The stories in this collection are set in the early eighties, and Anjana Appachana wonderfully captures the raw, vibrant energy and optimism of a time when we drank chai for thirty paise, and twenty thousand rupees spent on ‘gifts’ for the boy’s side was an enormous amount of money for middle-class Indians. Her characters strain for a place beyond the boundaries of a prescribed way of life in urban middle India: a hapless college student gets gated a few days before her appointment for an abortion; a disgruntled clerk philosophizes gloomily about his place in the scheme of things; a young girl, against all odds, decides to keep her sister’s deep, dark secret. By turns warm, gullible, arrogant and bigoted, Appachana’s characters live their lives amid contradictions and double standards, superstitions and impossible dreams, but ultimately usurp their familiar landscape and imbue it with an idiosyncratic vision.