Content Warning: This book contains descriptions of domestic abuse, alcohol misuse, addiction, infidelity, and dubious sexual consent.

A woman in a green sari stands at the rocks on Bombay’s seashore, contemplating her life that presently feels unreal. She is tempted to walk into the sea. Instead, she looks to the for an answer.

Bhima wakes up in her small hut at dawn. She studies the sleeping silhouette of her granddaughter, Maya, and feels a mix of maternal love and rage toward the young girl who is pregnant. Realizing she is running late, Bhima rushes out with a couple of copper pots to stand in line for water at the basti (slum) she resides in, stopping at the communal toilet on the way. As she takes in the squalor of the basti, she remembers the apartment in the chawl she once lived in with her husband, Gopal, and their two children—it had running water in the kitchen, and they only shared a bathroom with two other families. A chawl is a large building divided into many separate tenements, offering cheap, basic accommodation to laborers (“Chawl.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary).

The water line is long, but another woman has saved Bhima a spot.