"Imtiaz Akhtar's short stories are delicate precious stones that he might have collected while strolling with an umbrella along the Ganges River in his native Kolkata, at the end of the Monsoon season. The stories are an invitation to an India, both eternal and ephemeral, and are untainted by the puritanism brought to the continent by the British empire. I have sometimes called Imtiaz an existentialist secular Muslim, but no ism or religious affiliation could do justice to his superb writing, his exquisite palette of words that burst with smells, passions and ideas. Let Imtiaz take you on a wild journey that you will not soon forget, an imaginary trip in a world full of spice, desire, humor and the mysterious joys of life, spirituality, lust and death; a memorable voyage deep into our common collective psyche." Gilbert Mercier, author of The Orwellian Empire