Mahmud and Ayaz

<p>Using the legendary love story of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni and his Turkish</p><p>slave-cum-lover Ayaz as the backdrop Mahmud and Ayaz set in contemporary</p><p>Mumbai tells the story of a young casually radicalized Muslim man Mahmud</p><p>Fakhar who has failed to qualify for the IAS-where he had hoped to make</p><p>a lot of money but also to weaken the system from within-and has barely</p><p>managed a temporary teaching job in a second-rate college. At a loose end</p><p>after his entire family dies in the 2015 Hajj stampede he runs into a homeless</p><p>Hindu lad the illegitimate son of a tamasha dancer hires him as his domestic</p><p>servant converts him to Islam re-names him Ayaz and begins an affair with</p><p>him.</p><p>It is the start of an unusual life together and a series of journeys. Their travels</p><p>take them to Somnath in the great Sultan's footsteps and then to Kashmir</p><p>as they are drawn into a life of petty and not-so-petty crime and almost of</p><p>militancy. After some odd adventures the wheel comes full circle when their</p><p>wayward life ends again in Mumbai in the neighborhood of Mahmud's birth</p><p>even as AIDS afflicts one of them.</p><p>Narrated with irreverent deadpan humour R. Raj Rao's new novel is funny</p><p>subversive provocative and wonderfully rude. It is unlike any love story-gay</p><p>or straight-that Indian readers would expect.</p>