This is not a particularly demanding book to read but you do find yourself caught up in the daily lives of the characters, drifting along at times, jarred into wakefulness at others. Here are lives that are changed by various incidents and influences and the reader feels them through the thoughts of Sripathi Rao and his family.
... These days Sripathi could not bear the insubstantial - sorrow, pain and other abstractions that couldn't be surgically removed like an extra thumb.