Is life different in India? Do the people living in her cities of joys and sorrows and who wear the badge of Indian citizenship have a heart, a mind, and emotions different from the people elsewhere? The stories in this collection showcase the oneness of mankind. Man-made boundaries may have different situational moments and perhaps even different reactions to those situations, but the emotions in each situation remain the same for every heart. A heart living out of India will cry when in pain, just as a heart living in India will laugh aloud in moments of joy. Though strife, death, pain, and joys are universal emotions, they have a flavor of boundaries made by man dividing the world into parts, where each part has its own unique troubles and solutions. For those who wonder about the kind of life the common people in India live, these stories lift the curtain of curiosity to let the world get a glimpse into the reality of my people covered in the cloak of fiction. Each story in a way is not imagined but real; for after all, fiction can only be produced in the background of reality. Ruby Malshe