Karan Mahajan Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

Karan Mahajan discusses how a terrorist bomb near his home inspired him to write The Association of Small Bombs

Is the bombing at the beginning of the book based on a real event?

Yes. In 1996, Kashmiri separatists set off a bomb in Lajpat Nagar market in Delhi, about fifteen minutes from my home; the bomb killed thirteen and injured thirty. My grandmother had been there the day before to buy yarn, and my parents and I often went to the market to run errands: buying medicines, getting electronics repaired, purchasing school uniforms. It remains one of the few terrorist attacks in which I—or a family member—may have plausibly died.

The attack stayed local, though—it never became a major news event, and though Delhiites of a certain age remember it, it isn't part of the larger discussion of terrorism. This makes sense: before 9/11, India treated terror with the same overall indifference it applies to other tragedies: as yet another manifestation of a national malaise.

I should also stress that, though my novel takes the blast as a starting point, it deviates from fact.

Where did the idea for this novel begin?

It began in my unformed fury at the 26/11 Mumbai Attacks, which were broadcast on television for four days straight, like a mini-series of terror. I remember sitting in my office in New York—I worked then ...