First published 2018
A domestic cook works in a Mumbai household, dreaming of something beyond her daily routines. Elsewhere, a vagrant travels with his dancing bear, performing for crowds while searching for survival. A young girl flees violence in her village, seeking refuge and opportunity in an unfamiliar city. These three stories weave together with two others, each following characters caught between the lives they knew and the futures they imagine. The cook faces the gulf between her employers' world and her own. The vagrant struggles with poverty while his bear becomes both livelihood and burden. The girl discovers that escape brings new forms of uncertainty. As their paths cross and diverge, each character confronts what it means to leave everything behind. Mukherjee moves between the concrete realities of contemporary India and moments that blur into something more elusive. The five narratives build toward a shared understanding of desire and displacement, showing how the search for a better life transforms everyone it touches.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, domestic-fiction, contemporary, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: displacement, fish-out-of-water, search-for-a-better-life
Setting: Mumbai
Period: Contemporary
Audiobook · HighBridge Audio