Summary

The novel opens in a near future Indian city reeling from climate change and food shortages. The narrator first focuses on an unnamed teenage thief who studies the rhythms of the neighborhood. He watches which families still have onions, lentils, and rice in their kitchens and learns how hunger and desperation push people toward taking what others have stored. These early pages establish that the boy is driven less by malice than by fear of going without food, and that he moves through streets where markets have emptied out and even animals that once scavenged along the roadside have disappeared.

The point of view then shifts to Ma, a middle class woman who lives in the same neighborhood with her widowed father-in-law, Dadu, and her small daughter Mishti. In her kitchen, Ma cooks eggs and rice and imagines how she would respond if...