'Silk Route' by Sachin Kundalkar Refuses to Stay Still: Queer Longings and Lifetimes in Motion
Silk Route (Monochrome, #1) by Sachin Kundalkar
Book Review by Dhiraj Sindhi
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| Silk Route (Monochrome, #1) by Sachin Kundalkar |
Author: Sachin Kundalkar
Translator: Aakash Karkare
ISBN: 978-0143477808
Genre: Queer Literary Fiction
Length: 120 Pages
Publication Date: 25th July 2025
Publisher: Penguin Books
Cover Photo: Anuraag Banerjee and Cover Design: Amit Malhotra
Order your copy right now: https://amzn.to/3HP1zQp
About the Author:
Sachin Kundalkar is National Award-winning film maker with twelve Indian
feature films to his credit, a screen writer whose work has been adapted
into multiple Indian languages including Hindi and Malayalam. He is the
author of the celebrated novel ‘Cobalt Blue’ which he wrote in Marathi
when he was twenty-three years old. The novel by now has been translated
into English, Hindi, Kannada, and Sinhala and has been adapted into a
visually stunning feature film.
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| Sachin Kundalkar | Photo Credit: KUMAR SS |
Instagram: @sachincobaltblue
About the Translator:
Aakash Karkare is a writer and translator based in Mumbai. He has worked across film, photography, and journalism, with experience in documentary filmmaking and as a former film critic with Scroll. His debut memoir is forthcoming from Rupa.
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| Aakash Karkare | Photo Credit: The Bombay Literary Magazine |
Instagram: @aakashbagheera
Disclaimer: This review is only intended for initiating discussions. The opinions and views presented in this article are my own and do not reflect anything about the book's author.
REVIEW
When was the last time a book felt like a train
you didn’t plan to board, but once you did, you
couldn’t step off? Silk Route by Sachin
Kundalkar feels exactly like that. An unending
chain of stories, each an epilogue that quietly
opens into another. You think you’ve reached the
last station, and suddenly, you’re already
moving again with another story, another train,
the journey of which is slowly becoming into a
destination. If the author’s name rings a bell,
that’s because he’s the same mind behind Cobalt
Blue, yes, the one that became a Netflix film.
Originally written in Marathi as Reshim Marg and
translated into English by Aakash Karkare, this
first part of the Silk Route is a crisp 110-page
read, yet it feels like an entire world in
itself. The first thought after finishing this
book? I can’t wait for the second part to come
out. Sure, there’s a tiny glimpse of what’s next
at the end, but that’s not why I’m eager. It's
the sheer audacity and tenderness with which
Kundalkar writes.
The story follows Nishikant, a queer man
navigating love, loss, and desire; his story is
tangled with that of Srinivas, his lover. But to
reduce this book to a simple love story would be
an injustice. Sachin Kundalkar's writing sprawls
across lifetimes, histories, and continents, yet
somehow makes it feel intimate, like he’s
whispering secrets only you’re meant to hear.
One moment, you’re inside the invasion of Poland
during World War II. The next, you’re in
post-war France, watching how the state showered
scholarships and cultural privileges create an
image of intellectual glory, papering over
colonial sins with art and philosophy,
pretending to be the moral torchbearer for
decades. Then you’re in Delhi, in salons of
hollow intellectualism where people
congratulated themselves for engaging with each
other’s work, even when nothing real came out of
it.
And between all this, you’re back to Nishikant.
Back to Srinivas. Back to those tender,
dangerous edges of love. The book is peppered
with motifs that feel like old friends if you’ve
read or watched Cobalt Blue. The blue window,
for instance, an allegory that appears here too,
a silent witness to longing. Yellow flower trees
as well, signifying the stirring of puberty, the
bloom of desire, all those unspeakable urges
taking form in petals and pollen.
Then there’s Nikhil. The same man both Nishikant
and his sister love. She’s in a relationship
with him. Nishikant carries his crush like a
secret flame. And his sister dies because of
this affair. The blurb tells you that upfront.
It’s how the novel begins with a jolt that
pushes you headfirst into the current. And from
there, the story never pauses.
This book holds entire lifetimes inside its
pages. Deaths, too, many of them are mentioned
almost in passing. They don’t all serve the
plot, and that’s the beauty of it. They give the
story weight and texture, a sense of a world
that moves forward even when you’re not looking.
And then it hit me. This novel feels like an
endless chain of epilogues. Reading it feels
like standing on a platform and watching trains
pull away and you jump on to reach the remaining
last station and complete the journey. You ride
along, thinking you’ve reached the end, and
suddenly you’re in another story's epilogue and
the train is already pulling out. And again. And
again.
Yet somehow, it’s not about the pace. It’s about
how the author picks up and writes just the
right and smallest details of someone's life,
tracing their history or that of any country or
object, that it feels like it's a complete story
and you just let it pass after absorbing it. So
the stories keep coming. A boy who refuses to
commute by vehicle, walking everywhere,
memorising shop names in perfect sequence like a
human map. A German man who saves his Polish
lover and their child, leaving her actual
husband and other children to fend for
themselves in a war-torn land. A student making
duplicate keys to their crush’s home; not to
violate, but to love them the way they wish to
be loved, with a language of tenderness and
restraint. The details are so sharp, so
unassuming, that they pierce you without
warning.
And through it all runs a queer world that is
mysterious, magical, painfully real,
unapologetic, and alive with love, passion, and
pure, unfiltered desire. It’s never
performative. It simply exists; raw, tender, and
gloriously unashamed.
The narrative doesn’t wait for you; it sweeps
you along, like a silk thread slipping through
your fingers. By the time you finish, you’re not
even sure what you’ve read. A novella, a mosaic,
an atlas of lives? All I know is that I’m still
on that train. And I don’t want it to stop.
Happy Reading!
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