Vanity Bagh
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Anees Salim
Pan Macmillan India
248 pages, Rs 499
Inspired by the legend of the aging don Abu Hathim, Imran Jabbari and his friends form a gang in their mohalla of Vanity Bagh. They are hired to dispense a batch of stolen scooters to different corners of the city; not until the city rocks with scooter bombs does Imran realise that they have been involved in a terrorist act. He is jailed for 14 years, and while in prison he starts to trace the history of animosity between Vanity Bagh, nicknamed Little Pakistan, and Mehendi, a Hindu neighbourhood. A darkly comic novel that evokes a wistful small-town in the midst of a teeming city.
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