Small-town angst

In the second story, Ankush and his wife, Taruna - a survivor of child sex abuse - encounter a crisis that brings their relationship to the very edge, before a catharsis of sorts

This is a shit town”, thinks Gunjan, the protagonist of the short story “Compassionate Grounds” in Tanuj Solanki’s new anthology, Diwali in Muzaffarnagar. 

The town to which she is referring is Muzaffarnagar, in western Uttar Pradesh, which shot to infamy in 2013 when Hindu-Muslim riots killed 62 people and rendered 50,000 homeless. 

Almost all the major characters in the book hail from this town; some of them have managed to escape its claustrophobic society, where communal tensions keeps the air taut, but they all keep coming back: Gunjan returns after the death of her father and grandfather, Ankush is on