Relationships are achingly complex, even more so when it’s a father and his accidental love child.
Two strangers meet serendipitously. One is an irrepressible, mischievous brat and the other a
brooding platitudinous bore. Their contrasting individual paths that portend a star-crossed disaster
suddenly find a shared future. Fate brings them under the same roof, and soon, the insolent child’s
wild, roller-coaster, mind-numbing lIfe takes center stage in a moody family’s wacky, dysfunctional
abode. What follows is a fantastical journey, and that is putting it mildly.
Enter an unexpected visitor, and soon their lives are completely disarranged. The vicissitudes of life
are on full display as the father-son duo confront a new reality. The family struggles to grapple with
the new power dynamic as circumstances start spiraling beyond everyone’s control, with grievous
consequences.
In this exceptional slice-of-life book, Sanjay Jha tells us a heart-rending account of love and loss,
happiness and grief, regret and redemption. ‘Grief, once it checks in, is a permanent guest’, says the
tiny protagonist. Is atonement and forgiveness at all possible, or is it just a desperate human urge
for finding inner peace? Is time, eventually, the only true healer? Can we really move on?
In My Illegitimate Son, Sanjay Jha narrates a stirringly poignant story, which has both riotous laughter
and abundant sorrow, that might just find an echo with your own.