Check out this interesting book that dives into unique familial relationships

Nani and one of her daughters Salma (Nura’s mother) sat in Lalbagh, Bangalore (Bengaluru), with cones of peanuts and shared a deep secret. PIC COURTESY/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Title: Have You Met Me?
Author: Andaleeb Wajid
Genre: Children's fiction
Publisher: Harper Collins India
Cost: Rs 399

In Andaleeb Wajid's new novel Have You Met Me? (HarperCollins India), Nani has passed away and her children and grandchildren have gathered at her house in Mysore for her last rites.

While the adults are busy talking about property matters, the grandchildren - Safina, Nura, and Rayhaan - have found some Urdu romance novels and Nani's journals, which they read quietly, away from their parents. Soon they uncover not only one of Nani's well-kept secrets, but also shocking ones about other members of their family. If this is the last time they meet each other, with their families being settled in different parts of the world, they must do everything they can to save Nani's legacy together.

The novel is written from three perspectives of the three oldest grandchildren. This helps readers understand each of their relationships with their grandmother as well as the secrets they're hiding from their families. One of the most interesting conflicts Wajid draws in the book is the difference in the worlds the three characters come from, with Safina living in Bengaluru, Nura in Singapore, and Rayhaan in Canada. Although they are separated by the individual experiences which have shaped them, their connection with Nani, visit to her house as kids during their vacations, and their recent discovery of her journals brings them together.

Moreover, Wajid's exploration of the grandmother's character and a glimpse of her world through her diaries, is praise-worthy. She looks at what it meant for a Muslim woman in the 1980s to raise three daughters in a world that favoured sons; what her thoughts on romance and marriage may have been like; and what shape did her dreams and aspirations take. While her physical presence is absent, Nani becomes instrumental in how the other characters transform to act with more empathy and love towards each other.