This is a haunting collection of stories from the streets and cities of modern south India. These ten memorable stories explore interior worlds and moments of intensity, either awakening or loss, in the lives of diverse characters - mostly young girls and married women, but also boys and long-laboring men. Whether Hindu, Muslim, or Christian, they are all burdened by the complex layerings of class and gender, and are variously able or unable to find escape from the conditions of oppression that surround them. Some manage to rise above their situations by experiencing the denials and hardships...