Once It Flowers

A thunderstorm blows the roof off a village school. Guruji, the school teacher, who lives in the school building with his family, is forced to seek shelter in an abandoned police station. The schoolhouse opens to the sky, and along with it, this intensely poetic novel opens up to the inner world of a dozen characters: Guruji, his wife, their two children, the village watchman, the tailor, the teashop owner at the railway station and the stationmaster. There is also the worldly-wise grocer, Jivrakhan, and his wife, who listens to the radio because nothing else will fill the emptiness in her life. A dreamlike novel that is an extraordinary evocation of modern India.