Two women navigate love and politics in Mumbai

This novel's charm lies less in plot twists and more in the lived-in world of the millennial women it depicts accurately

- Shrabonti Bagchi

Pal brings to life women living in a country that feels both optimistic and hopeless.

A man and a woman stand near the doors of a local train, waiting to get off. The woman is 40, the man in his late 20s. They are former colleagues from the newsroom of a mainstream daily, on their way to the man's house to make out. Apart from questioning her life choices, the woman feels a certain amount of pincode snobbery—she's going to Kandivali? On a local train? At 2am?

This is the opening scene of Deepanjana Pal’s new novel Lightning in a Shot Glass, and it sets the mood for a work that hides its depth in a deceptive lightness of tone and style. The latter quality is signalled very clearly by the cover—doused in chicklit pink, with two female figures sitting atop shot glasses holding cocktail accessories—but the former unfolds itself slowly, revealing a wry understanding of the political underpinnings of India in 2025.

This is also a quintessential Bombay novel, which used to be a fixture of Indian writing in English but has somewhat waned in popularity in the past few years as the space started to be occupied by narratives from other cities and Indian small towns. But Bombay—Mumbai—as a heartland of emotions and ambition has never quite vanished from our collective cultural imagination. It has a certain pull, even for those of us who have never lived there and don’t particularly see its appeal.

Lightning in a Shot Glass