Exactly a year after her divorce, Nayantara, the protagonist of Shunali Khullar Shroff’s new novel, The Wrong Way Home, is en route to the income tax department when she finds out that her ex-husband has married a much younger social media influencer. “The dust hasn’t yet settled on the grave of our marriage, and he’s found himself another wife?” she asks, visibly outraged. “Do people have no morals?”
Turning to social media for answers leaves her even more miserable as she encounters her “ex aboard a yacht grinning at his new bride, with the unbroken Pacific blue of honeymoon brochures in the back”. The somewhat shallow, decidedly catty, and yet refreshingly real Nayantara clarifies that while she is “not jealous or anything”, she isn’t exactly thrilled with the news. A couple of meltdowns later, she makes a promise to herself. “He can have his perfect little wedding. I’m going to build an empire for myself.”
Except, of course, life never really works out like that. Nayantara continues to fumble through her days, making more than her fair share of mistakes and nurturing intensely complicated relationships with nearly everybody who forms a part of her world, including her narcissistic ex Jay, idealistic mother Kalpana, token gay bestie Rishi, a longstanding female frenemy Anjali, and some painful clients at the flailing PR agency she runs.
Read More
