Crowfall (Penguin)

Anima burns her diaries which record the long period of grief and mourning that followed Siddharth's death in the Bombay riots. Bold lines of black on a blank canvas lead Ashesh to start a new painting. Sharada sings her own composition in the noon raag Shuddh Sarang at an evening concert. Crowfall unobtrusively follows an eventful year in the lives of a group of friends - a journalist, a teacher, a musician and three painters in Mumbai. Like the cycle of seasons, love and violence and heartbreak and joy pursue each other and it is friendship that provides uncompromising solace amidst the ravening pressures of life today in the big city. Steeped in sensuous detail, Crowfall takes in art and identity, music and communal madness and the clash of the old and the new to etch a finely nuanced portrait of contemporary Mumbai.