In Manju Kapur's emblematic new novel, the seemingly tranquil world of a joint family is coming apart. Banwari Lal, patriarch of a cloth business in the middle class New Delhi neighbourhood of Karol Bagh, is a believer in the old ways. Men work out of the home, women within. Men carry forward the family line, women within. Men carry forward the family line, women enable their mission. His two sons unquestioningly follow their father in business and in life, but their wives will not. Neither will his grand daughter, who make a choices considered unavailable to the women of the family.With unswerving attention, Kapur follows the members of this traditional family into the uneasy world they come to inhabit. From the frenetic sensory overload of modern urban India, she constructs a story as intricate, quiet and dazzling as the fabric produces by the family. Told in a sustained in its sweep and unerringly accurate in the bleakness and hope it presents.