What can possess us to read about yet another uneventful train ride, stuck cosily in a compartment with the middle-aged wife of a bureaucrat, a paan masala-chewing politician, a perky aiyayo job-hunter and a young hack more adept at refilling water bottles than breaking news? But Shama Futehally impels us along a journey riddled with peddlers, beggars and cliches—and, of course, mundane confessions exchanged in grating Hinglish—by the elegance of her writing. That, and the insights she provides on what it feels like nowadays to have a name like Ayesha Jamal and not, say, Mrs Rajesh Shrivastava. That pregnant pause, that kindly-meant "I have many Muslim friends," that thin but impenetrable wall "like a plastic wrap," that vague fear, the spiralling, hopeless descent into the small, dark, lonely well of fury and hatred, are minutely etched. Ayesha, thrust out of her tea-cosy life, is travelling to Bombay to rescue her upright husband’s name and career from infamy. In the end, it’s the journey with these companions—adrift in time and space—that heals and grants redemption. If only life was a train ride!