‘Twelfth Fail’: Bestselling Hindi novel about public services exams (and love) is now in English

Another day had dawned for the residents of Bilgram, a village near Joura tehsil, thirty kilometres from the district headquarters of Morena. It was a day like any other, except that a few boys and girls from the village were going to appear for the first paper of the class twelve board exams. Returning home from Panditji’s house, Manoj found his mother chatting with two other women. “Wait, I’ll be there in a while,” she said, when he called to her.

But Manoj was getting late for the exam. He got ready in a hurry and was just about to step out when his mother, now squatting on the doorstep, asked in tones of deep concern, “Wait, son, didn’t Rajni make chapattis for you? You mustn’t take your exam on an empty stomach.”

Having passed on the responsibility of making chapattis to her fifteen-year-old daughter, Rajni, she had busied herself in chit-chat with the neighbours. Today Manoj had no appetite. He ignored his mother and, clutching a mathematics guidebook, fled without a word.

Since Bilgram was just alongside the road that connected the tehsil to the district headquarters, the villagers were quite fortunate as far as transportation went; a bus plying between Joura…

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