Family Planning

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More About This Book

Overview

"Karan Mahajan is a natural—a masterful storyteller, an assured stylist, and a gentle satirist whose unblinking vision is ultimately tempered by compassion. Family Planning is an incredibly accomplished debut. More than a fine first novel, it's one of the best comic novels I've read in years." —Jay Mclnerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City

Rakesh Ahuja, a Government Minister in New Delhi, is beset by problems: thirteen children and another on the way; a wife who mourns the loss of her favorite TV star; and a teenaged son with some really strong opinions about family planning.

To make matters worse, looming over this comical farrago are secrets—both personal and political—that threaten to push the Ahuja household into disastrous turmoil. Following father and son as they blunder their way across the troubled landscape of New Delhi, Karen Mahajan brilliantly captures the frenetic pace of India's capital city to create a searing portrait of modern family life.

"Sharply written, bracingly funny, and unexpectedly moving—Karan Mahajan combines 'take no prisoners' satire with haunting insights into the human condition." —Manil Suri, author of The Death of Vishnu

"It's hard to believe the author of this classic family saga is only twenty-four. Harder still to believe this is his first book. I've never seen a debut like this. Family Planning is the full band announcement of a major talent." —Stephen Elliott, author of Happy Baby

Editorial Reviews

Booklist
“An entertaining expose of a unique family.”
The New York Post
“A spot-on satire of Indian family life, globalization, and intergenerational strife.”
More Reviews (5) Fewer Reviews
The Observer (London)
“Mahajan is only 24 years old, but he has a mature and impressive grasp of poignant comedy and has opened up Delhi to western readers in a way that a more overtly politicised novel may not.”
The San Francisco Chronicle
“Brave, breackneck, and amusing. . . . A fearless cultural domestic tour. . . . Irreverent, fresh, and sometimes, given its author’s youth, preternaturally wise.”
The Times (London)
“Comic novels, full of loveable eccentrics and sly social commentary, seem to be one of ‘new’ India’s main exports; this is one of the sharpest and funniest examples.”
Publishers Weekly

The patriarch of a chaotic family living in a hectic land must come to terms with himself and what he's wrought at home and at work in this excellent debut. Rakesh Ahuja battles the twin bedlams of his sprawling family and overcrowded home city of New Delhi while simultaneously trying to save his career as the minister of urban development. Rakesh attempts to manipulate and cajole his way through the corrupt and sometimes illogical Indian civil service, often finding himself embroiled in absurd intrigues. Home is no less fraught, where his 13 children battle each other for their often-absent father's love. The lone exception is Arjun, the eldest, whose adolescent rebellion and nascent romantic inclinations prompt him to form a rock band and pull away from his frenetic family. As Rakesh clumsily reaches out to his first-born son, the twists of fate that shaped both their lives are revealed, providing a portrait of a family that is both comical and heartbreaking. Mahajan's effortless blending of comedy and tragedy is irresistible and should help his book stand out. (Dec.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Library Journal

Set in New Delhi, India's ever-expanding mega-metropolis, this debut novel explores the political and familial landscape of middle-aged civil servant Rakesh Ahuja. Rakesh is the father of 13 children, and the narrative zeroes in on his escalating conflict with eldest son Arjun. Arjun, who is experiencing typical teenager angst regarding first love, sexuality, and identity, is incredulous when he disturbs his parents as they make love in the nursery. Even as this incident sets off a chain reaction of comical events, Rakesh is forced to confront long-kept secrets and also becomes enmeshed in the high jinks of Indian politics, jockeying for power within India's notoriously corrupt civil service. Meanwhile, the death of an Indian soap opera character has consequences for all of Delhi, including Rakesh's political party. This could have been a fairly dour novel, but Mahajan interjects hilarity throughout otherwise tense and poignant moments of family drama. The result is a delightfully entertaining novel about father-son conflict that readers from just about any culture can appreciate. Strongly recommended to add breadth to English-language fiction collections covering contemporary India and South Asia.
—Faye A. Chadwell

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780061537257
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
  • Publication date: 11/18/2008
  • Pages: 288
  • Series: P.S. Series
  • Product dimensions: 5.28 (w) x 7.92 (h) x 0.69 (d)

Meet the Author

Karan Mahajan was born in 1984 and grew up in New Delhi. A graduate of Stanford University, he now lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Read an Excerpt

Family Planning

Chapter One

Question Hour

Obviously, Mr. Ahuja...Minister of Urban Development...couldn't tell his son that he was only attracted to Mrs. Ahuja when she was pregnant. That he liked the smooth, alien bulge of her stomach or the tripled heartbeat when they made love, silently, shifting over each other. That the faint fetal heartbeat ran under the speeding pulses of man and wife, calming him, holding him back from instant climax. Or even more fantastically, how, at times, he could imagine the unborn eyes of the fetus watching him, pleading for another sibling...begging, sobbing, moaning through the parched throat of his wife . . .

It was morning and Mr. Ahuja waited at the bus stop with his eldest son, Arjun. The sun swung over Delhi like a fiery wrecking ball, the entire city exploding with mirages and reflections that hurt the eye, Marutis and Toyotas and Ambassadors glittering by at top speed in their metallic finery. Clouds heaping in cumulus shelves overhead. The chalky pavements dizzying under eddies of dust. At least Mr. Ahuja was in the shade, under a tree, with Arjun. The middle-aged minister was becoming hard of hearing...the traffic on Modi Estate Road came to him like the indistinct whirr of a waterfall...but oh yes, he had heard Arjun's question. And the question was Papa, I don't understand...why do you and Mama keep having babies?

The boy had been as discreet as the bus stop would allow. He had waited for his other siblings...Rita, Sahil, Rahul, Varun, Tanya, Aneesha, Rishi...to leave. And then he had walked up to his Papa (Papa who insisted on seeing off the eight of his thirteen children whoattended school every morning) and popped the question with the abruptness of a coin-toss in a cricket match. The words were said...Arjun turned away jauntily, thrust his fingers into his torn pockets, and scratched his hairy thigh. His white school pants were too short; they rode up around his ankles.

Now, both Mr. Ahuja and Arjun saw the Delhi Transport Corporation school bus floating on a cool mirage of leaking oil and blazing road. Time was running out.

In the end, all things considered, Mr. Ahuja decided he could not let the bus win. So he said, "Son, I told you about the Yograj Commission findings, correct? Then? You know I'm not a fanatic, but findings were hundred percent clear. We need more Hindus in India."

"So I'm...we're...just a political cause for you?" asked Arjun, twisting his neck to peer sidelong at his father.

"No, son. But you know how it is...these Muslims have so many wives, and their families keep growing, and what are we Hindus..."

"Do you even know my name?" Arjun asked.

"Son!"

With a tragic swing of the schoolbag, Arjun boarded the bus and was gone.

The bus accelerated heavily onto the road. The children leaned into the aisles; their water bottles swung in the air, briefly unanchored, sloshing. As Arjun scanned the lolling heads for a seat, he wished he had learned to mutter under his breath (Goddamn politicians want goddamn Hindus goddamn fuck fuck). Then again, the skill was practically useless in his house where even the most regular conversation with his half-deaf Papa was...to Papa...a muttering under the breath. What luck, though: the only vacant seat was next to Aarti. She was a girl from the neighboring Convent of Jesus and Mary...a girl he liked enough to brave the usual heckling that burst from the back of the bus when he talked to a girl, even though he was sixteen. Today, the hecklers seemed hungover. Aarti closed the Pradeep's Physics Guide she was reading and they began talking. They talked about this, that, Bryan Adams, this, that, Bryan Adams's evergreen classic "Summer of '69," wasn't he wonderfully throaty, had she seen the new Bombay concert video, and what about that superb line when he said "Standing at your Mama's porch you told me it'd last forever it was the summer the summer of '69," what was he talking about, his lost childhood or his gained virility?

But really, Arjun wished he could tell her how he hated the daily morning bus-stop ritual, all eight kids trooped out onto the sidewalk by a man who couldn't hear anything, the eight kids now splitting into opposing factions and groups with the fickleness of politicians...each faction a campaign of shrill voices and stupid triumphs such as determining who could chuck Rita's water-bottle farthest across the road without cracking the windshield of a car...and all this ridiculous brouhaha expiring the minute the buses arrived and dragged the kicking, screaming mobs away. But the family was not a mob. The family was a solar system. The family had planets and satellites and the occasional baby that burned its way in like a mewling meteorite. As the oldest child by four years (the other children were separated by only nine to twelve months in age), Arjun had by now played every role in this evolving system: Pluto, the Sun, Jupiter, everything but a satellite, really. He replaced Mama as head-honcho when he was thirteen and she was recuperating from a difficult pregnancy, ten kids orbiting around him, tripping over their laces to get a piece of him, waiting for him to proclaim judgment on the crooked fixture of their ties...and now? Now he was Pluto again, cold, on the periphery, unimportant. He still had to read nursery rhymes to the four babies and soothe his pregnant mother by whistling filmi tunes, but otherwise he was trapped with twenty-four other probing eyes spinning around him...eyes that saw him only as a big threat to their personal nutrition at the dinner table.

Family Planning. Copyright © by Karan Mahajan. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 4, 2008

    Karan Mahajan: Family Planning: A brilliant must read masterpiece of prose, humor and readability

    Brilliantly written. So much happens in a few days.And it keeps you laughing, and relating to father son, husband wife, professional life. It builds a glimpse of India that is not covered by other Indian authors. It is brilliantly written with perceptive descriptions of places and events, of a man wavering between all kinds of pressures. Portrays contemporary Indian politics, urban chaos and a complex Indian family in a vivid fashion.

    A must read, brilliant masterpiece that will keep you laughing and entertained

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted December 4, 2008

    No text was provided for this review.

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