Boys from Good Families: A Novel

A powerful evocative story of love ambition the old city of Bangalore and the new city of Bengali. thippy the beautiful ‘girl from the Outhouse’. ashwath only son of a feudal family of landowners. A love that could never be blessed by destiny. Disillusioned by his family rejection of his love for thippy stifled by its traditions and conservative ways ashwath leaves Bangalore for a University town in American Midwest. It is 1981 and the American economy is booming. Ashwath enjoys the three C’s of success: a condominium a car and a credit card. But a decade later when the market crashes he sees the other side of the American dream—joblessness dingy one-room tenements and loneliness. Casting its shadow over it all is Neel Kamal his family sprawling bungalow in Bangalore now a piece of prime real estate. Ashwath is compelled to return after twenty-five years to lay claim to his inheritance. In doing so he has to once again face tangled relationships his sister Savitri her ne’er-do-well husband Keshav his first love thippy—and the ghosts of his parents who died without ever seeing him again. He also finds love of a different kind through his fun-loving niece Shweta and his intense idealistic nephew aprameya. Finally it is Neel Kamal that decides what he must do.