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It is interesting to reflect on the fact that humans are so mismatched to the lives and people they choose for themselves!

A collection of short stories, navigating the intricate web of cultural clashes in India, UK and USA, moving back and forth in history, from the trauma of the Partition to the moon landing and beyond that, circling around families for twenty pages just to let go of them when the reader thinks the narrative starts to create a pattern of sense, this is a wonderful reading experience! And bizarrely, the loosely connected short stories seem to match well in their description of misfits.

Why do we live with people we don't feel belong to us, with people who try to suppress what we value as treasures rather than celebrating with us?

Why is a close relationship so often similar to an act of slow suffocation?

Can we blame it on the custom of arranged marriages, which appear in some of the stories? Hardly, for the marriages that were founded on physical attraction generate the same issues. Can we blame it on the institution of marriage itself? Hardly, for the role of mistress is just as difficult to bear. Can we make it a gender issue? Hardly, for husbands are not exempt from the suffocation, even though they may have slightly more freedom of movement. Can we blame it on a specific culture? Hardly, for humans are humans whether they live in deepest poverty in Calcutta or in brilliant luxury in a university town in New England.

Funnily, the character who seemed to develop the most strength and inner happiness in the end was the sick young woman in India who was rejected by everyone, even her family, and who found herself pregnant and forced to raise a child on her own in "disgrace".

She was "cured".

Cured of her seizures, cured of the pressure to adapt to the expectations of others. Cured of trying to be matched, she formed her own pattern.

Brilliant stories, wonderfully human!