Fate

Without any truly guilty criminals to cast blame onto (or, to put it another way, with so much guilt to spread around that no one human is any more guilty than another), the novel asks that the reader consider the possibility that all of the tragedy might have been predestined to occur by some divine influence, and the book suggests that fate might be a more serious antagonist to the characters than any other person. Because fate is larger and more powerful than human motivations, mistakes, and desires, Mahajan is able to add depth to the already complex issues within the novel.

The novel starts out with a bomb, and everything that happens, afterwards, to the characters involved in the bomb, leads to a second bomb. The circularity of the plot lends itself to the idea that fate is running the lives of all of the...