Tin Fish

'[A] story which will stay with you a long, long time' -The Hindu 'Chakravarti's India is the real India' - India Today 'Reminiscent of Salinger' - Outlook '[Chakravarti's] telling is straight, frank and honest. It makes no apologies' - Tehelka In an elite boarding school in Rajasthan, fifteen-yearold Barun Ray, aka Brandy, lover of canned fish and beefsteak, hater of Kipling, worshipper of Michael Caine and Mick Jagger, meets his soul mates - Fish, 'king' swimmer with a domineering, Muslim-hating father; PT Shoe, a princeling who wants to run away to America and marry a 'gora' chick; and Porridge, a cereal-loving jester caught between warring churches at home.

Together, the four boys set about characteristically irreverent, sometimes hilarious rebellions against their regimental fishbowl existence at a brown-sahib institution in a turbulent, changing India. But growing up isn't always a breeze, and even as they eat toothpaste for dessert and make ambitious plans to write their own musical, Get Lost on the Ganga and All That, they struggle to make sense of incomprehensible adults, Indira Gandhi, the Emergency, urine therapy, girls, and try, above all, to preserve innocence in the face of unspeakable tragedy.

Wry, witty and utterly unsentimental, Tin Fish is an exhilarating ride.