We are reading about the little village boy Hari who has run away from his village to the city of Bombay. We curled up in the balcony to read them, while plump grey city pigeons gurgled in the nooks above us. As a city of stories and paradoxes, where waves of the new were constantly being inscribed on the old, and where anything was possible. We came to the city for the holidays, to our grandparents’ and uncle’s homes in Matunga. This month, for their bedtime book, I am reading a story set in Bombay: Anita Desai’s affecting children’s novel The Village by the Sea.

Source: The Hindu July 23, 2016 18:11 UTC