LESSONS IN FORGETTING

Here | indeed | is a novel well worth remembering'-India Today 'This is Nair's fourth book and there is no doubt about one thing: she gets better with each one. It's a story told at an unhurried pace by an accomplished writer'-The Hindu Literary Review Meera is happily submerged in the role of corporate wife and writer of cookbooks. Then | one day | her husband fails to come home. Overnight | she becomes responsible not just for her children Nayantara and Nikhil | but also her mother Saro | her grandmother Lily | and the running of Lilac House | their rambling old family home in Bangalore. Professor J. A. Krishnamurthy or Jak | cyclone studies expert | survivor of one marriage and several other encounters | has only recently returned from America. In a bedroom in his house lies his nineteen-year-old daughter Smriti | a tragic embodiment of memory and past violence. What happened on her holiday in the small beachside town in Tamil Nadu to make her so? The police will not help | Smriti's friends have vanished | and a wall of silence and fear surrounds the incident. But Jak cannot rest till he gets to the truth. By a series of coincidences | Meera and Jak find their lives turning and twisting together | with the unpredictability and sheer inevitability of a cyclone. And as the days pass | fresh beginnings appear where there seemed to be only endings. Delicately crafted and beautifully told | Lessons in Forgetting is a heartwarming story of redemption | forgiveness and second chances.