ABOUT
THE BOOK

Vishnu, the resident odd-job man, lies dying on the staircase he inhabits, while his neighbours, the Pathaks and the Asranis, squabble over who will pay for an ambulance. As the action spirals up through the floors of their building, the dramas of the residents’ lives unfold: Mr. Jalal’s obsessive search for higher meaning; Vinod Taneja’s longing for the wife he has lost; the comic elopement of Kavita Asrani, who fancies herself the heroine of a Hindi movie.
Suffused with Hindu mythology and the exuberance of Bombay cinema, this story of one apartment building becomes a metaphor for the social and religious divisions of contemporary India, and Vishnu’s ascent of the staircase parallels the soul’s progress through the various stages of existence. As Vishnu closes in on the riddle of his own mortality, he begins to wonder whether he might not be the god, Vishnu, guardian not only of the fate of the building and its occupants but also of the entire universe.