection of eleven interconnected stories, each built around one emotion, set in the housing societies, paras, chawls, pols and mohallas where strangers become family, whether they like it or not. Along the way, you’ll meet:
• A steel tiffin that appears outside a feverish stranger’s door at 2 a.m. every night. Nobody admits to leaving it.
• A coffee filter with a thirty-two-year-old dent, and a secret nobody on the street will talk about.
• Two brothers in a Mumbai chawl who haven’t spoken in twelve years, and the ten-year-old who carries their messages at ₹10 a trip.
• A widow in Fort Kochi who keeps receiving letters from Muscat, addressed to her husband, who died six years ago.
• A boatman on the Ganga who has waited sixty-two years to be paid two rupees.
Eleven stories. Eleven cities. Eleven emotions. One family.
Warm, funny and full of food, bickering and unexpected kindness, this is a book for readers of Ruskin Bond and Sudha Murty, for anyone who has ever been fed by an aunty they barely knew, and for everyone who still keeps a light on for someone.
About The Author :
Ab… is the name Abhishek Singh uses for his fiction. By day, he is a data professional who has spent most of his working life turning numbers into stories for businesses. He is also working on his second fiction book and his first technical book – “Ultimate SQL Playbook”.
The Lights We Leave On… is his first work of fiction, and his first attempt at turning people into stories instead. He lives in Hyderabad with his family, in a housing society with a very active WhatsApp group.
You can write to him at ab@abenterpriseindia.org.
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