Death Of Vishnu

Vishnu, the odd-job man in a Mumbai apartment block, lies dying on the staircase landing. In his fevered state, he looks back on his love affair with the seductive Padmini while all around him is played out the drama of the apartment-block dwellers: Mrs Pathak and Mrs Asrani’s ferocious bickering over their shared kitchen; Vinod Taneja obsessively playing his dead wife’s favourite album; Mr Jalal dreaming of a path to enlightenment while his son Salim plots a film-style elopement with the daughter of the Asranis downstairs. Then to ignite this mix of social and religious differences comes Mr Jalal’s pronouncement that Vishnu is no ordinary man...
Blending acutely observed social detail with a dash of Bollywood sparkle, The Death of Vishnu is a breathtaking debut.
Manil Suri's The Death of Vishnu should be read for the unalloyed pleasure of delving into a world that is so very familiar to many of us—a world of everyday problems, of characters who are much like us and our neighbours and perhaps we see that amalgamated somewhere in the muddle and blunder of middle class living, life's larger tragedies and ironies are played out.
One of the great strengths of this novel is the very effective characterization of people who are, in some ways, intensely ordinary and yet in many ways unique and memorable.