Set in Contemporary Bombay and Other Cities, These Stories Reflect the Kaleidoscope of Urban Life - Evoking the Colour, Sounds and White-Hot Heat of the City. Warm, Perceptive, Humorous and Touched With Sadness, Anita Desai's Stories Are Peopled With Intensely Individual Characters - the Man Spiritually Transformed by the Surface Texture of a Melon; the American Wife Who, Homesick for the Verdant Farmlands of Vermont, Turns to the Hippies in the Indian Hills; the Painter Living in a Slum Who Fills His Canvasses With Flowers, Birds and Landscapes He Has Never Seen.