The Illicit Happiness of other people - Manu Joseph

This is the second book by Manu Joseph after his hugely appreciated Serious Men and does not disappoint even one bit. In fact I can't think why I did not read this book any sooner. It is one of the very few that kind of leaves you a in a limbo after you have finished reading it.

The story is about the search of a father, Ousep Chacko to find the reason for his son, Unni committing suicide. Unni a budding cartoonist,a philosopher, the magnetic leader of his class,  is unlike most of the teenagers his age, even though he is a rebel, he is also the most attentive listener for his mother Mariaamo, who talks to imaginary people and why she does so lies the crux of the story. It is a story about the dysfunctional Chacko family, a family which is loathed and pitied at times by other families living in the same colony, who pride themselves for the normalcy of their lives. It is the helpless of a father to get to know his son better after his death, than he knew him when he was alive, wounded pride of a mother for not having protected her son, for a younger brother trying to be like his elder brother, the brother who could make his mother normal, could stop her hallucinations. In spite of all of this one finds this family together in all of this, they hate and abhor each other most of the times but find themselves together in figuring out Unni and his final act. The story which starts out being immensely funny in the beginning turns grim in the middle and continues in the same way. It touches on a lot of themes like neurosciences, existentialism, the search for truth, austerity of language etc. which only add to the narrative instead of taking away from it. Through all the interviews that Ousep has with all the people who knew Unni, he pieces together the life of Unni, knowing him better each time and yet not being able to figure out Why Unni did what he did. It's a poignant and dark story and is not sad because there is the good and the bad it is because there are grey's and there is an everyday tussle and hardship that the Chacko family has to go through because of their meager means.

What surprises you more is the reason for Unni's suicide, it is no where about his philosophical ruminations, his dysfunctional family, being bad at studies etc. There are so many interesting snippets in the story one of which was about Morality being an invention of not so good looking men and claiming they'd rather make love to only woman in their lives and of how Unni fools Thoma into believing that the home minister was going to make the value of pi from 3.14159 to 3 to make it easier for Indian children to calculate the area of circle.

This book is definitely a must read and I will be picking up Serious Men soon enough too.