Using the legendary love story of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni and his Turkishslave-cum-lover Ayaz as the backdrop, Mahmud and Ayaz, set in contemporaryMumbai, tells the story of a young, casually radicalized Muslim man, MahmudFakhar, who has failed to qualify for the IAS-where he had hoped to makea lot of money, but also to weaken the system from within-and has barelymanaged a temporary teaching job in a second-rate college. At a loose endafter his entire family dies in the 2015 Hajj stampede, he runs into a homelessHindu lad, the illegitimate son of a tamasha dancer, hires him as his domesticservant, converts him to Islam, re-names him Ayaz, and begins an affair withhim.

It is the start of an unusual life together, and a series of journeys. Their travelstake them to Somnath in the great Sultan's footsteps, and then to Kashmir,as they are drawn into a life of petty and not-so-petty crime and, almost, ofmilitancy.

After some odd adventures, the wheel comes full circle when theirwayward life ends again in Mumbai, in the neighborhood of Mahmud's birth,even as AIDS afflicts one of them. Narrated with irreverent, deadpan humour, R.

Raj Rao's new novel is funny,subversive, provocative and wonderfully rude. It is unlike any love story-gayor straight-that Indian readers would expect.

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