Hailing from a middle-class family, Pankaj believes that his life is all sorted—get an engineering degree; marry the love of his life, Riya; and settle down for a ‘happily-ever-after’ in Delhi. But when Riya decides to go abroad for further studies, his plan goes for a toss. Still determined to keep to the plan, he promises to wait for her.
After settling in Jamshedpur, though, he becomes close to his boss’s daughter, Kajal, and starts assisting in her social work. In the midst of the changing economic and religious environment of India in the 1990s, he undertakes a journey, which not only gives him a peek into rural life but also a new and focused perspective on life and love.
Love Side by Side not only gives a glimpse of India in the ‘90s, but also demonstrates why sometimes the failure of a well-laid-out plan can be the best thing to happen in life
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A graduate from Delhi University, Partha Sarthi Sen Sharma is an Indian Administrative Service officer currently based in Lucknow, India. He has written articles, mainly travel pieces, for The Times of India, The Hindustan Times, Discover India, Swagat, Rail Bandhu and other periodicals. In 2011, he published a travelogue titled A Passage Across Europe. Apart from his work and writing, he loves to spend time with his family. He is a sports enthusiast, an avid traveller and a voracious reader. Love Side by Side is his first fiction novel.
