MJ’s grandfather Prayag was born a Hindu, and into poverty. He flees a famine that claims the lives of his parents and arrives in Telinipara where he is saved from starvation by a Muslim family. He converts to Islam, becoming Rahmatullah. Telinipara’s existence depends on the Victoria Jute Mills and Rahmatullah thrives in its benign economic shadow.

With prosperity comes social status and acceptance, the better to celebrate the rituals of births and festivals in an expanding family. As he writes, “My father was the first spoilt child of Telinipara”, also the first to get an organised education. MJ’s father gains adulthood, marries a Kashmiri, and his circle of friends includes British merchants and Hindu neighbours, but all along one can sense that unfolding events are going to change lives, relationships and fortunes.

The lives and times of MJ’s grandparents and parents may not have been much different from other middle-class Muslim families all across India but in MJ’s precise and dexterous prose, laced with wry humour, they come alive and become a contemporary parable. This is not just a journey into the past but an intellectual expedition that examines challenging questions-about British rule, partition, community, caste and communal relationships and social faultlines through conversations, dialogues, arguments and events.

The momentum of history drags Telinipara from obscurity into the tide of nationalism and partition. Friends turn foes and suspicion and rumours lead to a peaceful community being torn as under. As a terrible history unfolds, the Akbar family faces the threat of elimination by Hindu fanatics. The charm of this book lies in the maxims and sermons on religion and secularity, related to the past but inextricably linked to the future.

The Quran, communal relations, interpretations of jehad, politics, wars, and society become metaphors for existence. The prose is quintessential MJ. As China attacks, “patriotism crawled up our young spines like an ascending firecracker.” He adds: “It was a good war for me because we were in it together. Defeat unites Indians.” In college in Calcutta, he “spends three pacifist years” indulging in movies and girlfriends, avoiding the lure to join the Naxalites.

As he writes: “Falling in love was less demanding than counter revolution. This was not my war.” He cannot escape the other one, though. Another communal confrontation during a visit to Telinipara sees him narrowly escaping being knifed. He is 17. Life, he concludes, had begun.

The book may lack the broader appeal of his other works but it is no less compelling, for its insights, its humour, arguments, debates and, above all, the social commentary that runs through it like, well, an ascending firecracker.