The Malshej Moment

Tesu Palash, an office worker in Mumbai, is stuck in a rut until he meets Adhit Wagle on a train. Wagle lives in Matheran, a beautiful mountaintop community that does not allow vehicular traffic. He invites Tesu to visit him to enjoy the views and talk philosophy. Thereafter, Tesu and his friends make regular visits to Matheran, discussing a wide variety of topics from the existence of God to the state of India. In the meantime, Tesu and Fanish, a gatecrasher in Tesu’s group, court the same girl with fatal consequences.

The Malshej Moment would benefit from a good editor. The stilted conversations drag endlessly with lists of statistics and quotes from reference materials. The murder “mystery” is not a mystery at all since it’s fairly clear who tried to (unsuccessfully) murder Tesu four—yes, four—times. What little plot there is gets lost in the statistics and informational minutiae while the undeveloped characters are indistinguishable from one another. I had trouble even remembering the characters’ genders. Tesu is an unsympathetic protagonist, frustrating in his inability to take decisive action without extensive thought. By the time I reached the cliffhanger ending, I was just glad the book was over.