A Nest for Lalita
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“Langer’s prose is lucid and wonderfully detailed … [he] is extremely successful at bringing the time and place to vivid life.”
— Kirkus Reviews
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The streets of Sompur, India, were not for the faint of heart. Narrow roads congested by cars, trucks, rickshaws and livestock made navigation tricky under the best of circumstances. To agree to travel under these conditions was to feel as if one had consented to the country’s ancient caste system. It seemed to Meena Kaul that even the roads gave way to old India, to hierarchy and tradition; and try as she might, paving the way for her country to enter — let alone embrace — a modern India was a task that required more political stamina than any one person could muster.
Like navigating the roads of Sompur, Meena and those closest to her are about to discover that “Indian politics was not only a dangerous game … but a complicated one,” in Ken Langer’s A Nest for Lalita (Dryad Press).
OLD INDIA VS. MODERN INDIA
India, 2005. Behera House, a center for women who have survived domestic violence, is making plans to open a new campus — a task that proves exceedingly more complex for its executive director, Meena. At the top of the list of complications is the HDP — the Hindu Democratic Party — which, after the stock market crash and a loss of funding, has offered a sizable grant to Behera House for building the Lalita Devi Center for the Advancement of Women. The problem? Members of the HDP support the return to a more “traditional” India, a move that is, in essence, the antithesis to the advancement of women. Meena and her deputy director know that the HDP’s interest in funding the new campus is a politically advantageous one — attaching their name to Behera House’s new project offers the HDP the perfect opportunity to snag women’s votes before the upcoming national election.
Perhaps most concerning is the fact that the HDP’s leader has been historically in favor of sati — an ancient practice outlawed a century ago under British rule in which widows threw themselves onto their husbands’ funeral pyres — an act he has described as both ennobling and an important part of Hindu culture. So, it’s no mystery why Meena is loath to take any money from their organization. She knows that if elected, the HDP will “destroy whatever progress [India has] made on women’s rights over the last one hundred years.”
CORPORATE GREED AND “GREEN” CLASH
But if the HDP wasn’t enough to worry about, Meena’s husband Kesh — an architect and influential member of the India Green Building Association — has been crusading for India to become more environmentally friendly. This presents a problem for Madhav Behera — founder of Behera House and Meena’s boss — who owns Himco Air Conditioning. If Kesh is successful, he’ll lose out to foreign competitors with more energy-efficient systems, and that’s not good for India’s fragile economy.
Enter Simon Bliss, a world leader in sustainable architecture. He becomes invigorated by this new project, but the passion he’s experiencing may have more to do with the Lalita Devi Center’s alluring executive director than its construction. Seeking respite from his stalled marriage, he falls for Meena and immediately becomes engulfed in the dealings of dangerous politicians, crooked priests and dirty businessmen. Simon “might be a starchitect, but his star didn’t shine in the treacherous skies of Indian politics.” Working with Meena to rid the Lalita Devi Center from the HDP’s grasp before it opens, Simon finds himself confronting old ghosts amidst an affair, corporate greed and now a murder investigation.
LANGER’S COMPLEX PORTRAIT OF INDIA
Through the madness of Indian politics, the author’s sense of place shines; but it’s no surprise that Langer, who lived in India for over five years, would know just which shades to use in rendering his portrait of this ancient and vibrant country. Yet, it isn’t just the clogged roads and sacred temples that open the window to India. It’s Langer’s understanding of a shifting culture — a century of progress at odds with thousands of years of tradition that built the very ground on which all his characters stand — that bring his portrait to life.
With political intrigue, forbidden love and a desperate fight to ensure India’s future before it tumbles backward into the hands of those who would thwart its progress, A Nest for Lalita offers a complex, entertaining plot for any reader seeking a thrill on the other side of the world.
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