In India's tropical paradise, stands a town wrapped around a giant roundabout, where a canny caretaker with a French connection holds sway. Vying for his attention are two competing neighbours. Appu holds lessons for the living but Maya cares only for the dead. And a gastronome dog plays ball girl to tennis-loving nuns.

At the centre is an imposing temple so ancient that no one knows exactly when it was built. Here, even a tiny railway station has set its own rules for acceptance and belonging. On the other side of the tracks, a baker runs errands for total strangers in the middle of a pandemic.

Malgudi Days meets reality in the search for joy and belonging in a book that is alternatively heartwarming and hilarious. Anjana Menon takes you to a place that you wish stays that way forever, in these true stories of hope and resilience from a midway Kerala town.

Autorentext

Anjana Menon has been wrestling with words for as long as she can remember. After studying literature, she got sucked into a journalism career that took her to Southeast Asia and Europe with Bloomberg News.

She returned to India as one of the founder-editors of the business newspaper Mint and then ran a television newsroom before setting up her own content strategy consultancy. She is a co-author of What's Your Story? The Essential Business Storytelling Handbook, published by Penguin Random House.

A columnist who thought she would grow up to be an artist, she likes people more than gadgets, dogs even more than people and slow life over hurried living.

Anjana divides her time between Delhi and London, wishing instead to be in Kyoto, knowing fully well the foolishness of her desires. This is her debut creative non-fiction book.