A METICULOUS PLAN

Two generations of Bengalis weather religious tensions, political upheaval, and star-crossed love in this fizzy romance.

He’s Bakhtiar Khan, a Muslim physics student in Dhaka, Bangladesh; she’s Pooja Roy Chowdhury, a Hindu philosophy student in Kolkota, India. They meet cute in a Bangkok hotel and soon realize they are soulmates. Pooja’s prejudiced grandmother hates the idea of her marrying a Muslim and starts fasting to protest the wedding but relents when Pooja counters with her own fast. The interfaith marriage goes swimmingly, and the couple moves to Florida. They both become professors, and the novel’s focus shifts to their son, Satya, a prodigy who, at age 7, speaks six languages, has a physics lab in his bedroom, and relentlessly fact-checks fairy tales. At 17, he gets his math Ph.D. and is offered a position as CEO of a tech startup, but he opts instead for a grander vision: establishing a retirement home for indigent old folks back in Bangladesh with a school attached for poor kids, all financed by produce fields and a fish pond. Satya’s meticulous plan for the project, called Shanti Kunja, goes great, and love softens his austere intellect. He friendzones his besotted assistant, Roma, but is smitten himself by fetching journalist Aratrika. Passion erupts when Satya and Aratrika are drenched in a downpour, and Aratrika demands that Satya help remove her bra—the clasp is stuck—so she can change into dry clothes. Then turmoil breaks out with the (real-life) overthrow of Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in a 2024 uprising led by Islamic fundamentalists, and violence threatens to undo the new relationship and sink Shanti Kunja. Mohit’s yarn is an energetic take on Bengali-style romance, reigned over by matriarchs and gal-pal matchmakers, prodded along by whirlwind courtships and happenstances that fling lovers into each other’s arms, and written in throbbing, heartfelt prose (“The moment I saw you, my soul was trapped in your eyes”). Threading through is an earnest, philosophically complex critique of organized religions— “Religion is the progression of early sorcerer’s magic,” says Satya, a stance that puts him dangerously at odds with mullahs—and a plea for tolerance and freedom of thought. The result is a somewhat contrived but still affecting story of people pushing past antagonistic faiths to find love.

An entertaining if occasionally cheesy love story in the rich historical setting of strife-torn Bangladesh.