Book Launch of HOT WATER by Bhavika Govil in conversation with Aravind Jayan | Champaca, Vasanth Nagar | 12 July, 5:30PM

Join us on Saturday, 12th July, for the Bangalore launch of Bhavika Govil’s debut novel, HOT WATER—a poignant, heartrending story about a family of three, and the secrets and tensions that lie beneath the fragile world they have built themselves. Bhavika will be in conversation with author Aravind Jayan, and the discussion promises to be insightful and moving.

Here are the details of the event: 

Date: 12th July 2025, Saturday 

Time: 5:30PM

Venue: Champaca Bookstore, Vasanth Nagar

About the book:

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.

About the speakers: 

Bhavika Govil was born in New Delhi and dreams of the sea. She holds a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Edinburgh. A portion of her debut novel, Hot Water, won the Pontas & JJ Bola Emerging Writers Prize and was a finalist for the DHA New Writers’ Open Week. Bhavika’s short fiction has won the Bound Short Story Prize, been shortlisted for the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, and can be read in Wasafiri, Extra Teeth, Gutter, A Case of Indian Marvels and elsewhere. When she isn’t writing, Bhavika teaches creative writing workshops online and in person. 

Moderating the session is Aravind Jayan, a writer from Trivandrum who now lives in Bangalore. He is the winner of the 2017 Toto Funds the Arts Award and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2021. His first novel, TEEN COUPLE HAVE FUN OUTDOORS, has been translated into several languages, and was shortlisted for the 2023 Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction.