The Nalanda Chronicles

He was born to write. The worrying question is - what? Naturally, it should be about what he knows best - himself, Benoy Sen.

But he has found nothing to write about. In the thirty years of his life, nothing much has happened to Benoy Sen.

Till now, that is. At 8.30 a.m. on the 27th of November 1998, something cold and steely presses against his brain.

In the middle of a highway, with policemen a bare whistle away, the minibus of Nalanda Co-op Housing Society, is being hijacked.

It is full of the privileged of Nalanda - pontifical Mr Thomas, Francis Figueredo the spy, Gauri Kamath on the verge of labour, glamorous Farheen who worries about her kids, Muralidharan of the Carry Home Cash Scheme, Arshad who plans to throttle him, and Mrs Jayaraman who clutches a plastic water-bottle with inexplicable passion. And then there's Maya - joyously, painfully in love with Arun.

Dark, savage, madly comic, "The Nalanda Chronicles" is a roller-coaster ride through lives that scatter and cohere under the assault of terror.