Diwali in Muzaffarnagar

by Tanuj Solanki

Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar 2019

Muzaffarnagar, the infamous north Indian town that is a byword for unrest, and where skirmishes are prone to break out ever so often. This is a place where teenage love and friendships are tested by the violence that threatens to erupt at the slightest provocation. A town that always pulls you back into its ways, no matter how cosmopolitan the city has made you.

In 'Diwali in Muzaffarnagar' - Tanuj Solanki's new book of short stories after 'Neon Noon' - young men and women straddle the past and the present, the metropolis and the small town, and also the parallel needs of life: solitude and family.

Genres: India, Short Stories, Fiction, Contemporary

232 pages, Paperback

First published January 25, 2018

About the author

Tanuj Solanki is the author of four works of fiction. His debut novel Neon Noon was shortlisted for the Tata Lit Live First Book Award 2016. His second, the short-story collection titled Diwali in Muzaffarnagar, won the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar in 2019. His novel The Machine is Learning was longlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature 2020 and was listed by The Hindu as among the 10 best fiction books of 2020. Manjhi's Mayhem , his latest novel, was also longlisted for the JCB Prize 2023.

Reviews

[Rakhi Dalal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Solanki’s second published book “Diwali in Muzaffarnagar” was one of the five books in the list of books to look forward to in January 2018 as anticipated by Daily Post along with the like of “Why I am a Hindu” by Shashi Tharoor. The book has lived up to this anticipation. Solanki’s writing, articulate in expression, shows a remarkable penchant for clarity, bringing forth the unspoken and mostly unknown, verities of small-town India. But it neither criticizes nor idealizes the small town or its aspirations. It invites you to sit down and look at the life - the ordinary life of such a town and its people, for exactly what it is, no more and no less. To those coming from small towns, the stories seem to reverberate with the rhythm with which their lives have existed in their environs, putting before them a mirror whose reflection they cannot escape. It explores the memories that haunt, the interactions which appear transient in the face of unexceptional realities, deftly portrays the thoughts fraught with the feelings of guilt and lay bare the conventional notions embedded in the psyche. What really strikes about Solanki’s writing here is the austerity of the narrative which goes admirably well with the depiction of everyday life in its starkness.

There are eight stories in this collection. The characters of these stories have their world views defined in the knowledge of their background. Though sometimes they struggle to come out of the shackles of the unconsciously held notions which stifle them or to experience a sense of liberation, sometimes they burn with an ache to find their place in their family or with friends. In a town ridden with the uncertainty of unrest, the youngsters desperate to seek a way out, those already relocated trying to fare through life on their own terms; it is the familial ties which still connect them with their roots.

The first story "The Sad Unknowability of Dilip Singh", tells the story of a struggling writer who commits suicide. Metafictional in nature, the story is an attempt to understand the obscure mind of an author.

“He was writing short stories now – stories that seldom had more than two characters who met each other for the first and the last time in them……..I felt that he didn’t have anything substantial to write about, and was therefore writing about the transitory nature of human encounters – how we grow intimate with strangers and then part without much ado. While this template persisted in general, the settings and the tones and timelines changed dramatically from story to story, and the intensity of connection that the two characters felt for each other also varied substantially.”

Most of the stories in this collection have two characters. Solanki delves into the fleeting nature of human encounters in all of his stories and only the settings, tones and timelines change from story to story. In a manner, the first story sets the tone of other stories to come in this collection.

“My Friend Daanish” deals with the perplexed emotions of a Hindu teenage boy when confronted with a skirmish episode involving his Muslim friend and how the episode comes back to haunt him many years after leaving the town. In “B’s First Solo Trip”, the protagonist undertakes a solo excursion to explore a world unknown. Here Solanki nimbly portrays the transient disposition of protagonist, in accordance with the circumstances, towards the girl (white- foreigner) he desires.

In “Diwali in Muzaffarnagar”, Tarun visits his home town for Diwali and in the events that unfold, finds himself under an obligation to help his family. What connect him with his family are not the traditions or rituals, but a sense of duty towards them. In “Compassionate Grounds”, Gunjan, living a far comfortable life in Delhi, comes home at his father’s death and struggles to make things work out for his mother. She realizes that even a glamorous and well off life in a metro, with a handsome and rich live-in partner, couldn’t imbue the feeling of belongingness in her life. Back in Muzaffarnagar, as she overcomes her inability to grieve, she also overcomes her feeling of homelessness and finally connects with her roots.

The story “Good People” has at its center a newly married couple from an average middle class family, where husband comes face to face with his unconsciously held conventional beliefs as the wife Taruna makes attempts to reconcile with an unfavorable situation back in her family. In this story, Taruna’s family offer assistance to an ailing old relative who once abused their daughter. The author here portrays the helplessness of the family in the name of culture and traditions.

“The Mechanics of Silence” is poetic in nature whereas “Reasonable Limits” is a six- page story in a single sentence. Both of these are more experimental in structure.

Five stars to this book because of author’s ingenuous approach which bestows the work with a kind of freshness that is stunning. This book is a must read for the Indian readers who long for a vivid literary treat. For the non-Indian readers, it is a perfect introduction to the life of people from a small town in India.

[Rajat Ubhaykar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diwali in Muzaffarnagar, Tanuj Solanki’s eminently readable collection of short stories, depicts subtle moments of conflict and crisis in the life of the aspiring small-town cosmopolitan perched between the fashionable progressiveness of the future and the pragmatic brutality of the past.

Muzaffarnagar, the town itself, largely remains in the shadow, but it maintains a constant, lurking presence. Muzaffarnagar in this book is a state of mind.

Most of Solanki’s characters are well-heeled, but not to a fault, and the tiny deprivations that mark the difference between middle-class lives in small-towns and metros is brought out well. Solanki is adept at evoking the pesky particularities of everyday life - money matters, the delicate question of dowry, government forms - and harnessing them to lend depth to his characters.

The writing is lucid and the stories well-crafted and relatable. Out of the eight stories featured in this collection, my favourites were Good People and B’s First Solo Trip. I would recommend Diwali in Muzaffarnagar to all millennials who, despite their protestations of modernity & open-mindedness, occasionally find themselves nursing the small-town in their soul.

[Mohit Parikh · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Since this review/article has been under-consideration forever, I am going ahead and publishing it here)

Young writers writing about characters their age are not looking back in time. They are not - because of the very nature of their construct (i.e. being young) - putting their experiences in a patent perspective, bundling them together in some safe (or provocative), agreed upon (or dismissed), definite (or fresh) context. Instead, after sifting through arrays of recently lived moments and conjuring stories out of those that pull them in, they ask the readers: do you think there is something in there? Can you see what I see? Is there sense?
Maybe that’s why writers writing about their times turn the gaze inwards more than others. And maybe that’s why narrators in Tanuj Solanki’s both books – the heartbreaking Neon Noon and the inventive Diwali in Muzaffarnagar – stay close to the central characters, observing microscopically sometimes what’s going on their minds and asking us if that is a reflection of their times.
Male or female, privileged or unprivileged, saintly or evil, wouldn’t a young person going through their Facebook feed pass judgments on others, feel happy, envious, sad, eventually unaffected – eventually reducing people to profiles? Wouldn’t they be more informed and sensitive to the plights of the other gender and thus be more sympathetic/empathetic? Wouldn’t they be jerking off guilt-free in toilets watching porn on their smartphones? Wouldn’t they be complaining about the drudgery of their corporate lives, of the ruthlessness of capitalism, and ironically enjoy the benefits of riding in Uber, buying organic fruits in air-conditioned malls, and reveling under IMAX domes? And wouldn’t they be nostalgic of the small-town life bubble that encapsulated them once, until they would complain about the lack of mobile apps to bypass the bureaucratic hassles, the neighbor’s apathy, the slow wifi that does not allow them to escape the small-town corporeality?
Not that that is the theme of Tanuj’s published works. Not that that is what the author has set out to show. But through author’s acute self-awareness of their work, this constraint has become a consistent, ever-present position of the narrators. It has been said of Tanuj’s characters that they are neither heroes nor villains; and that if they are not fully human neither they are ants. While such delineations can be by any writer alert to the human condition, still, it can be argued, for Tanuj, for any young writer writing of the young of their times, they are born out of constraint. In the lack of a historical view, can they say with confidence what is what?
Inward looking characters are self-absorbed and thereby are at unpeace. In Gertrud, Herman Hesse’s memoir-style meditation on youth and high art, he says, “Young people have many pleasures and many sorrows because they have only themselves to think of”. In Tanuj Solanki’s second book, Diwali in Muzaffarnagar, young people seem similarly fated: they think of themselves, their place in the New India, and are mired in many sorrows and pains, not especially because of their conditions (which are by no means dreadful).
The characters, going through the motions, are also in a state of constant departure: from places, from people, from passions. In that, they mirror writer’s own journeys in the twenties. The stories are set in Muzaffarnagar, the writer’s hometown, in Mumbai, where he works in an insurance firm, in Delhi, where his wife grew up, and in Diu, a tourist place close to his alma mater IIM Ahmedabad where he went for a quiet grad-trip.
While in Neon Noon, a young writer is nursing heartbreak in a metropolis; the Bachelor, a lone figure, rebelling Bartleby style (or at least desiring to); here he arrives mature, adjusted, and we see him grappling with his ties to the hinterland and home. He is an outsider at both the places. The debut novel (shortlisted, Anupam Kher Award, PILF) was praised for its character’s brusqueness. It resonated with the thinking young people who were unhappy with their selves for no single, affirmable, concise reason; who yearned for escape and yet were powerless: escape, yes, but where to?
Diwali in Muzaffarnagar continues these ruminations, if in somewhat stuttered and subdued manner. Through its eight stories, varying in form and matter, it does not indulge in a broad brushwork to delineate the millennials or the metropolitans or the misfits, though that’s what every single one of his young characters is. Nor is the book a socio-political commentary on the tragedies of Muzaffarnagar (as many readers assume it is because of the title). Rather, it is a personal gaze on the immediate, interspersed with humor, irony, and imagination in language.
The narrative is experimental: “Reasonable Limits” is a story in single sentence running for six pages, and “The Mechanics of Silence” a short prose poetry. But, instead of alienating readers such experiments here make stories more accessible. Accessibility though does not translate to comfort. The author doesn’t shy away from being in-your-face to readers who might feel ill at ease at the unsentimental depiction of tragedies. For instance, take these opening lines from ‘The Sad Unknowability of Dilip Singh’ (Finalist, DNA-OutofPrint Short Fiction Contest 2014):
“The never-to-be-famous writer Dilip Singh died of his own hand in the winter of two thousand and six. He was twenty-nine. His mother returned from her grocery rounds on the unfortunate day of his death and found him hanging from the ceiling fan, one of her plain widow's saris wrapped tightly around his strained neck.”
In other stories too the author uses this suddenness to great effects, such as in “My Friend Daanish” and the titular story “Diwali in Muzaffarnagar” which stands far above the rest.
All the stories combined seem to underscore youth’s learned apathies and casual indifference, their self-deception that keep them comforted and protected, their busyness with their work and chores that stop them short from asking real questions and pursuing meaningful action; and their travails, when the young do ask those questions, when they do indulge in pursuit of those meanings.
In an interview somewhere, evoking Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, the writer has stated that ‘consciousness is a curse’. Happiness eludes those who think, especially – one can say from the reading of his works - the young, who discover themselves in a large and largely indifferent universe and are concerned for their futures, grappling with their presents, while deciphering their pasts.
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[Anirban Nanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tanuj Solanki’s Diwali in Muzaffarnagar is a collection of 8 stories, which present eight faces of the small-town where most of the stories are set.

The first story, "The sad unknowability of Dilip Singh", is about a writer who committed suicide. We don’t know why he killed himself, but we know a thing or two about him. That he was a writer who never published anything, he went to Himalaya for years and soon after returning, killed himself by hanging. The reader is left to decide the reasons of the suicide. Any aspiring writer will relate to the initial attempts of the said writer. And at times, I was nodding as I read the sentences, and I felt sad. I realised that it is not so much about the death of the writer but the continuous conflicts of a writer trying to express himself and how intense that feeling itself is. Sometimes, the process of breaking down something and convert it to a work of art is more emotional than the emotion of the work itself. And how we never get to know them. Solanki didn’t hesitate to talk about this and he shows that a writing about writing can be exciting and revealing.

The next story "My friend Danish" which has also been published in Catapult as "I Once Had a Muslim Friend" is about two teens growing up in a small town. How societal norms about teens make them realise about their positions, their worth, their genders and religions is deftly portrayed here. The story not only shows the existing hypocrisy in our society about communal harmony but also points at how seriously our society takes adolescence and its confusion. Small details about our way of perceiving Life keeps the writing engaging all the way. Solanki’s observations are brutal, he asks the difficult questions that we try to avoid. "Good People", the longest and probably the best story in the collection continuously draws our attention to such uncomfortable questions. Newly married Taruna and Ankush love and understand each other in a heartwarming way. But Taruna's childhood and consequently her life is shadowed with a scar. As they try to understand each other, their relationship gets complicated during a trip to Muzaffarnagar, to Taruna's hometown on the occasion of Holi. The end is shocking. I felt helpless. I drank a glass of water. Then I mentally congratulated the author for the perfect execution of the story, for thoroughly justifying every action of the characters. In a painfully funny way, the name of the story is "Good People".

Some of the characters in the book are recurring. In the final story Compassionate Grounds, Gunjan, who previously appeared in My Friend Danish is trying to grasp the grief of the death of her father. The most memorable passage of the story is where "Gunjan found herself thinking of her lack of grief while squatting in the toilet. She had already shat; she was lingering. It was then that it hit her – the smell. The smell of her own shit. […] The man had died and she was alive and here it was , the connection. Her insides, her intestines, her body – all a testament." One of the best passages I have read in the book. Solanki’s tone varies with the need of the stories. Sometimes they are casually detached, sometimes they are self-reflective (Take "Reasonable Limits" for example. The narrative runs restlessly till the end.) No one is a hero or a villain in Solanki’s stories; everyone is justified in his/her own ways and we are left to wonder about the complexities of lives, even if they are lived in a small-town.

[Himanshu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is it tough to write a collection of good short stories in an Indian landscape? Yes, very, because this seems to be something a lot of budding authors like to do. There are a lot of such collections sitting on the shelves of Indian bookstores, but this one stands out by a mile!

The honesty with which each story is crafted is discernible as at the end of each, the reader is left with a distinct emotion that binds them to that story and doesn't interfere with the next one. I feel proud as a reader that such quality writing is finding itself on more and more Indian shelves which is the need of the hour. Looking forward to reading 'Neon Noon' now!

[Parth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first came across writer Tanuj Solanki through an interview published in The Hindu, where his comment about preferring Kafka to Karan Johar, was just the kind of humor I needed. I immediately ordered his anthology collection "Diwali In Muzaffarnagar" (the title being a major attraction) and as I finish reading this brilliantly written work, I am sure this is not the last time I will be picking up a book by Mr. Solanki. Dark, constantly engaging, brutally honest and diverse, "Diwali in Muzaffarnagar" is a collection not to be missed.

I won't lie. As much as I would like to pretend, a 'relatable' book would anytime have a place closer to my heart more than any canonical piece however great the latter might be. So when I read about rich families spending time in their private cottage near the countryside, I am unable to engage as deeply as I might want to with a book of that kind. As someone who grew up not far from Muzaffarnagar (in a town Dehradun [which however is not as 'small' as it used to be]), I felt like I have known all the people in the story, have grown up with them, laughed with them, attended tuition with them on my Activa. Muzaffarnagar remains not just a city but becomes a living-breathing, all pervading character by the time the final story ends. Even stories not set in Muzaffarnagar, there is always a reference to the town- it remains a figure you can't escape, for better or for worse.

There is not a bad story in the collection but for the point of brevity I would stick to describing the ones that left the most impact on me. The first story "The Sad Unknowability of Dilip Singh" sees Mr. Solanki extending his love for Kafka to create a figure like the great modernist writer- Dilip Singh, who (like Kafka) never sought publication and burnt all his work. It is a wistful, nostalgic and poetic account on an artist trapped by invisible forces.

"My Friend Daanish" is a personal favorite. The main protagonist is a young teenager navigating the space of liberty with his Muslim friend Daanish in a town where places are defined not by space, but by communal identities. The story brilliantly captures the state of living in a small town where using deodorants, cellphones and riding with girls are 'big things'.

"B's Solo Trip" thwarts the romantic and picaresque expectations fostered by movies during the eponymous character's solo trip. In the titular story, the tension is not just in the streets of Muzaffarnagar, but also inside the middle-class household.

"Good People" navigates a seemingly happy couple whose relationship begins to turn grey, ironically during the festival of Holi as they make a journey to Delhi to the bride's house, where a sinister secret lurks. It is an eye-brow raising story- with an honesty as I have rarely found in my short reading life. The story penetrates deep inside the psyche of its characters as they come face to face with uncomfortable truths and exposes the facade of ''goodness'' we often put up. The story leaves one thinking with questions like: Are we really as benign, egalitarian, honest and loving as we often claim to be?

The final story "Compassionate Grounds" packs a clever surprise I hadn't anticipated (another mark of Mr. Solanki's genius) and while it explores similar themes as many of the above stories, it ends on a much optimistic note where our lead character has reconciled with her love-hate relationship with the ugly beauty of Muzaffarnagar.

"Diwali In Muzaffarnagar" packs everything needed to be a modern classic and in Mr. Solanki we might just have one of the most original voices of our generation.

[Kumar Anshul · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got my hands on 'Neon Noon' (the debut book of Tanuj Solanki) accidentally (the review copy was sent by the publisher), but by the time I completed it (which was within a few hours), all my friends knew (because I told them vociferously) how much I loved the melancholic tale of love, longing & heartbreak.

Needless to say, when I came to know that the author is releasing his second book (which would be a collection of short stories), I knew I had to prebook my copy.

An unknown, unpublished author commits suicide while his friend ponders on the probable reasons behind it. An uncanny friendship between two teenagers which ends up with a feeling of guilt, remorse & regret. A fresh architecture graduate has bitten the 'wanderlust' bug, only to realize the realities of much talked about 'Solo trip'. The title story- 'Diwali in Muzzafarnagar' which is a meditation on the lives of 'small town middle class ambitiousness', which manifests in multiple ways as the time passes. 'Reasonable Limits', which is a single sentence story, spreading across a few pages, nothing but a chaotic ramblings of mind. A girl had been sexually abused during childhood, but when she should try to forget those scars and just 'let it be' so that her present life isn't affected? 'The Mechanics of Silence' where the protagonist learns about the ambiguities of life & the unavoidable existential crisis when she watches an old silent movie. A girl in her late twenties finds herself in the middle of corrupt bureaucracy and never ending paperwork, when she suddenly had to return back to her hometown and take the responsibility following the untimely death of her father.

Most of the 7 stories in this book are set up in the small town of Muzzafarnagar in UP (the home town of author himself). While stories such as 'Diwali in Muzzafarnagar' and 'B's first solo trip' has distinct undertone & prose strongly reminding of 'Neon Noon', other stories such as 'My Friend Daanish' are written in extremely simple, straightforward way. What makes this book rich & worth a read that the stories are versatile, their central theme varies so does the prose & plot.
A word of caution- all these stories have already been published in various magazines & journals. So it might be repetitive if you have been following the author's column.

A short read, nostalgic in most of the stories, while thought provoking in almost all of them.
Find more reviews on my blog- https://kumaranshul.com/category/book...

[Mohak Gupta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Diwali in Muzaffarnagar was a surprise in many ways. A collection of 8 short stories, the book revolves largely around characters coming to terms with notions of belonging - to a place and to a time, coming to grips with their own selves and their emotions and expectations and the subtle drama that exists within the folds of the absurdity of everyday life.

The narratives are simple and relatable, and the characters are few but very real. The real magic in writing comes in the form of profound observations from mundane everyday things and the mastery of the writer in painting a picture that allows the reader to personalise the story and become a silent bystander witnessing the events unfold.

The conflict between small-town Muzaffarnagar and protagonists who are struggling between the stories of their lives and the stories they want to write, their adventures and misadventures, the coming of age and the baggage that comes with it, all come together to weave a splendid book that provokes and endears in equal measure and will leave you asking for more. Highly recommended!

[Tanaya Pandey (kitabiyatri) · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5

[Mounica Sarla · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories about characters from or living in Muzaffarnagar. I was disinterested initially and it took me to get to the third story to understand what Tanuj Solanki was doing - making me focus on the questionable consciousness of his characters by ripping off any romanticization that could have made the blow softer to bear. He has written with admirable honesty on the crudeness of human emotions. My favourite stories were Good People (a couple dealing with the traumatic truth of one of the partner’s past), Mechanics of silence (loved this, a prose-poem written in the way a silent movie would have captured the protagonist) and My friend Daanish (a teenage friendship variegated by religion and puberty). The last story, Compassionate Grounds, was too triggering for me to get past even the first two pages, so I did not complete it and I don’t think I ever will.

Would recommend it if you are on the lookout for Indian Fiction.

[Natasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muzaffarnagar is an actual place on the map, but it is interchangeable with any other small town in North India. The characters and situations in this collection of eight short stories are universal- we can relate to the petty bigotry, the idiosyncrasies, and the dark secrets that populate the books. The characters, suspended as they are between the expectations to conform and the yeaning to escape, are relatable- we have known several like them scattered across small towns in India.
Three stories in particular stood out.
'My Friend Daanish' where the protagonist experienced the casual prejudice people had against his Muslim friend, 'Good People' which explored child sexual abuse and how it can tear families apart, and 'Compassionate Grounds' where a daughter is expected to return home after the death of her father and take on the traditionally male role of running the family.
While one story explores Hindu-Muslim tensions, and makes a slightly political statement, the rest are all explorations of people being people; filial responsibilities, the pressure to conform, having to deal with the expectations of others, varying levels of freedom- situations we are all aware of.
If you are from a small town in North India, this could well be your own story. If you are not, this offers an unsentimental and brutally honest glimpse into one. A book I have recommended to many.

[Vikrant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Straight from the heart, author bares his soul to share 8 short stories which potray the struggle of India's current so called educated youth from being a big fish in small pond to small fish in big pond (Read migration from small town to big metropolitan cities). I might be biased in feeling really connected to the stories, due to my growing up years in a similar environment of small-town India.

Read the book just to remind yourself of the frail vulnerability of human existence, which we conveniently keep ignoring through our structured & comfortable modern life.

[Nanditha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely loved this! Fleshed out and layered characters, realistic settings, relatable life events, and nuanced writing. This book got me back to reading consistently after ages which says a lot about the author's talent.

[Dhwani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe these are stories about small town India, but they don't have to be. I agree, in that, the dilemmas that the characters all navigate are questions that come up in that gap between tomorrow and yesterday that you see most in small-town India. But the characters' responses and the wonderful, generous internal dialogue we explore with them had me hooked. I think I particularly liked Good People and My Friend Daanish, especially because I could picture these, the issues they bring up being commonly discussed yet the pace of writing allowed me to question how I felt about it all.

[Ujjwal Narayan · Rating 5 out of 5]

rarely something touches this deep, that all the different cords, spread across my soul, the parts even I was hiding, shying away, even running away from. how how did the author manage to do this? relentless honesty and craft I guess.

I could see Patna in Muzaffarnagar, the people around me, the gasping-for-breath kind of aspiration to leave this place, also how you can't, how it never leaves you

What this flux between the small town and the big town does to a soul, I haven't felt so deeply ever by any work of art.

I will hold this book close to my heart, for a very very long time.

thank you Tanuj Solanki :)

[Rheea Mukherjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

While some are more profound than others, this collection lets you explore your own myths of small-town India. As a reader and writer who is obsessed with the interior dynamics of contemporary India, Solanki holds a premium position in both voice and theme. My favourite ones dealt with death and suicide. Solanki weaves a special energy with his prose, one that dives into life-affirming notions but embraces a certain nihility and static futility common to every existence.

[Shubham Gupta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kicking off 2021 with this delightful collection of short stories. Diwali in Muzaffarnagar is a book that feels like a friend: familiar, easy to understand, and with a life of its own. The characters feel like people I've met. A lonely graduate who goes on a solo trip, many dissatisfied corporate-types, young middle-class folks in relationships with those who own 4 cars, and, most prominently, those who no longer recognize the home that they left behind. I enjoyed this much more than Tanuj's newest book, The Machine is Learning (the genesis of which is obvious in one of the stories in this collection).

[Pranjali · Rating 4 out of 5]

poignant. reflective. evocative. there are 'treats' hidden amidst the pages of the book, one just has to look for them. the author captured a gamut of emotions and its expressions through a string of extremely relatable personas. A page-turner this is.

[Medha Dwivedi · Rating 4 out of 5]

'This town is shit, she thought, and smiled'
To a person from a small town, this sentence felt very personal. If you have lived in a North Indian small town, you will find people in this book that you already know. There are stories that could have easily been yours. That is how real the book felt. The sentences, specially the ones at the end of each story, are effortless. So are the emotions. And I love how the book ends with a surprisingly hopeful story 'Compassionate Grounds'.

[Sudharsan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Refreshingly beautiful set of short stories.

[Ameya Joshi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diwali in Muzaffarnagar is what I want to read when I read 'modern Indian fiction'. Grounded in reality, un-pretentious, hard-hitting and speaking a language with a nuance that is educative yet relatable. Written for a semi-urban/urban Indian audience by someone from that background, without exposition or talking down yet with a narrative arch which keeps you hooked and wanting to know more- this is a rare cocktail which gets it just right. While not each short story worked for me, I absolutely adored the ones that I did like and found myself willing them not to end...

Boundaries in India are never about distance on a cartographer's map, they exist more in our minds and so despite growing up in a part of 'Urban India' which is on the face of it far from the Muzaffarnagar in question (which is anyway only lurking ominously in the backgrounds), there is some microcosm which connects everyone post-liberalization Indian to these stories. The stories of boys and girls (recurring from one tale to another which I always think is a lovely touch) from small towns who grow up and set base in big cities, adapting to them in various ways is I felt a fascinating peek into our lives today including that ever-enlightening introspective question : "What would I have done in a similar situation?"

'My friend Danish', 'Compassionate Grounds', 'B's first solo trip' and the titualar 'Diwali in Muzaffarnagar' were especially apt for a realistic depiction of the world around us today, putting yourself into the shoes of the protagonists and their dilemmas - I felt these are the stars of the show. The others are a bit more experimentative and even self-indulgent, and as mentioned previously - your mileage may vary in how you like them.

[Samriddhi Suman · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Diwali in Muzaffarnagar', Tanuj Solanki's second book delves deeper into the nook and cranny of Muzaffarnagar, a small north-Indian town, known for skirmishes even over a heated argument. Well, I must say while reading the novel one realises that it's not just the story of Muzaffarnagar, its about every mofussil town of India. The same mofussil town where he was born and brought up, did his schooling and later migrated to the metropolis only to find himself lost in the hustle and bustle. The nuances with which Solanki writes about the transitional phase i.e. from adolescence to teenage and further to an adult is laudable. The last chapter 'Compassionate Grounds' is worth falling for, especially for the ones who have spent their childhood in a mofussil town.
Its about the conundrums we take at the end of the day. It's about our parents who are our cynosure and continue to guide us even when they are not around.

[Mohammad Sabbir Shaikh · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a collection of eight short stories about the young men and women of Muzaffarnagar. Though these are 'small town' stories, but they differ in the way they are presented here. Each story is insightful, deep and makes you feel for the character. Tanuj's prose, his characterisation is just exceptional. I completely enjoyed reading all the stories. My favourite of the lot is My Friend Daanish. Have you read this book? Which is your favourite story?

[Sharwari Kulkarni · Rating 4 out of 5]

The unsettling one.. shows the constant struggle of human mind.. it is one book which doesn't give satisfaction to finish a book but triggers the thinking process in a way which will make you feel restless..

These stories from small town depict a typical mindset of a small town person who struggles with life every now and then. I can see reflection of myself and people around me in this book.

Can't say this is the best one I read till now but surely the one we shouldn't miss..

[Harpreet Sandhu · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book by solanki is a good attempt to shed light on muzaffarnagar , it is mixed with emotions and actual scenes. The one which had a good impact was the story of my friend danish and good people . There is a good interlinkage between some of the stories . Will definitely read his new book .

[Aryan Patel · Rating 5 out of 5]

To a fellow small-town UP boy, Diwali in Muzaffarnagar hit too close too home. I have not loved a book this much in a long time.

[Deepika Sekar · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I enjoyed Neon Noon immensely, I’m not sure if I can say the same about Diwali in Muzaffarnagar. Although lurking somewhere in every story, I somehow did not get the sense of the place that is Muzaffarnagar. The characters too remained elusive and kind of hard to get to know. Nevertheless, I really liked four out of the eight stories here – The sad unknowablity of Dilip Singh, My friend Daanish, Reasonable Limits and Compassionate Grounds. The strongest story, for me, is My friend Daanish – the image of Saransh riding on his bicycle trying to find out what happened to his friend is powerful and I know I’ll remember this one.

[Sudarshan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every story has moments that strike a raw nerve and every cell in your body is raging with seething anger. Quaint and idyllic, small town India is not.

Narrow mindedness, mutual distrust, corrupt bureaucracy and many other societal ills, mofussil towns like Muzaffarnagar continue to epitomise these vices and that has been brought out through the short stories in this book.

I highly recommend this.

[Ajay · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories in this collection have a wonderful eye for the minutiae of the lives of young individuals who grew up in middle-class families in small-town India, angst-ridden lives that have no room for rose-tinted nostalgia.

[Atulaa Krishnamurthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this collection of short stories. My favourite kind of stories are the ones that make you wish they were novels instead and most in this collection tick that box. I will be following Tanuj Solanki's future works! TW: child sexual abuse.