''His jaw lies here, but he is no more.
He was not his bones turned to ash.
He was not his flesh melted away.''
At the first step of a promising career, Ranchor returns home to face the sobering reality of his father''s demise. A railway employee prevents a young man''s desperate attempt at suicide. Elsewhere, a doctor faces the harrowing prospect of facilitating euthanasia for a friend. In an idyllic city, Keshav''s life is slowly engulfed by a terminal illness, and the spectre of death looms large.
Written in searing prose, these stories by debut author Himanshu Asnani are a rich portrait of lives that mirror countless others. Probing and often edifying, they capture the pathos of life while offering succour to those traversing similar paths - a reminder of fiction''s singular ability to lay bare life''s fundamental questions.