Like a Pinprick to the Heart

by Shujoy Dutta

English 256 pages 1 edition

Anando Sen’s father can smell death, his uncle can see ghosts, his sister can communicate with spirits. Anando himself is able to tell futures and spin mantras to get what he wants. Gifts that are perhaps the natural by-product of being a highly spiritual family. While travelling to immerse his grandmother’s ashes after her death, Anando discovers the great secret about his family, which his grandmother kept hidden from them. The secret that explains just how the family came to their gifts. This revelation makes him question everything he knows, and has grown up believing and starts unravelling something within Anando. In a fit of depression, he quits his job and wanders in a flux for many months, coming to his senses on the banks of the Ganga in Haridwar. In a fortuitous turn of events he goes from being a beggar to becoming a godman with many devotees. One day, when he is credited with working a miracle that is clearly not one, he sees his entire life as an insidious joke spun by God. He decides that he must hurt God in return. Since God is love, he tells us, to really hurt God he has to destroy love—to prick God where it hurts most…