I find it pleasantly surprising that even towards the end of August, I should smell of April; an April that smells of marigolds, of snow, of the river and that mountain...an April in me that smells of Caroline. Opening with these lines, the eight stories, beaded along in these pages, cover a wide range of experience of human existence from the young Raman escorting a beautiful Frenchwoman on a surprise tour without being able to speak to each other in a common language to the catharsis of the narrator under the furnace of a gaze of the tiger; loneliness as the sole companion of Anjumman...

I find it pleasantly surprising that even towards the end of August, I should smell of April; an April that smells of marigolds, of snow, of the river and that mountain...an April in me that smells of Caroline. Opening with these lines, the eight stories, beaded along in these pages, cover a wide range of experience of human existence from the young Raman escorting a beautiful Frenchwoman on a surprise tour without being able to speak to each other in a common language to the catharsis of the narrator under the furnace of a gaze of the tiger; loneliness as the sole companion of Anjumman...