Set against the background of a college hostel, the book tells the story of Anjali, Tara and Paro who are at a stage when they are unable to decide what to do with life other than to complete their course. Paro talks of her parents looking for a suitable boy for her to marry. One day the warden comes on an inspection tour of their rooms and finds an electric rod which the students are not allowed to keep in the hostel. She reprimands them and walks out. In a world in which you have only a space of nine by nine to call your own, where you share inedible meals and improbable dreams is what the author tries to show. Though the girls spend mornings and evenings in each other'scompany, it cannot be said that they know each other inside out and when to draw the line between private and public discretion and transgression.
Many such trivial incidents are common happenings in college hostels and the author describes these ? not that they are unusual but her style of describing is certainly fetching. When describing the hostel atmosphere, she says, ?Fat drops plopped down, making pretty patterns where they fell. Light, teasing drizzles tempted people out and there turned into malevolent downpour. The Master (the warden) was inundated with complaints of leaking windows and sparking plug points. The courtyard was littered with carcasses of earthworms slain by careless feet. The Master'sstudents trudged to class clutching umbrellas that lost all sense of proportion in the wind.?
In any case, this story is about Anjali who, suffocated by her mother'sunspoken demands, finds a shoulder in Tara to cry upon ? a Tara who is a brilliant and eccentric free spirit; the tranquil Paro, with her blatant desire to get married, represent a complete contrast to the restlessness of the former two. So as Anjali applies furtively to universities abroad, Tara struggles with her doctoral thesis under Dr Narain and Paro gets engaged to a suitable boy to break the engagement soon enough. Paro returns to the hostel and a sequence of events occur, disturbing the even tenor of life of the occupants forever. This is a story about friendship gone sour.
(HarperCollins Publishers India, A-53, Sector-57, Noida-201301, Uttar Pradesh.)
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