Shala

Mukund Joshi is fourteen and newly in love. He attends the same private tuitions as his classmate Shirodkar just for a glimpse of her and follows her back home every day. Sadly she has not a clue that he is pining away for her because in their society boys and girls don't interact freely much less talk about love. When he's not negotiating the tricky alleys of love Mukund sits around the school field or loafs about town with his close friends Surya Chitre and Phawdya railing against the education system and debating ideas such as discipline and Bohemianism. Set in a small Maharashtrian town during the Emergency of 1975 Shala is a heart-warming nuanced novel about the adolescent struggles that are as tortuous in real time as they are amusing in retrospect.