Synopsis These stories have been translated from the author’s award-winning Oriya collection, where characters are implicated in relationships they neither control nor fully understand. A husband’s discovery leads him to doubt whether he ever truly knew his wife. A daughter’s marriage concretises a rupture begun long before with her parents attempts to have control over her life. A writer confronts his need for recognition and ponders the nature of true success. Relationships here are paradoxical, never simple, often confining or disappointing, at times liberating, strongest when opposition to their realization exists, disappearing as the obstacles fall away.