Completed this book in a long stretch, from July to September(can only read so much in a plant library). It only seems apprpriate enough, as the timeline of the book stretches across more than 50 years, spanning through 4 generations of a family, against the backdrop of birth of Indian nationalism at the turn of the century(the 20th, that is). It feels like you've lived a whole life through it.
After I got sufficiently engrossed into the book, it kept reminding me frequently of another book: War & Peace. To me, it is the War and Peace of India- the epic saga of a family(with many families and characters coming and exiting the stage) through the generations, an expansive, frightfully accurate and natural, almost Tolstoy-like, gaze at the society of that time, stories of family, bonds, love, hate, friendship, rebellion, Hindu vs. Muslim sensibilities, generation change, and everything set against, and into, the rising national conscious of a colonized young India, led by Gandhi and Nehru.