[4] Emma-Lee Potter of The Independent listed it as the book with the strongest prose and character development out of 12 Indian novels "that everyone needs to read.

Brooke Allen, writing for the Atlantic in 2002, noted that this was the first book by Mistry which went out of his familiar circle of Parsi characters and aimed at describing the whole Indian society.

[8][9] Ishvar and Omprakash's family is part of the Chamaar caste, who traditionally cured leather and were considered untouchable.

A powerful upper-caste village thug, Thakur Dharamsi, has his henchmen murder Narayan and his family for having the temerity to ask for a ballot.

Ishvar and Narayan's son Omprakash (Om) are the only two who escape the killing as they lodged with Ashraf in the nearby town.

As a result of their skills, Ishvar and Om later move to the big city to get work, by then unavailable in the town near their village because a pre-made clothing shop has opened.

While on the train, they meet a college student named Maneck Kohlah, who coincidentally is also on his way to the flat of Dina Dalal to be a boarder.

Dina, from a traditionally wealthy Parsi family, maintains tenuous independence from her brother by living in the flat of her deceased husband, who was a student.

Dina rebelled against Nusswan and his prospective suitors for her when she came of age, and found her own husband, Rustom Dalal, a chemist, at a concert hall.

She eventually met a lady from a company called Au Revoir Exports - Mrs Gupta - who would buy ready-made dresses in patterns.

The tailors rent their own sewing machines, and come to Dina's flat each day for nearly two weeks before the first round of dresses is completed.

Maneck was born in a mountain town in the Kashmir Valley to loving parents, Mr and Mrs Kohlah.

Maneck, after a humiliating ragging session by fellow hostel students, has his mother arrange a different living situation for him, and he moves in with Dina Dalal.

The shantytown where the tailors live is knocked down in a government "beautification" program, and the residents are uncompensated and forced to move into the streets.

Maneck returns home, finished with his first year in college (he has received a certificate but not a degree), but has stiff relations with his family and finds that his father's business is failing due to the invasion of cheap commercial sodas.

Omprakash and Ishvar return to their old town to find that Ashraf Chacha is an elderly man whose wife died and daughters were all married off.

While at home he reads old newspapers and learns that Avinash's three sisters have hanged themselves, unable to bear their parents' humiliation at not being able to provide dowries for their marriages.

He learns from Dina the horrific lives that Ishvar and Om – one disabled and the other castrated – have led as beggars after their village visit.

Dina and the beggars discuss their lives and how Maneck has changed from a pleasant and friendly college student to a distant refrigeration specialist.