Description

Suhani Anand is twenty-nine, the very efficient head of marketing at a Gurgaon agency, the only daughter of a sweet but exacting Punjabi mother, and — as of three weeks ago — the very enthusiastic Maid of Honour at the destination wedding of her younger brother Aarav in Udaipur.

She is also, as of three weeks ago, in a slightly delicate situation with the Best Man.

Vikrant Khanna is thirty-three, Aarav’s college friend from Yale, and — Suhani learned only two months ago, on a perfectly innocent video call about the bachelorette playlist — also her ex-boyfriend’s older brother. The ex-boyfriend whom Suhani had quietly, conclusively, and with maximum mutual relief, broken up with seven years ago. The ex-boyfriend who is, terrifyingly, also a guest at this wedding.

Across five days at a sandstone palace hotel in Udaipur — through a mehndi, a sangeet, a haldi, a baraat that nearly capsizes a boat, and one increasingly uncontainable thing happening on the marble balconies between Suhani and Vikrant after every event — *Mehndi Ki Raat* is a propulsive, sensual, irresistibly funny modern Indian romance about the men we are not supposed to want at the weddings of the people we love.

Set against the lake palaces, dhol nights, and family group-chat warfare of a great fat Punjabi destination wedding, this is the romance every Indian reader will be passing to their cousins by April.