These are no Malgudi idylls; what each story deftly exposes is the battle between the new and old that is now being waged in every Indian family.
The stories are simple enough—a 30-year-old bachelor in search of a suitable bride, a busybody pensioner with a penchant for peeking, growing-up pangs of a schoolgirl, an NRI in search of her roots—all set in Bangalore with its steaming Mysore kaapi and neighbourhood chittammas. But these are no Malgudi idylls; what each story deftly exposes is the battle between the new and old that is now being waged in every Indian family.
Thus, the bachelor in search of a bride is confronted by the very different expectations of his matchmaking mama, the ageing peeping tom finds that the dazzling life he glimpses from behind the curtains holds its dangers and anguish, and the schoolgirl finds that what the nuns teach her at school is not quite in sync with the manipulations of her ayah at home. Some of the stories teeter dangerously on the brink of the mundane, creating an involuntary suspense: will Sankaran pull it off or will she collapse into the waiting bed of cliches? But she sails through with surprising skill and elegance.