Review of The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan

*The Association of Small Bombs* by Karan Mahajan (2016). Published by Viking.

The Association of Small Bombs continued my streak of listening to books while I end up doing work, as, if you haven’t been to my corner of the Internet and blog before, I am working a remote internship where I’ve discovered I am more motivated when it isn’t completely silent. So I started using Libby through my library to get audiobooks, which means that I have been able to get my work done while powering through books.

I’m a very efficient multitasker, and am used to this to begin with, so I feel like I understand the books pretty well.

The Association of Small Bombs is something I stumbled upon when I was going through the books, then I read the synopsis and realize this was straight up my alley. Contemporary Indian and South Asia are topics that I’m very interested not only from an academic perspective, but also just as a human.

I spent some time studying, although virtually, out of Kolkata for Bangla, which instilled a deep appreciation within me for the region even more. I got through this audiobook over the course of a week, so it wasn’t too difficult to get through.

Let’s get on to the review, shall we?

A terrorist bombing at a market in Delhi completely changes the lives of those affected.

This book doesn’t hide anything from the get-go—it talks about how the bomb went off in the Delhi market, and how it essentially ended up incinerating a ton of people who were in its path. but in this book, the focus in one two brothers, who have gone with their friend, Mansoor, to pick up their family’s television.

They had sent it off to the repair shop instead of just going to buy a new one in order to save some money. The year is 1996, and these boys did not expect what was going to happen next.

Only one survived: Mansoor. Both brothers were killed instantly, and their grieving parents are left to figure out the consequences of what have happened, and figure out who is to blame in this kind of scenario.

It becomes more clear throughout the narrative to everyone that the perpetrator was a Muslim from Kashmir, which means that this is going to set off one of the many forms of hate against Muslims in the country of India—a problem they still face today.

So what happens is this: the book goes across multiple people perspective’s throughout the years, with the blast serving as the centerpiece.

Mansoor, now grown up and having attended university in America, has to deal with the trauma of returning back to Delhi and confronting the realities of what happened to him all those years ago.

We also get a glimpse into the parents and how they wanted someone to point a finger at, like so many other people out there in the world when dealing with the grief of a tragedy.

But lying underneath all of this storytelling is what forms people’s opinions and what draws them to do such actions and cope with the circumstances. The most interesting narrative to me was going deeper into the head of the people who set off the bomb.

Kashmiris who were cut off from their own lands, they entered India through Nepal and ended up pretending to be farmers attending a convention. They wanted to set off the bomb because, like so many young people from the region, they have been radicalized to think that this is the only way to make change.

The ripple effect didn’t begin with the bomb. It began with the oppression of others and how they end up making drastic decisions to be heard in a world that doesn’t acknowledge their voices.

Overall Thoughts

I think this was an interesting novel to listen to in the end. It was a bit difficult to get through sometimes as an audiobook because of how repetitive it began to feel when it came to the storytelling and how certain elements were beginning to unfold, but in the end I was glad I ended up listening to this one.

It’s fictional, but it’s also a very real glimpse into contemporary India, although it takes place in 1996. There are still religious and ethnic tensions, as well as the situation in Jammu and Kashmir ongoing in the country.

We need more perspectives like these—Mansoor is a Muslim character, which also completely changes things for some people when this happens, as Muslims generally were blamed.

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