Tabish Khair 'returns' to India with new novel

Author Tabish Khair, whose last two novels were set outside India, returns home with his new book which is about a man who builds his thriving business empire with the help of his trusted aide only to be compelled to find out more about him after an incident.

"Night of Happiness" is described by the Denmark-based Khair as either a ghost story or a psychological thriller or both about a man who has experienced something most of us cannot even imagine.

"How this man (Ahmed) lives a seemingly normal life with or despite this experience. And how someone like us - well-meaning, reasonable and limited (the narrator of the novel, who is a businessman named Anil Mehrotra) - reacts when exposed to the trauma of Ahmed's tragic experience," he says of his book, published by Picador India.

Pragmatic entrepreneur Anil Mehrotra has set up his thriving business empire with the help of his lieutenant, Ahmed, an older man who is different in more ways than one. Quiet and undemanding, Ahmed talks in aphorisms, bothers no one, and always gets the job done. But when one stormy night, Mehrotra discovers an aspect to Ahmed that defies all reason, he is forced to find out more about his trusted aide.

As layers and layers of Ahmed's history are peeled off, Mehrotra finds himself confronting some deeply unsettling questions. Does Ahmed really have a wife? Does he keep her imprisoned in their flat? Is Ahmed deranged, or is he just making desperate sense of the horrors that afflicted him in the past?
"He slowly realises that like the ancient mariner he is talking about an obsessive and incomprehensible experience, and I hope that the reader realises by the end of the novel that both the texts are about human suffering, guilt, empathy (or its lack), and the search for redemption."
Khair has chosen an important Islamic festival to base his novel upon - Shab-e-baraat. Asked if there was any particular reason, he says, "Shab-e-baraat attracts me as a festival as it has so many indigenous - Indian - elements in it, many of which are now being discarded by Islamic fundamentalists."