Relationships are achingly complex, even more so when it’s a father and his accidentalove child.Two strangers meet serendipitously. One is an irrepressible, mischievous brat and the other abrooding platitudinous bore. Their contrasting individual paths that portend a star-crossed disastersuddenly find a shared future. Fate brings them under the same roof, and soon, the insolent child’swild, roller-coaster, mind-numbingife takes centre stage in a moody family’s wacky, dysfunctionalabode. What follows is a fantastical journey, and that is putting it mildly.Enter an unexpected visitor, and soon theirives are completely disarranged. The vicissitudes ofifeare on full display as the father-son duo confront a new reality. The family struggles to grapple withthe new power dynamic as circumstances start spiralling beyond everyone’s control, with grievousconsequences.In this exceptional slice-of-life book, Sanjay Jha tells us a heart-rending account ofove andoss,happiness and grief, regret and redemption. ‘Grief, once it checks in, is a permanent guest’, says thetiny protagonist. Is atonement and forgiveness at all possible, or is it just a desperate human urgefor 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 riotousaughterand abundant sorrow, that might just find an echo with your own.