Summer, 1999. Twelve-year-old Pragya spends her summer holiday with relatives in Calcutta, a muggy city stranded in the last century. Pragya can't wait to grow up. But she struggles to choose a vocation. Bored by her gossipy relatives, Pragya befriends Maya the maidservant. Maya, fresh from the countryside, is devoted to her family, but harbours dreams of her own. Pragya and Maya rebel against gender and class constraints and bond over their ambitions. Soon, the two girls are ready to run away together and try life on their own terms.

These 15 stories feature contemporary Indian women as they grapple with family and friendship, miscarriages and runaway children, love and sex, work and ambition, physical and mental illness, coming of age and aging, and the struggle to make a living.