Conditions Apply by Nishant Kaushik

That couple next door
I spotted this book on facebook and it looked interesting so I bought and read it. As the plot built up, I was impressed with the flow of events, realistic characters, and contemporary idiom. The central theme of this book is the relationship between a young urban couple in an arranged marriage and how the stresses of work and their expectations of each other shape their future. Subsidiary characters create an environment in which Nishant Kaushik is able to highlight a number of important issues in an unpretentious, effective way. As in life, daily tedium is unexpectedly peppered with drama and, occasionally, horrors of life. Some of the things I admired in this book were the brilliantly caricatured scenes from corporate life, insight into preoccupations with reality TV shows and their impact on individual lives, the chafing of community prejudice and how simply a new paradigm can remove it, and the gentle hint to prodigal offspring to reconsider the benefits of the parental bosom. Best of all was the simple understanding that 'love' might be as simple as ‘I like it when she’s at home’.