When Loss Is Gain

Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given only a few months to live, Anand a budding Delhi lawyer, who is obsessed with his own ambition and the politics of his workplace, thinks his life has rock bottom. But then further misfortune strikes: his wife Tanu leaves him for his best friend Adi, the owner of the law firm for which he works. As Anand surveys the wreckage of everything that has mattered to him and realizes how misplaced his priorities have been, he is unexpectedly granted a reprieve. His doctor tells him that the initial diagnosis was wrong and that he is cancer-free.

Determined to make the most of his second change, Anand quits his high-powered job and deliberately loses himself in the myriad simple joys of life for which he has never had the time. But when the old concerns and habits begin to creep back, he decides, on a whim, to journey to the remote Bhutanese retreat of Wangsisina to think about his future in solitude. Should he renounce the temptations of the city forever? Should he abjure romantic love? Should he spend the rest of his days as a recluse? Or should he start taking the first tentative steps back to a fuller life, which Chimi, his Bhutanese friend. Encourages him to do? As he wrestles with these questions in the shadow of Bhutan's dramatic cliffs and mountains, he runs into the enigmatic Tara, a woman fleeing her own tragic past and his life looks set to take yet another unexpected turn.

Action-packed yet contemplative, Pavan K. Varma's first novel is a powerful story of love and loss, despair and hope, chance and destiny and the true meaning of joy and sorrow in every human life.