'Bhavika Govil uses imagination, insight and humour to craft a tender but unsettling family tale. A charming and confident debut that I enjoyed tremendously.'

-Amrita Mahale

'Moving and gentle in the way it's told, the voices in Hot Water orbit one another precariously, revealing a tender mess, and creating an intimate portrait of family life that's both heartbreaking and heartening.'

-Aravind Jayan

'Hot Water is a complex family story, masterfully told. Striking the chords of the heart, Govil is a writer far beyond her years, daring to broach the most sensitive and taboo subjects with delicacy and depth, bringing light to the darkest corners of our humanness.'

-JJ Bola


It has always been Mira, Ma and Ashu. The three of them-as they sing Simon & Garfunkel in Ma's sun-yellow car, watch TV on the sofa and holiday on the mango farm-are bound firmly together. Yet, beneath this tale of proximity, lurks another story-that of a family in hot water.

Nine-year-old Mira, fourteen-year-old Ashu and Ma harbour secrets. All of them confront questions that have no neat answers. Where is Ma's husband, for instance? Who does Ashu pine for? Why is Mira on the alert?

One long, hot summer, the secrets come tumbling out. And the world Ma, Mira and Ashu have cobbled together threatens to give way.

An achingly beautiful novel, Hot Water traces the ways in which the love we feel for one another can both make and wreck us.