At sixty Jagan is a prosperous widower a sweet-vendor who contrives to combine handsome profits with highminded Gandhian Principles. The apple of his eye is his son Mali, for whom he feels a deep but absurdly embarrassed affection, which appears to go unrequited. When Mali cooly announces that he is abandoning school to go to America to become a writer, Jagan's fatherly feelings are thrown into still greater confusion. And when, a year or two later, Mali returns with half-Korean, half-American wife and a grandiose acheme for marketing a novel writing machine, Jagan is Utterly at sea. He is confronted by the new world shockingly personified - a world where his cherished notions of marriage and morals seem to count for nothing. The tragicomic clash of the generations deepens with every chapter. Jagan's final escape from the galling chains of paternal love comes a unexpectedly as every other twist in this delicious story.