"So now that began to develop into a full-fledged shouting match of its own, and all in all it was soon a full-scale old-style Bombay tamasha, with people watching from every balcony and window in every building, up and down the road, laughing and giving advice and yelling at each other."
The role of the city of Mumbai in the lives of individuals in these stories is central. People live close together, space being a precious commodity, so they are naturally involved in one another's lives. The physical proximity of neighbors makes even the most personal of affairs a relatively public issue.
"The incredible length of Bombay sped by, those endless sprawls of buildings, huts and shacks, children squatting and shitting by the tracks, refuse, the crowded grey roads twisting and winding between, all of it blurred but fearsome in its strength, in its very life that grew it unstoppably."
Throughout the book, Chandra expresses the beauty of Mumbai and its surrounding regions. He sees a sort of familiar and deeply human characterization in the juxtaposition of squalor and extravagance. There is a direct and personal association in the way he describes the setting, imparting a piece of his own experience with Mumbai for the reader's sake.
"I spoke at length, then, about superstition and the state of our benighted nation, in which educated men and women believed in banshees and ghouls."
A commonwhich presents an extreme sort of union of East and West. As this quotation illustrates, the superstition and tradition of the past is ever-present even among more urbani touchstone throughout these stories is the mixed culture of India zed and progressive cities in India. The people hold fast to their heritage, despite learning of its departure from the expected status quo.
"He thought of the curve of her shoulder and the drops fell through the leaves above him. His eyes closed. He thought of Megha, and he tried to answer the question, Rahul's question, his own, and he said what happened to us was that we loved each other, and we were unkind to each other, and impatient, and unfaithful, and disappointed, and yet we wanted it for forever, but these are only words, and then came a flowing stream of images dense with colour and the perfume of her hair, and it carried him."
Singh is caught up in a story which is not his own, but which reminds him strongly of his own life. He witnesses the love lost in Patel's life and he understands the complexities of such a prominent social life which led to that loss, but he cannot manage to extricate his own experiences from Patel's story. The emotional connection with the story is just too strong and all too familiar.
