Despite his full-fledged academic career as a professor of Biomedical Engineering in IIT Bombay, Rohit Manchanda continues to foray into the world of novel writing. The Enclave is Rohit Manchanda’s second novel that follows his debut novel presently titled and republished by HarperCollins India as A Speck of Coal Dust. The Enclave is however starkly different from the setting and thematic engagement of Manchanda’s first novel; while the latter was set in a mining town in eastern India and engaged with life in the backwater town, The Enclave is set in the bustling city of Bombay in the transformative era of post-liberalization.
The novel’s primary focus is on the life and experiences of its female protagonist named Maya who finds herself living independently in Bombay, in her early forties. After what is understood to have been an uneventful marital separation, which also translated into Maya’s life away from her son who now stays with his father, the protagonist finds herself making the most of a new found independence which primarily includes her multiple amorous rendezvous with Softs, Santy, and Alain—all of whom find a distinct space in Maya’s life and the novel’s narrative.