‘At 34, I have spent almost half my life trying not to be defined by a single night in 2008.’

In the years after 26/11, Aakash Karkare tries to move on in a country that will not let him forget the death of his father, Hemant Karkare, during the Mumbai terror attack.

Aftermath: Life in the Shadows of Headlines and History charts a different kind of coming-of-age story, one shaped by private grief that becomes inescapably public.

What happens to those who live in the shadow of history?

In 2008, 17-year-old Aakash Karkare’s life cleaved into two: before and after. This memoir depicts the next 17 years of his life and his struggle to move on from that event and not be marked by what others always describe as tragedy. By taking a scalpel to memory, Aftermath traces a decade marked by loss, displacement, and slow repair.