Angad
Khanna, a teenage, middle class boy from a family of Hindus and Sikhs was madly
in love with Delhi, the only city he knew as home or homeland, a city he
passionately loved with the fervour of a devout. He was imbibing the elixir of
life, discovering the little joys that growing up brings along-of the first
love, the surreptitious initiation into sex, the first drink in the company of
a childhood friend, when disaster struck. It was the Orwellian year, 1984, also
Angad’s sixteenth year. It was time to learn new lessons, of hate and
bloodletting, of compassion and bravery, of despair and death, of hope and
optimism. Living as a refugee for fourteen turbulent days in his own city, he
found that luck and time were on his side. He returned home, unlike his father
Iqbal, who as a sixteen year old had fled his home in Rawalpindi, dictated by
destiny to seek a new Home and Homeland. Dilliz Boyz has cameo descriptions
of Delhi-the real metropolis-warts and all, its psyche and social fabric woven
into the main story line in a beautifully knit, seamless pattern. A
malice-free, tongue-in-cheek comment on Delhi and Delhiwallahs interspersed with the grave and sombre description of
the 1984 riots and the all-pervasive goodness in man that effectively thwarts
evil forces and defeats their malicious design and intent through compassion
and common sense. A triumph of good over evil.